I don't think solid design kept pace for space sims. Wing Commander relied heavily on a new 'wow' factor to sell each new game instead of building up the core gameplay. As a result, a mission in Wing Commander IV plays essentially the same way as a mission in the original game... and you're relying on an unsustainable full motion video budget to sell the new game. (You know what killed that final generation of AAA space sims (and in turn publisher interest)? It's not that StarLancer/FreeSpace 2/Tachyon were terrible games... it's that everyone who looked at them on the shelf was programmed to ask an obvious question: 'so, it's Wing Commander without the video?')
All that 'HALO is just like Wolfenstein 3D!' acerbity is just talk. One big factor in FPS' continued success is the fact that they're able to both evolve in incredibly important unnoticed ways (multiplayer, physics, mouselook, etc.--all the stuff that becomes standard over time) and because they're willing to innovate around the basic concept in different directions (open worlds, themed pieces, multiplayer dedicated games, things like Half Life where they build the story into the game...).
Another thing that hurts is the 'sim ghetto' that we helped build. You know what Wing Commander's gameplay is? DooM without a floor--but we (and the folks advertising it) worked so very hard to convince everyone it was something much more complex. It's not an arcade game or a shooter, it's a *simulator*. Ooooh. You know what? People *like* shooters and arcade games and they don't necessarily enjoy being told something else is superior.
One of the upcoming HALO games has an arcade-derived space combat mission--maybe that'll be a start.
But I think these reasons aren't valid anymore. Alternative input device are back now. I mean some games ship now together with skateboards, bongo drums and guitars, so why can't a new space sim ship with a basic joystick if needed?
It's an interesting thought but I don't think it's the same. The really succesful alternate controllers are hits (sort of) because they're part of a particular movement--social games. You put extra money into a Rock Band setup or a Wii to play a particular kind of multiplayer game in real life with your friends. Other controllers, like the skateboard or the various guns, have been flops--because it's a different thing to purchase an expensive one-off controller for a game you play by yourself.
(Flight sticks and hardcore simulators for the current crop of consoles do exist... but no one really cares. I've been playing IL-2 on the Xbox with a nice Saitek Xbox flight stick... but I don't think either of those things is burning up the sales carts, or even breaking even.)
It also wasn't that people necessarily *bought* separate joysticks for Wing Commander--that's always been a barrier, and fancy specialty sticks continue to exist in roughly the same capacity today--it's that a cheap joystick was part of the standard Dell/Gateway/Compaq 'family PC' at the time.
I said this once before in a similar thread. The 1990's was still riding on the buzz of the Cold War-era space program, the first Star Trek series, and the technically mind-blowing Star Wars films. The market wanted to go into space and do neat things.
It's more than that--the overall TV market shattered into a zillion pieces. It used to be you could produce a sci fi show and have a low-but-consistent audience... but that isn't the case anymore because ratings are down so significantly overall. Spending a lot of money to create a new Star Trek type series still guarantees you a steady audience that's 10% of a hit show... but the numbers that make a show a hit today are so low that that 10% isn't worth the money anymore.
And I would point out that while Mass Effect has you travel through space, everything you do is on foot, either on a planet or on something that perfectly simulates a planet. In that regard I can call it "Gears of War with some Bioware dialogue slapped on" and not be entirely incorrect.
That doesn't seem especially fair. The original poster is right that Mass Effect is a very geeky game--to an odd extent. It's full of the kind of lore and design that people who play Gears of War don't care about. I'm not really sure how ME became a huge hit, since it spends so much effort doing strangely unique and unnecessary things. The stuff that defines games today isn't that you press a button and your guy shoots--that's just a given--it's the fact that Mass Effect has a unique 1950s-derived sci fi art style and Gears of War has muscles and brown stuff.
(Sadly, ME's success is actually a problem for modern day WC pitches. Why do Wing Commander when you can do a game in EA's current popular sci fi setting?)
You want to revive a series? I'dve loved to see SeaQuest DSV back on the air. More underwater sci fi, history, and PSAs, and less Space Battles, Military Campaigns, and Micheal Ironsides. The first season was great, but then the show pretty much killed itself with it's "New Direction" that even the cast hated.
I love seaQuest more than is reasonable, but I'm not sure there was anywhere for it to go... which is why it kept getting retooled. Like Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea before it, they ran out of things to do underwater. (And it wasn't an underwater show anyway--it was the best of a dozen attempts to copy ST:tNG at the time. There's a great movie that LeHah and I saw on Netflix streaming recently that's clearly a pilot movie for *underground* Star Trek.)