Frontier to cancel dev of console versions of Elite Dangerous

[Akita One]

This is the right decision, they really have been going in the right direction since the launch last year and aren't trying to lie to themselves or over-promise. It's obvious they are too small of a company to maintain the scope they had before 2021.

The PC updates have been steady and with more substance than what they were doing before.

 

[PJsprojects]

Here goes my hope that I'll ever get to play it more or less seriously. Do we have any idea of the console vs pc player base split? If they're killing console I'm assuming it was a marginal population they decided to shit on?

Click to shrink...

Not solid by any means but I read that console players were less than 20%

 

[Deleted member 93841]

Still going to reiterate my hot take that I don't think adding an so-so FPS mode was needed in a game about space vehicles and the space simulation part of being a space sim. I would have rather had things like uninhabited earthlike worlds or something than going this route. It's neat to walk around but I'm not particularly a huge fan of the FPS component.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, I'm not sure what led them to that decision. I'm guessing they wanted to get in on the Star Citizen action, seeing as Star Citizen will probably never release.

 

[HylianSeven]

Yeah, I'm not sure what led them to that decision. I'm guessing they wanted to get in on the Star Citizen action, seeing as Star Citizen will probably never release.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, seems really weird to try to take after Star Citizen of all things, given how development of that has been going and Elite has been...ya know, a finished product, for years.

 

[RevrendHedshot]

Disappointing given that Hello Games with a team of around 25 can support NMS across multiple consoles, generations and PCs but Frontier with 30x as many staff can't manage it - though as a caveat I obviously don't know how their engine works!

Click to shrink...

Word is most of the original team left so... I don't think they know much about the engine as well. =]
It's good at making roller coasters, Kinectimals, and dinosaurs I guess.

 

[foxuzamaki]

I was silently hoping for a switch version but oh well, time to fully dive back in on pc

 

[RevrendHedshot]

Yeah I got real in to it with VR and was playing it pretty consistently, but when they announced they weren't doing VR for Odyssey I lost all interest in the game and literally haven't played it since.

Click to shrink...

Same here. Kills me they let one of the best VR experiences just rot on the vine like that. I sold so many vr headsets and copies of the games just letting people launch a ship out of a station.

 

[gothi]

Absolutely gutted. I grew up playing the original wireframe Elite and jumped onto Elite: Dangerous as soon as it hit Game Preview on the Xbox.

I haven't played for a while but was looking forward to Odyssey hitting consoles.

 

[Dexterous Gambler]

They state it there, they want to focus on na single codebase.

Click to shrink...

The real reason is basically, money. Down To Earth Astronomy did a video on this a few weeks back, as well as ObsidianAnt. I'll try and be as brief as I can:

• PC/Console player-base split is estimated to be 80/20.
• Console players playing on last-gen vs current-gen (so PS4 vs PS5) is also around about 80/20 at present (based off of data collected from other titles).
• That means the amount of people playing Elite on current-gen (PS5/XSX) is around 4% of the entire player-base.

I personally have poured over 1000 hours into Elite on the PS4, maximising everything I can (highest ranks, max materials, all ships engineered to Grade 5 specs, etc), and even though I've been completely fed up with it recently, I was really looking forward to jumping back in when I get a next-gen console in the future, and playing Odyssey. This isn't surprising news to anyone who's been closely following the game over the last year, but it's still a horrible punch in the gut.

My hope right now is that they find a way for ALL console players to switch to a PC account, and allowing them to retain EVERYTHING. You've always been able to contact Frontier about switching platforms, but you only get your credits and the monetary value of your ships - no ranks, no materials, no paintjobs, no decals, etc etc. So yes, this needs to be addressed first and foremost because people have poured so much time into this game.

One wish I have is that they reassess this situation at some point in the future, maybe in a few years time, as I'm someone who neither wants, nor can afford a gaming PC that can run this game at an acceptable level.

 

[DeadmansTheory]

 

[Unicorn]

Following on the heals of cancelling VR dev too.

Click to shrink...

WTF seriously? This was the definitive experience for VR...

 

[edgefusion]

This sucks, I really enjoying chilling out in Elite Dangerous. Won't be the same knowing the game has been ditched by the devs. Doesn't really bode well for the future of the PC version either.

I'll for sure be very hesitant to get involved in anything GaaS-related FDev put out in future.

 

[Edward]

Following on the heals of cancelling VR dev too.

Click to shrink...

Elite Dangerous VR is what got me to buy a VR headset and a higher end flight stick. It bums me the fuck out.

To me it was the way to play it.

