Because it seems as if you don´t know it ratchet:
There are already a lot of games using voxels, as there once was a time at which voxels where very popular for gamedev.
Voxels would allow some great effects. I´ve got no idea on how to do the shading, but that also works somehow. Shadow mapping should work wi†hout a problem for shadows. With raytracing they should allow some even better results than polygons as you´ve got information about the volume of objects.
I think that voxels could really get popular for realtime rendering again.
If you wanted you could probably still use the usual model formats and the importer could make voxelobjects out of it.

Well i know like C4D engine, Crysis uses voxel for terrain.
But at final like C4 engine , that's voxel computed into polygons by the editor.

With 3D points and polygons you can define hard edges along a spline on models, i'm not sure voxel will allow that.

Well polygons are here for a long long time

Novalogic released several games using voxels. For example Comanche Gold and Delta Force 2. The game Outcast by Appeal uses voxels for the environment and polygons for animated objects like characters. There are several more games from between 1992 and 1999. So voxels are also there for a long time already I guess the biggest problem for voxels was the increasing resolutions games were rendered with, as you needed more details and thus more and smaller voxels, which in the end turned out to be slower than using polygons.

i dont think zbrush is too expensive. you get the updates for free
i tried out 3dcoat but among ppl think zbrush is strange, i didnt got the hang of 3dcoat over zbrush... retopology in zbrush isnt that bad as many claim. it works like a charm

zspheres2 are going to be just awesome

my 2c

Hiya.

I tried 3d Coat as well, but found ZBrush to sort of, I don't know, "artisticly empower" me. A lot of the time when I'm in ZBrush, I loose the perception that I'm in a 3d program...it's really wierd, because something will happen (like a rendering artifact, or maybe I hit the wrong hot-key), and I snap back into reality and think "Oh! Right...I'm using ZBrush on a computer...". But for seconds and minutes at a time, when I'm right into it, I'm picturing my model as an actual 'clay' sculpture and I'm actually pushing/pulling/poking/proding it with physical tools in my hand.

No other software I've EVER used has actually 'sucked my brain' into it that way.

I think ZB3.5 will become the buzz of the internet artists circle again...and I have no frickin' idea what Pixologic is going to do for ZB4 that will top 3.5...but one thing I've learned about Pixologic: Never underestimate their creative innovation.

@Paul_L_Ming :

Well, i'm not 3D Coat fan, it's not my exclusive tool !
But have you tried it's voxel sculpintg, that very different from pushing vertices !

You can't do that on Zbrush , or you need to subdivide all time your mesh when you push too much polygons :
With voxel, i can extrude how much i want , along any path, and any brush shape, whitout having to subdivide !

voxel spikes example

or that

Cut and clone


ANd there are lot of examples :
With voxel , you can do boolean operation on any volume or parts, you can put volume anywhere in space, sculpt it , cut it.

That's really different from the simple push vertices, subdivide, push again, push, subdivide etc ....

With voxel you add volume in space, you are not pushing vertices (and subdivide each time) , you add more vertices , so no need to subdivide each time.

Coat 3D in voxel mode is as artistically great as Zbrush !
And again for little budget or people not sure to sell a game,
595 $ For playing with a tool is really big
But if you are passionnate , why not ?
I had 3D Coat for 160 $ before price increase
The new price 3D Coat is 285 $ , and that's sure now it's only half of Zbrush and if price continue increasing , that's sure people will perhaps go to Zbrush ??

They are two great tools and Zbrush with it's Z Sphere 2 is similar in some ways of 3D Coat voxels ... so it's a user preference.