I think the game will make back it's money for the developer pretty quickly, it's one of those games where you just sense it will do very well.
But... will it be a critical success, that is difficult to say right now. In the spectrum days you could get away with very little things to do in games like Elite but rely on the excitement from the players... my biggest concern with such a big environment is the lack of things to do after you have done the core elements. How much depth is there. Also I think the whole sentinels might get a bit of a pain in the butt when you just want to collect resources.