First, it was already said that changing the engine means rebuilding a large chunk of code. Second these trailers are goddam trailers We can be pretty sure that almost everything we see there is prescripted, preanimated and prerendered. Trailers that show actual gameplay usually have a small "actual gameplay" branding. This does not because it's not actual gameplay.

I guess that begs the question "than why hasn't that happened?"

The space stuff is not based on carbon, at least not the rendering part. How old the carbon engine is i don't know, but is more like four years and engines tend to perform differently in various environments e.g. ID tech needed significant reworks to cope with large areas while allowing great visuals in enclosed spaces.

The space simulation is not that complex. In fact the main reason why eve looks so good even on old hardware is the fact that most of what you see in any given scene is a high resolution skybox. The polycount is really rather low compared to games that have to render vast areas along with all the actors.

The Carbon engine is from 2003... older than the Unreal 3 engine....explain that one...

So if the PS3 can't handle Carbon, why downgrade the gameplay, content and quality so drastically to be able to run on PS3? When a new system would be available during the same year of release, especially when releasing a FTP game in a starter line-up for a new Console would or at least seems really good as an invesment?

Who would not try out a free game when they just spent all that money on the new console? Surely the player count would be/should (be) much higher than 10k for a FTP game?

Just seems to me that downgrading a game so much from what was shown in 2009 isn't the right move, but then again what do i know, i am not a game developer, just a gamer. As long as the aurum is rolling in they should be happy i guess.