He didn't say it was being shut down at 1.5, the Nodus website went down and people automatically assumed that it was gone, but now it's the actual developer stating it's going to be discontinued.
Once Nodus is gone, of course many people are going to use other clients, but the reason Nodus was so big was because everyone knew about it, it was developing fast and had more features (at least for free) then any other client. Now the hacking will be more deverse but less frequent, and I doubt any new client will make an uprising to stand out from others, just like it was before Nodus was made.