Downloadable console version

[cmdrdale]

Any developers know how often the underlying console platform APIs change? Presumably Elite has to have some integration with Xbox Live and Playstation... uh, online services, whatever they're called, for services including identity, maybe friends lists, IAP. Changes to a console platform that require significant adaptation could be a trigger for FDev to shut things down. I have the feeling the platforms don't make breaking changes very often, though.

 

[Maolagin]

The fly in the ointment would be if Horizons on PC is merged with Odyssey (becomes "Odyssey Lite" as many of us call it), which theoretically would simplify the server code. At this point, will Frontier continue to maintain legacy Horizons server support just for a few remaining console players?

FWIW I admit that my assumptions are based on pure speculation, but there is a logic to that speculation.

Yeah, I've had that thought too. It seems like a reasonable point of concern - if the backend code was fully interoperable between the two clients, why would FDev have to go to the trouble of, as they've described, maintaining parallel galaxy servers? So some extra work there - on the client, servers, or both - needs to happen eventually to keep the console version ticking.

Given the uncertainty about the future I can't imagine they're selling a lot of copies or arx on consoles going forward. So the engineering time they can justify devoting to solving this is necessarily going to be very finite.

 

[metatheurgist]

The fly in the ointment would be if Horizons on PC is merged with Odyssey (becomes "Odyssey Lite" as many of us call it), which theoretically would simplify the server code. At this point, will Frontier continue to maintain legacy Horizons server support just for a few remaining console players?

FWIW I admit that my assumptions are based on pure speculation, but there is a logic to that speculation.

I don't know how their code works either but I'd think that the stuff that's exchanged is just specifically formatted data packets sent via standard protocols so it shouldn't be an amazing obstacle. But, I have been wrong about how FD does stuff before.