Its not about being niche. ED and SC are simply painfully dull to watch, there is no point whatsoever to streaming it.
ED is dull by design though. It's why it's viewing numbers will never go up unless they are paying famous streamers. It's on level of niche games like kerbal and space engeniers, the hundreds while SC in the thousands. That's how far ahead they are in terms of being "fun", to play and to watch.
In ED there is next to no agency or pvp conflict. Besides it has to cater for solo mode while in SC at least let's your always online and always at the risk of being attacked. A smaller but hand craft universe will always feel more alive and interesting to watch than a copypasted one.
There's more options for shenanigans too, mostly due to ship interiors. Like stowaway, steal ships, ransoms etc. The beauty of focusing on the player experience from the get go instead of trying to shoehorn mechanics later. They don't have to deal with that ambiguity of designing for solo/open and obfuscate it with mindless grind. They just follow their vision and keep on adding stuff whether dads or sons like it or not. They're adding full looting to an already open universe PVP server along with medical and rescue stuff. Sure it's scary to loose everything but that's the beauty of it, everyone is on it either they like or not. There's no hiding behind solo.
But hey we're getting FC interiors, another srv variant (only took 6 years) and have emotes now... Weeewooo
very exciting times ahead.
Following this path the only way that Frontier will ever see Odyssey steam reviews reach a positive state is if they write Assassins Creed along with it.
Oh and they are adding or have added a bombing ship, haven't seen it yet so probably next update.
They get what? A couple of new vehicles to play every 3 months while Frontier takes years for one when they don't even have to worry with making interiors and damages and stuff...
There's just so many variety of ships and vehicles that put ED to shame. After all Elite was supposed to be a spaceship game first and not a COD pew pew later. Another dropped ball by Odyssey.
No wonder Elite Refugees keep jumping over.