After their experiences with miniatures, I´m pretty sure MGP will have a third party produce the miniatures for Emergence, and just distribute them (along with the bases).
A future setting with earth nations going to war with each other? That would follow the same path as Full Thrust does, depending on how it was set up it might or might not be unique enough to be interesting...
What would interest me more at the moment would be whether it will be ship - or fighter based. The first concepts shown in the blog (whic I wasn´t to fond of to be honest) could easily have been fighers. Now, a fighter game would really be something different; I know there is a BSG games out there, but that is hex based as far as I recall?
Whatever the setting, scape and scope of Emergence will be, I´m pretty sure it´s rules will be based on the CTA rules set, ACTAS game engine is pretty solid as foundation for other games.
Ah well, we´ll see later this year...