 

[Mengy]

Then relaunch the game on current gen? Bring in a support studio? Seems like there are solutions, maybe they just don't want to spend the money

Click to shrink...

My gut feeling is Elite Dangerous is slowly being put into maintenance mode. Actions speak louder than words, this is especially true with Frontier who say very little to begin with. The game is gradually losing features and development has slowed to a crawl, plus there is absolutely zero roadmap for the future of the game at all. Every new update breaks old stuff over and over again and employees who have left Frontier all agree the codebase is spaghettified and near impossible to work with anymore. What makes this worse is most of the original team are either gone or reassigned, leaving people to work on the game lost and struggling.

I feel it's only a matter of time now until they announce there will be very little future content coming for Elite but they'll keep the servers online (for a few years after at least).

 

[Deleted member 93841]

My gut feeling is Elite Dangerous is slowly being put into maintenance mode. Actions speak louder than words, this is especially true with Frontier who say very little to begin with. The game is gradually losing features and development has slowed to a crawl, plus there is absolutely zero roadmap for the future of the game at all. Every new update breaks old stuff over and over again and employees who have left Frontier all agree the codebase is spaghettified and near impossible to work with anymore. What makes this worse is most of the original team are either gone or reassigned, leaving people to work on the game lost and struggling.

I feel it's only a matter of time now until they announce there will be very little future content coming for Elite but they'll keep the servers online (for a few years after at least).

Click to shrink...

Yeah, I would hedge my bets on this too. E:D is basically an MMO that doesn't have a subscription fee, doesn't release regular paid expansions and has very little in terms of microtransactions to keep the coffers filled up. Their next round of "investments" (the Odyssey expansion) just flopped horribly.

I'm really surprised that the game is still going after all these years, to be honest. I never thought it would last this long. I just hope that if they do axe it at some point in the future, they make some kind of offline play available.

 

[Anton Sugar]

My gut feeling is Elite Dangerous is slowly being put into maintenance mode. Actions speak louder than words, this is especially true with Frontier who say very little to begin with. The game is gradually losing features and development has slowed to a crawl, plus there is absolutely zero roadmap for the future of the game at all. Every new update breaks old stuff over and over again and employees who have left Frontier all agree the codebase is spaghettified and near impossible to work with anymore. What makes this worse is most of the original team are either gone or reassigned, leaving people to work on the game lost and struggling.

I feel it's only a matter of time now until they announce there will be very little future content coming for Elite but they'll keep the servers online (for a few years after at least).

Click to shrink...

Sadly, yes.

It was a fun few years and it really had a promising vision for this type of game that I don't think will be accomplished anytime soon. The closest we have is NMS (there's always Star Citizen lol), I guess.

One thing that's wild to me is that, up until even now, their focus just seems misguided. Cutting content to focus on...the story? It just seems like a really backwards way of looking at the development of what used to be a flagship game.

 

[HylianSeven]

My gut feeling is Elite Dangerous is slowly being put into maintenance mode. Actions speak louder than words, this is especially true with Frontier who say very little to begin with. The game is gradually losing features and development has slowed to a crawl, plus there is absolutely zero roadmap for the future of the game at all. Every new update breaks old stuff over and over again and employees who have left Frontier all agree the codebase is spaghettified and near impossible to work with anymore. What makes this worse is most of the original team are either gone or reassigned, leaving people to work on the game lost and struggling.

I feel it's only a matter of time now until they announce there will be very little future content coming for Elite but they'll keep the servers online (for a few years after at least).

Click to shrink...

Yeah I feel this is gradually where it's going. I still love the flight mechanics and even if they do kill the game, I hope they have some kind of offline variant left to play. I remember people were disappointed in the fact that they cancelled the offline mode.

I remember when they introduced fleet carriers...lol what a shitshow that was. Tons of people have them now if you look though.

 

[Mengy]

It was a fun few years and it really had a promising vision for this type of game that I don't think will be accomplished anytime soon. The closest we have is NMS (there's always Star Citizen lol), I guess.

Click to shrink...

The difference between NMS and Elite Dangerous is this: Hello Games has a clear vision and disciplined focus on making that vision happen with No Man's Sky, while Frontier seems to have "dartboard development goals" and a huge team of devs who accomplish very little comparative to Hello Games. HG is communicative while FDev is super secretive.

What gets me is how no other large studios have entered the genre and made an Elite type game of their own? Any such game developed competently with a persistent server architecture plus monetization ED style would be a smash hit and profitable. Elite has failed so miserably over the years and Star Citizen has languished in development hell for so long that I'm truly surprised no one has stepped in and stolen the thunder. The success of NMS is not only due to HG's excellent development but ALSO due to Elite's and SC's failures.

