To answer the question literally "Will ED be
THE space game?" I think... possibly not ...or maybe.
First... is it even 'THE' space game now?
We have an active forum community here and it's all about ED (obv) but in my personal RL circle, many of whom are avid gamers, I'm the only one who currently plays ED. Just in my personal/friends circle 'THE' space game currently is NMS, a handful of my friends are still playing it after the NEXT update. Amongst my friends ED players (me) are even outnumbered by KSP players (2 of my friends). Three or four of my gaming friends
used to play ED on PC years ago but stopped long before I eventually got into it last year (I'm on PS4). I wonder if we sometimes get so focused in this forum that we forget ED probably isn't as popular a game in the wider gaming world as we might think, some of the younger gamers I know haven't even heard of it.
Second - 12 months... that's a long time in games. This time last year we'd only just got into the return of the Thargoids. That seems like ages ago now.
I've also been playing NMS since it's NEXT update and given the amount of stuff HG packed into that in a year who knows what they might achieve in another 12 months time - they're already putting out feelers to the community for new content suggestions, more varied planets, VR support, larger multiplayer lobbies, improved bases, improved NPCs, etc. Imagine if they decided to improve the flight model and space combat?
X4 will have been around for almost a year and if well received may well be a firmly established favourite for many by then.
Star Citizen is probably still not going to be anywhere near a finished game by then, but their recent test update does at least seem to be playable at decent frame-rates.
Starfield won't be around yet, but we'll hopefully have more info on it by then - who knows what that might turn up.
ED - We don't know for sure yet of course, but the
hype info so far from Frontier and and the recent visiting group of player representatives suggests that the Beyond Q4 update
could be a game changer... and if we tack another twelve months on we should be at the point where some significant future DLC or paid update has at least been announced.
Will ED be 'THE' space game in a years time? Maybe... but even if it isn't it will still be 'A' potentially decent space game among a bunch of other potentially decent space games and I reckon that's not a bad thing at all.