The problem with more in-depth sims is that they lack the very thing arcade games have...
First, wider audience can't really get into the somewhat sterile world of flightsims, I mean basically they hold as much appeal as Call of Duty singleplayer without the storyline especially if there's no multiplayer which is another attraction.
I tried AceCombat for PC and it's pretty much not even a sim-game but rather plane-game, but I'll tell 'ya, it kept me in the chair to the very end and old hand AceCombat players even say that we got the worst one!
So to cut to the mighty two(from our perspective):
LockOn saga:
It's ok, pretty scalable in difficulty options although maybe not fully up to my taste, has multiplayer which is a big plus, however singleplayer is just as sterile as usual for those games and with the limited amount of scenarios, terrains and flyable aircrafts I get bored with it really easy.
Big minus - no mods(in SF sense) from the start, can one imagine what would be available now if mods for LockOn were possible from the start?
Another huge minus for LockOn series is unreasonable performance demand topped with poorly scalable graphics options which often lead to the what I call LockOn paradox a 3d game phenomenon which occurs when the game is so demanding that even when you cut it down to the point it looks VERY poorly as in worse than competition poorly it still runs like crap.
TW series,
- small development house can't follow modern trends
- continuation from the first point, same as LockOn and other sim-games, has sterile gameplay
- no multiplayer
On a good thing, high modability gives it nearly endless possibilities, you can buzz around in a Fokker Dr.1 over France in 1917 at one point, push the attack on Hanoi in F-105 in another and finish your playtime pushing amraams from your Raptor over Taiwan, no game could give us that, ever...
- however devs for some reason are pushing the mods out more aggressively than ever which makes that huge uber-plus of tw games a big-fat minus.
Do we dare to hope for a super game? I think we should and basically if such game ever shows up it will have to concentrate on allowing a smooth mod support and let the people as enthusiasts build it together with the devs, I see DCS is trying that but they are waaaay too complicated for that to explode and conquer like SF series mods(just look at the insane amount of stuff we built over the years!!!) because with the amount of time it takes to make something at DCS level mods that do come out and actually get finished can pretty much be payware only and even then considering the time it will take they will most likely be obsolete...