I'd love to see someone like CD Projekt or even Blizzard make an Elite clone.

 

[Tigress]

Yeah I feel this is gradually where it's going. I still love the flight mechanics and even if they do kill the game, I hope they have some kind of offline variant left to play. I remember people were disappointed in the fact that they cancelled the offline mode.

I remember when they introduced fleet carriers...lol what a shitshow that was. Tons of people have them now if you look though.

Click to shrink...

Wait, you can no longer play it offline (I haven't played it in a while)? Why did they even do that?

 

[HylianSeven]

Wait, you can no longer play it offline (I haven't played it in a while)? Why did they even do that?

Click to shrink...

I don't think it's ever been a thing? I remember there was a big deal about them saying they had to cancel the offline feature back when the game's initial release happened.

 

[Tigress]

I don't think it's ever been a thing? I remember there was a big deal about them saying they had to cancel the offline feature back when the game's initial release happened.

Click to shrink...

I could have sworn there is an offline mode that I've played in (In fact it would be the only way I'd play unless I can get in server of a peaceful group).

 

[Xalbur]

Game has been a mess for a while, Odyssey really messed the game up, hopefully this means they manage to refocus and make the game good.

 

[HylianSeven]

I could have sworn there is an offline mode that I've played in (In fact it would be the only way I'd play unless I can get in server of a peaceful group).

Click to shrink...

There was, and still is a "solo" mode, but that's still online and always has been.

 

[Tigress]

There was, and still is a "solo" mode, but that's still online and always has been.

Click to shrink...

That's what I probably am thinking of. Didn't realize it was still online. I really dislike it when games even make their solo play online >:(.

 

[Cheesetriangles]

I really like the combat in this game. Flying in VR with a HOTAS and fighting was really fun. It paid like absolute garbage while having a high risk. The game was Korean MMO grindy in a lot of ways and didn't reward you well. Stopped playing a few years ago when things didn't seem like they would improve.

 

[eyeball_kid]

They dropped support for the Mac version before I could play it, and I never dipped into the console version because I suspected it would sooner or later meet the same fate. It's a shame, but it also feels like they lost their core vision over time and were trying to compete with all the other space games out there instead focusing on what they do best. It feels like only a matter of time until they shut it all down.

 

[RedSwirl]

The difference between NMS and Elite Dangerous is this: Hello Games has a clear vision and disciplined focus on making that vision happen with No Man's Sky, while Frontier seems to have "dartboard development goals" and a huge team of devs who accomplish very little comparative to Hello Games. HG is communicative while FDev is super secretive.

What gets me is how no other large studios have entered the genre and made an Elite type game of their own? Any such game developed competently with a persistent server architecture plus monetization ED style would be a smash hit and profitable. Elite has failed so miserably over the years and Star Citizen has languished in development hell for so long that I'm truly surprised no one has stepped in and stolen the thunder. The success of NMS is not only due to HG's excellent development but ALSO due to Elite's and SC's failures.

I'd love to see someone like CD Projekt or even Blizzard make an Elite clone.

Click to shrink...

What's happening with ED and SC really does make NMS look more like a miracle, especially considering how that game started out and then rose from the ashes. And NMS has involved no payments at all outside buying the base game.

And yeah, I've also wondered why none of the big publishers have tried this kind of game. BioWare wanted to do this with Mass Effect but simply ran short of manpower and time. I also feel the concept of procedural generation fell out of favor after NMS's initial launch.

Still, I've always wanted to see a game like this adapted to a more traditional solo storyline. Having a story-based RPG with that sense of scale is sort of an unrealized gaming dream. There needs to be a game that is to NMS what Dragon Quest Builders is to Minecraft. Going through Odyssey's tutorial mission made me believe Frontier could one day string together some kind of pre-written story mode if they got all the pieces together.

 

[SkoomaBlade]

Still, I've always wanted to see a game like this adapted to a more traditional solo storyline. Having a story-based RPG with that sense of scale is sort of an unrealized gaming dream. There needs to be a game that is to NMS what Dragon Quest Builders is to Minecraft. Going through Odyssey's tutorial mission made me believe Frontier could one day string together some kind of pre-written story mode if they got all the pieces together.

Click to shrink...

