In this situation, I'd fully expect them to deliver something early, and then sell another game in the next generation, or sell DLC, or something like that. It'

In this situation, I'd fully expect them to deliver something early, and then sell another game in the next generation, or sell DLC, or something like that. It's more-or-less a proved revenue model; nobody's quite doing something exactly like Star Citizen, but there's plenty of games that are "the previous game's engine and possibly content, but more". It's popular to hate on sequelitis, but I actually often enjoy those games, because the developers are not struggling just to get the engine to do what it is they wanted or learn how to do the basics, and are now creating a game quickly and confidently based on experience.