How about a Sci-fi RPG from Wizards?

[mxyzplk]

My first RPG was Star Frontiers and I played the heck out of Alternity (am currently in a year-old campaign of it actually).

Both games got more support than 90% of RPGs. They were never as big as D&D but each had dozens of supplements, so I'm not sure "unsuccessful" is an appropriate moniker to apply, just not as successful as D&D, which nothing ever is. (Except Pathfinder. Oh snap!)

d20 Modern/Future weren't successful but that's because d20 Modern wasn't all that good and Future was a barely thought out bolt-on that didn't get any support.

Alternity seemed to be going strong with people I knew, till WotC got the Star Wars license and discontinued Alternity with the hopes of building Star Wars into the grand SF game "to rival D&D" you're thinking of. Contact with the Lucas Approval Machine basically ruined that and turned the game into a minimal release has-been.

Also, in general SF fans do expect a bit more rigor from their world. A pure Star Wars approach can kinda get away with hand-waving but that's not really the fan set that SF RPGs attract. As a result, a 4e-based SFRPG in the Gamma World mold would probably not be well received - at least not by anyone who played Traveller/Alternity/Star Frontiers; those aren't exactly hard SF but they're at least simulation games. You can go strongly genre with it, go for Star Trek: The Old Series silliness; Santiago is going for the Cowboy Bebop angle. Maybe you could go gonzo with a far future transhumanism like Alan Moore's Top 10, that could work in 4e. Might not have wide base appeal though.

The SF RPG market is fragmented right now because what SF means is pretty fragmented. Mongoose Traveller is doing well for old style space opera fans. Eclipse Phase is the game of choice for the transhumanist "new SF" aficionados. There's many more but yeah none have really taken on a majority position.

 

[Votan]

I think the only successful SF games have been those from licensed properties (Star Trek, Star Wars, etc.)--and I'll count StarFleet Battles since it's more or less a depreciative of Star Trek due to some licensing technicality--and Traveller. And the latter was the first SF RPG and thus probably benefits from its long history--but even that gets strained due to the various game systems and what (IMO) is a campaign setting that shows its age in terms of S-F trends (lack of cybertech, nanotech, transhumanism).

I would have counted Traveller as a success.

Actually, Star Frontiers was a popular game in my youth for a very long time and had a fair amount of interest. The line lost support and it faded, but it was a well supported and popular game of the era.

 

[Mark CMG]

GW seems to be the 4E SciFi version of D&D, albeit with a wacky random card mechanic layered on top of it and some other changes.

 

[VGmaster9]

Maybe what Wizards can do is make Star Frontiers a D&D-licensed game, just like they did with Gamma World, and create a broad far future setting that borrows elements from many space opera franchises.