I was thinking about this too. It's obviously nothing compared to Wing Commander, but Halo is huge, and perhaps it will generate some interest. Maybe a Halo flight sim could pave the way for a Wing Commander return.
Does anyone else think this could be the future of big games?
Personally I would love a Wing Commander game which was first person and included walking around your capship, on planets, conversing or fighting --- but obviously you could run across the flight deck during a scramble and jump in your Vampire
Games used to work like this. It was no surprise to see a game where you fly a ship, run around and shoot, use a mapscreen, and other things. Even games as "recent" as Shadows of the Empire did things like this. Of course, games were simpler then. Over time, as engines and graphics got more complex, games evolved into a more "do one thing and do it well" thing. And of course it was also natural to target serious players with more specialized products, such as with flight sims.
The more modern attempts to include multiple types of gameplay haven't really been as satisfying, in my opinion, though, because at least one type of gameplay winds up watered down. In Halo: Reach, the FPS type of play was still the same as ever, but the flight type of play was very watered down. This happens for a variety of reasons. Time and budget, of course. (And does it even make sense from a business standpoint to release one game that is a great FPS and a great space combat game when you could release one of each?) And there is also a game design issue at play - you want to have as simple and as common a user interface across the whole game as possible. But two really serious attempts at two entirely different styles of play need different controls. Plus, you don't want to waste time putting a serious space combat mode in your FPS when your fans likely will not want to bother with that anyway.
So you can get something like Battlefront 2, that does FPS, vehicle combat, and space combat. But it doesn't do any one of those things that well. And that can still be fun. But when you really want to get your space combat fix, Battlefront 2 isn't going to do it.
So we may see more gameplay variety in big games, but I don't think we'll be seeing multiple fully fleshed-out styles of play in games in the foreseeable future.