It's interesting indeed.
I played X3 Reunion for 100's of hours and loved it, and ED is the first game to attempt to come close to it.
I think they are different games mostly, but the things that ED currently misses in comparison are either already planned to be added or can always be added later on.
It still feels like there's a vast amount of final release stuff that isn't added / finished yet too.
Only yesterday I was thinking wouldn't it be great if there were more stations and factories in space - then potentially in the future you could add in player ownership and all kinds of stuff.
I know that's not on the short term plan at all, but long term the sky is potentially the limit if it's popular enough.
The base game is already shaping up really well.