What happened to space sims?

[Tryst]

There has been little or nothing new for single players since Freelancer. What's the deal? Have space sim games gone out of fashion?Freelancer was a big let down for me, a supposedly open world game like Elite turned out to be mission based and you had to use hacks and mods to play the fully sandboxed game it was hyped up to be. With a tiny universe and very little variation on ship setups, it completely blew out any idea that it was an Elite type game. Damn M$ taking over Digital Anvil, a company with vision that got bought out by one that can only produce high priced trash.I have been trying to email David Braben since the news that Elite 4 would be released but after a couple of years and no news, I guessed that was just vapopurware. He seems more interested in silly platform games for consoles now. Shame that someone who rocked the game world with Elite and gained a massive fan base didn't want to build on it. After fighting all that time for the rights to the Elite title, he doesn't even want to do anything with it.Can't the space sim fans among us hit on some developers to assuage our hunger for another title?

[Dramacius]

the only way we are going to get anything worth playing is to either develop it ourselves or to hope that some indie developer does for us, the mainstream developers are only interested in $$ which means its more Unreal Engine FPS or WoW clones.

[sscadmin]

There is a few SP/MP games in development actually, some that I am waiting on personally is Starpoint Gemini, Shattered Origins and Salvation Prophecy. You also have Star Wolves 3, Evochron Legends and Precursors.

[CaptainKal]

Quote:
You also have Star Wolves 3, Evochron Legends and Precursors.
Which are very good games.

[Blackthorne]

There's also the X-Series, which by by now can be gotten incredibly cheap. It's not without it's warts, but the games are definitely worth trying.
Quote:
some that I am waiting on personally is Starpoint Gemini, Shattered Origins and Salvation Prophecy.
SP:G is preordered already, and I'll buy the other two in a heartbeat once they become available. It's slim pickings as far as the genre is concerned, but it's not extinct.-Blackthorne