It's a great idea on paper, but I'm not sold that CCP can sell the game to hardcore FPS gamers.
Not against the A+ shooter du jour, no. That takes millions thrown into ads saturating every commercial break for 2-3 weeks and the game to back it up. Is there anything that points to CCP's willingness or ability to do that?
CCP's only shot is to make the first successful MMOFPS for the console. That will require a few things in my opinion:
1. At least an A- shooter at launch, and still be B+/B level a few years in when all the main MMO features are implemented and tweaked appropriately based on experience. We really don't know what to expect from CCP Shanghai at this time in this regard.
2. Marketing tie-ins with the PSN and XBOX Live. They need people subscribing for the long-term. It needs to be marketed through the game industry as something special.
3. Cool skill advancement unique to the FPS genre. This is actually something I'm expecting.
4. The link with EVE to be something that gets the FPS "pros" interested on succeeding at (i.e. being the most sought-after mercs to have contracts with).
There's probably a few more, but they do indeed have a tall hill to climb. The thing is, DUST sort of has to succeed or it will signal the slow death of EVE. I mean, how would they recover from launching a game like DUST and then abandoning it. How would you play that off in the EVE world?