We’re sorry to report this morning that Frontier has just announced that it will be canceling console development of Elite Dangerous, essentially sending the console version of the game into permanent maintenance mode in order to focus on PC. Here’s the message from Frontier’s David Braben:
“It’s no secret that Odyssey’s launch was less than ideal, including the need to split the PC/console player base to focus on a PC-only launch. Since Odyssey’s release in May 2021, we have worked tirelessly to improve the Odyssey experience on PC, and whilst we have made great progress there is still more to be done. We have been supporting the pre-Odyssey and post-Odyssey codebases since.
“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.
“We appreciate this news is not what our console community were hoping for. This was not an easy decision to make, but it was made with the long-term future of Elite Dangerous in mind.”
Readers will recall that the 2021 release of Odyssey was a bit of a mess, forcing Frontier to admit that its reception had been “disappointing” and to delay the console launch to focus on shoring up the expansion for PC. The game struggled throughout 2021 in spite of an “upturn in player sentiment” and hasn’t had a turnaround yet in 2022 following a falloff in comms and multiple delays for Update 11.
