Photo: Frontier Developments
In a surprising turn of events, Frontier Developments, the studio behind Elite Dangerous, announced it has canned all future update for the console version of the game. After a less than ideal launch of the Odyssey expansion, the developer decided to exclusively focus on the PC version of Elite Dangerous going forward.
In a statement released today, Frontier Developments founder and CEO David Braben explains the reasons behind the studio’s decision to stop updating Elite Dangerous on PlayStation and Xbox consoles:
“Over the last several months, we have been wrestling with the best way to move forward, and it is with a heavy heart we have decided to cancel all console development. We need to be able to move forward with the story of the game, and in order for us to do this we need to focus on a single codebase. Elite Dangerous will continue on console as it is now together with critical updates, but we will focus on new content updates on PC on the post-Odyssey codebase.”
Although the Elite Dangerous will continue to receive small updates on console that will fix many of the issues, there will be no content updates coming to console players going forward, as Frontier Developments announced it will exclusively deliver these updates to the PC version only.
Of course, the news has taken players by surprise, and many have decided to quit playing the game and permanently dock their ships. Reddit is full of posts from players who bid farewell to the Elite Dangerous community and show off their soon-to-be retired ships.
Some are hopeful that Frontier Developments will make it possible to transfer characters cross-platform, something that’s not currently possible. However, that will only be a solution for a small number of players, as many who own a console don’t own a gaming PC too.
While we understand that in order to progress with the development a radical decision needed to be made, it’s sad to see a big chunk of the Elite Dangerous community being deprived by what’s coming to the game in the next months.
“Over the last several months, we have been wrestling with the best way to move forward, and it is with a heavy heart we have decided to cancel all console development. We need to be able to move forward with the story of the game, and in order for us to do this we need to focus on a single codebase. Elite Dangerous will continue on console as it is now together with critical updates, but we will focus on new content updates on PC on the post-Odyssey codebase.”
Although the Elite Dangerous will continue to receive small updates on console that will fix many of the issues, there will be no content updates coming to console players going forward, as Frontier Developments announced it will exclusively deliver these updates to the PC version only.
Of course, the news has taken players by surprise, and many have decided to quit playing the game and permanently dock their ships. Reddit is full of posts from players who bid farewell to the Elite Dangerous community and show off their soon-to-be retired ships.
Some are hopeful that Frontier Developments will make it possible to transfer characters cross-platform, something that’s not currently possible. However, that will only be a solution for a small number of players, as many who own a console don’t own a gaming PC too.
While we understand that in order to progress with the development a radical decision needed to be made, it’s sad to see a big chunk of the Elite Dangerous community being deprived by what’s coming to the game in the next months.
Google News