Sorry folks, I should have replied to this thread earlier.
Yes, the plan was to do a big budget Wing Commander after Arena. It wasn't even the sales that killed the project--that was that weird period where the industry was OBSESSED with Metacritic; bad reviews for Arena told the number munchers that no one wanted the Wing Commander IP. It's a shame--they had great things planned, and even had a simple multiplayer mode up and running when it died. It would have been a "classic" style game (ie, a FPS without floors), but following the continuity created by Arena. I don't know how much there is in terms of game assets out there and I don't really have any, beyond a few sketches of the Kilrathi I was shown early on.
(One thing that I think confused people is who made Arena. Arena was managed by an EA producer in Burnaby, but developed by an outside studio called Gaia in New York City. The AAA product would have been run by the same producer but with a team at EA. Other than the man in charge--who LOVED Wing Commander like we do--it would have been a new team of developers.)
This project was NOT connected to Chris Roberts' current one in any way. If you know Chris, you know he's a man with a very specific vision--the fact that he wants to come back to Wing Commander now means that he has his OWN idea that he's set on making. There's no chance that he'd be picking up where someone else left off.