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Elite: Dangerous Releases in December

Elite: Dangerous Releases in December

A competitor to Cloud Imperium Games’ Star Citizen , Elite: Dangerous developer, Frontier Developments, has announced that its space trading and combat simulator will finally be releasing next month, on Tuesday, December 16 for the PC.

Throughout the year, the game itself has been through a number of Alpha and Beta states during its development; its multiplayer of which entered Beta back in May, whilst its fourth Alpha phase introduce 400 billion systems and 200 cubic light years of space to explore in. Elite: Dangerous is available to pre-order digitally via its official website for £35, or your regional equivalent. You can also get into the game’s Beta right now by paying £50.

No game is ever truly finished in the minds of those making it, ” Frontier Developments’ CEO David Braben told Eurogamer. ” When you are close to a project for a long time, you tend to see the things that have annoyed you; those things you know could be improved upon; those things you are afraid might not work well for people that are not 100 per cent au fait with the game.

For me this makes a public alpha and beta process quite difficult, but it also helps focus on the bigger picture. I think the best definition is that something is launch-ready when it is a great game, ” Braben continued.

There are two types of things that can happen at this stage. The first is endless ‘feature-creep’ – new features are added which in turn cause problems that have to be fixed. The second is polishing what is there. The latter reaches a point where there are diminishing returns, but the challenge is always to be able to judge when that will be long in advance. At Frontier we have been doing this for a long time, so we are confident the date we have announced is a sensible one.

Elite: Dangerous’s Kickstarter campaign was successfully funded back in January, 2013, where 25,681 people backed the game, raising a total of £1,578,316, surpassing its original goal of £1,250,000. Back in July, Braben also teased that the game may one day release on consoles as well–the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4.

I’ve just got to watch out, ” Braben said during this year’s Develop Conference. ” I don’t want to do something that constitutes an announcement, but we would be stupid not to support other platforms, including console.

We’ll bring you more news on Elite: Dangerous should further information reach our ears.

[ Eurogamer ]

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