Mercs upgraded nearly everything visual so animation was more fluid and there were actual textures... still, they didn't age all that well either.
Seeing this, it amazes me how sci-fi sims have really died in the past years. We could do amazing things with them now and yet no one has bothered. Even if you took older stuff and just upgraded the graphics, there would be more tons meat than most games that involve vehicles of some sort. Granted it won't be as action packed as all that stuff, but I still think you could do something amazing with a modest budget that would cater to the crowds of people who would love a game like this again. It doesn't even need to be an established franchise, just something that was open enough where learning to drive/pilot some fantasy tank/ship is a game in of itself.
With the gaming industry having moved on to the mass market stage, I think it will take some time before a publisher spends big bucks on making a sci fi sim. I guess for now they are all making what they suppose to be safer investments.
As for those with modest budgets, I guess it is the same reason why we are seeing a decline in sims in general. I remember reading some sales figures in PC Gamer in an article by Andy Mahood, and it seemed that aside from MS's
Flight Simulator, nothing was actually breaking even! I suppose with the regular sims not selling well, they weren't willing to experiment with sub genres.
Even the famous
Falcon 2.0 series had been slow to sell.
