Why are you creating some kind of stupid conspiracy? This is all well documented.
EA's lack of interest in Wing Commander is a shame for the fans, but it's completely understandable from their point of view. Interest in space sims declined significantly after Prophecy. There were a string of disasters (sales-wise): Freespace 2, Tachyon and later StarLancer sold a tiny number of copies (no, Quarto, the movie didn't kill WC -- the team was laid off *before* it was released...). EA simply said "Oh, look, there's no market for these games, lets not invest in them."
Fans don't really mean much money-wise -- to assume so is far too self-important. How many people are registered to this board? A thousand? How many people actually post here regularly? A hundred? How many people need to buy a new game for it to have broken even? A *million*. It was wonderful how well Origin interacted with the fans... but financially, the rabid fanbase is the group you *least* need to please. We're going to buy a game *anyway*. We're the *guaranteed* sales numbers... a new title has to sell to the hundreds of thousands of casual gamers. And as of 1999 the market indicated that these casual gamers weren't interested in another space-sim.
How many games to date are series like WC? How many games of such a series can be counted compared to WC? I think so far, the only game I know of that barely comes close to WC would be the Star Wars games, such as XVT or XVA. Although those dont interlink with the other like WC games do, storyline etc, the numbers are still FAR below the series numbers of WC.
Myst, Duke Nukem, Serious Sam, Tomb Raider, Half Life, A half-dozen Sierra 'Quest' games, Final Fantasy, Ultima, Command and Conquer, etc. We can name dozens of games that are series like WC.
Many game makers have extened the life of their games by either releasing source code, assembling official editors or simply making the things multiplayer capable, or making them very easy to add modifications or complete total conversions.
Completely different sales model -- EA/Origin has never done this, and I know it will come as a shock to the Lunix Junky community... but they're GETTING ALONG JUST FINE. (Mind you, of course, that companies like iD releasing the source for the Quake II engine isn't a kindness to their fans -- it's so that their *licensees* will have to purchase the Quake *3* engine to develop their next title.)
I hope you see what I am getting at. It is simply asking why no plans for a new WC game when the history, the track record, the sales, the profits of the series has indeed created an income for EA/OSI. I find it hard to believe that it is a money issue. Or that EA/OSI want to just focus on UO and nothing else. If you have a money maker, you dont shove it into the closet and let it sit, you expose it, you sell it, you make money. And I think everyone here can agree, WC IS a money maker.
But we *can't* agree on that -- it's only true because you have no actual facts behind your statement. Wing Commander IV is the game that effectively killed the interactive movie because it was too expensive to turn a profit...