This post makes me miss and wish for a sequel to Freelancer

 

[Love Machine]

Terrible news. I'm sure it was a very tough decision to come to, and I'm sure they're turning things around with the PC version.
But man... This was one of my favourite games of recent years. Was part of a PMF, spent hundreds of hours on PS4, and held out hope for a long time for Odyssey on PS5.

This was truly a unique experience on console, but I feel drained of any desire to keep playing it.
Wonder if they will have any solution for at least transferring to PC, or some show of good faith to the console community.

On the plus side, it seems we'll always have NMS even if the satisfaction of owning and flying your own ship isn't quite the same.

Wow. What a bummer.

 

[Absoludacrous]

On one hand, I totally understand the disappointment. On the other, Odyssey is very mediocre and I don't see the PC version getting much more significant content in the future either. So in the end I don't really know how much of a loss it is for console players, assuming they're willing to keep the servers up and running.

 

[Sangral]

If we would still have PS4 and Xbox One, I might would understand, but what's wrong with focussing on a current gen version? Really weird to not to continue console support at all, what year is it?

 

[Edward850]

That's what I probably am thinking of. Didn't realize it was still online. I really dislike it when games even make their solo play online >:(.

Click to shrink...

This is one of the rare cases where they have an actually good excuse, the universe generation seemingly became too complex to run/store offline, so it seems things became a toss up between having a shared background sim but keeping the game online, or losing the online play entirely and spending the work to make the universe generation work offline.

Though yes it's still an excuse. While I'm fine with it conceptually, what I worry about is if they do end up taking the system offline they don't end up deploying an offline mode, because in such a situation why put in the effort?

 

[HBK]

I basically dropped the game after Odyssey's release when I saw the shitshow it was on PC and I basically knew the "postponement" of console versions was a stealth cancellation.

Unfortunately Frontier has been doing shit with the game for a looooong time now. And I'm not sure what the problem is because the only way it would remotely make sense is if comic book ideologists "we gotta follow the trends" took the reins of the project while no game designer ever objected, something which basically never happens outside of badly written stories.

While they did fix some nasty stuff after the fact (looking at you RNGineers), most of the new features introduced was a hot garbage mess, no two ways about it. It's sad really. The game has a cool basis and amazing potential. But I guess it will forever be the space sim game which implemented mediocre FPS competitive multiplayer stuff when all we were asking was to enhance planetary exploration and implement spacelegs so we could gaze at our ships they so painstakingly designed.

Baffling. There's no other word. Baffling.

 

[Garulon]

I haven't played for a while but was looking forward to Odyssey hitting consoles.

Click to shrink...

Yeah that's what I was waiting on after it was announced. They really drove this game into a ditch didn't they?

 

[Mengy]

This post makes me miss and wish for a sequel to Freelancer

Click to shrink...

Wouldn't that be great!

 

[Crax]

Wouldn't that be great!

Click to shrink...

Maybe they should try to get Chris Roberts to make it! I hear he isn't doing much these days.

 

[Guaraná]

I stopped caring when they stopped VR development.

 

[fourfourfun]

So. In the great space showdown between Elite Dangerous and Star Citizen, No Man's Sky comes out the winner.

 

[Tunesmith]

This post makes me miss and wish for a sequel to Freelancer

Click to shrink...

Freelancer Online is coming any day now!

 

[McNum]

I stopped caring when they stopped VR development.

Click to shrink...

Same. It's not so much that Odyssey had bad VR that's the problem, it's that they didn't design Odyssey with VR in mind in the first place.

Also, why would I want to get a rifle in an FPS part of my spaceship game? My ship is my weapon. And sometimes my SRV. I just wanted to look at cool things in VR on foot, like I do in my ship. But, no. No space feet without combat boots, it seems.

It honestly starts to feel like the spaceship simulator genre is cursed. Nothing but monkey's paw wishes here, if you even get those.

All I want is a competent open world spaceship game with VR and HOTAS support. It can be a universe I know or a new one, Wing Commander isn't doing much these days, but I just want to get in my rustbucket of a starter ship and set off into the galaxy in search of pretty things, valuable things, and a better spaceship to fly.

I'll throw in my hat with a Freelancer revival if that's what it takes. Give me VR and HOTAS support and you've got an instant fan.

 

[Mengy]

It honestly starts to feel like the spaceship simulator genre is cursed.

Click to shrink...

It does feel that way sometimes. Honestly NMS is my favorite space game of the past decade, but I wish it had the ship flight mechanics of Elite Dangerous.

I really wish I could just take parts of different space games and put them all together like a Lego set to make the actual space game I want someone to make. No one seems to ever have the gumption to make my dream space game. :(

 

[Onvious]

It is really big bummer. I wonder why companies cant make proper space sim. I know NMS exist but It does not give same feeling as Elite.

