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Things have changed a bit in recent years. It used to be that manufacturers developed specific engines for specific cars than they do now, and those engines tended to be pushed closer to the limits than current engines are. Thus, tunes were a bit of a riskier proposition.
Nowadays the situation is completely different. BMW produces over 20 car models, yet those 20 cars share three basic engines. If you look at the N55, it was sold in variants of 300, 320, and 360 horsepower (335, 135is, M2) not to mention the factory tune sold separately in the MPPK.
BMW can't have one car for $60,000 with the same horsepower output as a $38,000 X1 35i, so they artificially restrict engine output for marketing reasons. It's significantly cheaper to restrict power via software tweaks as opposed to making different engines for every car. Restricting engine output allows BMW to save hundreds of millions of dollars via sharing components.
If you're willing to lose your warranty, there is nothing stopping you from getting back some power. A flash tune is best, as there is no external hardware or additional failure points added. A piggyback is also good, but comes with additional points of failure (wiring harness, water in the electronics, etc). If you keep it within the power levels that BMW has previously sold your engine with, than there is extremely minimal risk. Once you go significantly past that, you can make a lot more power but your risk of something going wrong increases as well.
For what is worth, I have the 3.0L N55 engine in the X1 35i. I now have 74,000 miles on it with a JB4 tune pushing over 400whp. I have used e85 since day one as well. I have had several things fail on the car (thermostat, corrosion of wiring harness, oil filter housing gasket, etc), but the engine itself is still in excellent shape.
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