About our "prayed-for sequels", I think the game industry is becoming a lot like the movie industry, consolidating, requiring big capital investment, using tried-and-true formulas making bad sequels to bad games just because its safer.
HOWEVER,
It is also getting like the movie industry in that the people, not the people with money yet, but the rest, have a clear and defined set of absolute classic properties that, money or not, WILL AT SOME POINT BE MADE. It may be a good thing or a bad thing, but the huge investment costs will stop independents from making immeadiate sequels to "cult-classics", but games that become recognized as truly great (like System Shock I & II) will have a major studio make a run at it.
One day (maybe 2015ish) we will be at the Hollywood level, which isn't exactly quality friendly, but has a lot of talented and dedicated people who get a shot or two at making our SSIII (or FS3, Gabriel Knight 4, etc.) dreams come true. Remember LOTR worked out very well under this kind of system (miraculously)