I hope they fix Odyssey on PC.

I wonder if it possible to add multiplayer to X-4 foundation ? or Will they need to make new game ? We need more proper multiplayer space sim games

 

[McNum]

It does feel that way sometimes. Honestly NMS is my favorite space game of the past decade, but I wish it had the ship flight mechanics of Elite Dangerous.

I really wish I could just take parts of different space games and put them all together like a Lego set to make the actual space game I want someone to make. No one seems to ever have the gumption to make my dream space game. :(

Click to shrink...

No Man's Sky is the best there is right now, yeah. But it's mostly a ground-based exploration game with an arcade-like flight model for space travel. It is awesome to own your own fleet of fighters aboard your very own flagship of a fleet, but... it doesn't scratch the spaceship itch as well as it could.

I do have a feeling that your dream space game and mine would look similar enough that if we got either, the other would be happy about it. If only someone would make it.

And yes, it is tragically funny that in the debate between Elite and Star Citizen, No Man's Sky is running away with it. Maybe releasing something basic that works and then expanding drastically on it was the right play after all.

 

[Mugen]

Shame, although I would've hard to play E:D on anything but PC with all the inputs (KB+M+Hotas+VoiceAttack) that I mapped up and used all the time. Sadly I don't think E:D truly evolved much from it's release. Not counting the space-legs expansion that I haven't played, the core game-play remains mostly intact I think? I still remember the sheer awe from doing the first jump and the first successful docking. I can't say I remember any in-game mission as fondly though, just same again and again. Tedious to upgrade until you accepted to repeat broken missions for money. I'll probably boot it up again some day, but my feeling from launch that there is a lot of missed potential remains yet.

 

[Absoludacrous]

I'll throw in my hat with a Freelancer revival if that's what it takes. Give me VR and HOTAS support and you've got an instant fan.

Click to shrink...

A Freelancer revival wouldn't give you HOTAS support though.

I will always be bitter about that.

 

[Kaji AF16]

Sad news, particularly as an Xbox-only player.
I put 283 hours into Elite and it gave me great friends. Its community is legendary.
Several unforgettable moments: buying my first Anaconda, mining void opals, visiting Sagitarius A, reaching Sol, the arrival of the Thargoids...

I will look forward to an eventual succesor.

 

[Askherserenity]

I always go back to Elite every now and then on the Xbox so this is a bummer...

 

[McNum]

A Freelancer revival wouldn't give you HOTAS support though.

I will always be bitter about that.

Click to shrink...

And things like that is why I call the genre cursed.

There is a great spaceship game right there to make, and everyone is making games adjacent to it. Not quite there, but teasingly close. And then they add their own spin on it that makes everything worse.

Sometimes I wish I had the talent, money, and resources to just make a company for the sake of making that one spaceship game. But I don't. And I probably never will.

 

[Cenauru]

It's frustrating how many issues Odyssey has brought, when most of us who wanted space legs wanted ship interiors for more ship interaction. Can't really think of Elite getting much better, it feels like it's on life support to reach a point where the company is ok with putting it into maintenance mode and letting the narrative end. And the real only alternative is Star Citizen, which will never be fully out and playable for most people. There's just absolutely NOTHING for the MMO spaceflight sim genre, and the only games doing it are fumbling so hard. It especially stings when Elite Dangerous looks like it could be so much better if Frontier cared about it instead of spreading themselves so thin on so many other projects.

Might legit be better off ditching the idea of ever flying ships in a first-person MMO and just switch over to EVE for the only other semblance of a proper space-sim MMO.

 

[Grue]

Only just learned this via Obsidian Ant's vid popping up in my feed

What a bummer. Might be time for me to finally jump into NMS.

My gut feeling is Elite Dangerous is slowly being put into maintenance mode. Actions speak louder than words, this is especially true with Frontier who say very little to begin with. The game is gradually losing features and development has slowed to a crawl, plus there is absolutely zero roadmap for the future of the game at all. Every new update breaks old stuff over and over again and employees who have left Frontier all agree the codebase is spaghettified and near impossible to work with anymore. What makes this worse is most of the original team are either gone or reassigned, leaving people to work on the game lost and struggling.

I feel it's only a matter of time now until they announce there will be very little future content coming for Elite but they'll keep the servers online (for a few years after at least).

Click to shrink...

What are the odds Frontier eventually decide this retirement leads to a (hopefully more robust) "Elite 2"?