I have to agree with the naysayer's (because I'm pessimistically optimistic as I get older, being wiser is open for debate). EA have proven that Star Wars is a cash cow, even when they put little content out there. As everyone will know, I am referring to Star Wars Battlefront. It has beaten EA's projections and continues to sell strongly, they made a lot of money in a very short time. That's EA's mantra.
New EA SW game sells badly (Dec 2015) :
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...es-after-gamestop-claim-launch-underperformed
12 Millions copies sold (Jan 2016):
http://www.idigitaltimes.com/star-w...million-sold-more-free-dlc-coming-soon-500710
That is a pretty fast turn around is less than a month!
As for Mass Effect Andromida, yes it was in production before EA got the rights to Star Wars. Now which is more popular and has more traction and has a mass appeal to all audiences? Simply ME has a smaller audience than SW. Sure from a fan perspective we all want ME and SW to co-exist, hey why not a cross over lol (sorry, being silly). EA will expand on it's SW portfolio as it's the less riskier option and guarantees to make shareholders and many gamers happy. Same way with how they have done with Sports.
As for Wing Commander, why would they sell something off when they don't need to? Why sell a license which could negatively affect their brand if it turns out badly? Why compete against a large franchise, when WC is already inspired by SW? They are too similar in concept, just set in different universe/time period. It's best to keep all your cards close to your chest, even when the company is nothing but a shell, because income is still going to come in from sales of a back catalogue, with an income, no matter how small in comparison, with no expenditure, the dimes all add up. Probably enough to pay for the Champaign lunch each day for the EA execs.
Look at Interplay, they hold the licence to many Star Trek game, do they even make games anymore?
http://www.interplay.com/ (Perhaps they do
)
In the end of the day the suits make the decisions, the Command and Conquer community are still waiting for their new game since Red Alert 3.
How many C&C projects have they cancelled since then, at least 2 I know of. How many WC games have EA killed off, many that we know of.
How many have they worked behind the scene's on and never announced, will we ever know?
All that is written without any animosity or negative feeling (read it in an upbeat way), but the tl;dr of it is if we want to see a Wing Commander and live up to the community's expectations then the community needs to build it. SO many awesome projects out there made by the fans, this community is definitely not lacking the talent. Just time, commitment and structure to a very large and complex project. We can't rely on EA to make it, or for Chris to re-skin Star Citizen, because it may never happen; but we all want it to happen
I've added some smiley faces, because reading all that may make me come across negative and a miserable sod.
Disclaimer: The above is all just my personal opinion, I have no inside knowledge to how the world really works, but I've lived long enough to become disappointed by it enough times.