When Mike spoke about too many spaceships he is dead right (as always). I was told many a time - take out the spaceships - the industry is bored stiff of sci-fi stuff, they are probably getting bored with dinosaurs by now...

As for 3DS or 3DMax or whatever (same program), it has been dominant in the games industry for ages. As Kevin said this might change, reason being most game development cycles are about 2-3 years. Now you're not gonna change package half way through a development cycle to Maya Complete (you don't need Unlimited) just cos it's got cheaper and is better to use. So, perhaps as games developers finish their games they might adopt Maya instead of Max. But then again they would have to train staff to use Maya which would be time consuming and not cost-effective.

Put yourselves in the shoes of a developer you wana create something that is gonna sell and produce it as cheaply as possible...

BTW
Talking of SciFi it might make a bit of a come back. I mean I still think 'The Forbidden Planet' was an excellent film, better than some of the stuff you get today...