That's awesome news!!! I've been wondering about that since I got hooked on this game again (I used to play it on the Amiga 500 back in my military days). It's great to play it again - I hope to see some improvements with the NPC AIs, further cosmic realities (i.e.: not all moons are perfectly round, stars feeding off each other, etc.)That isn't correct info. That interview with the lead of the XB1 project specifically said that we WILL be able to retain our ranks and all other in-game progress in addition to a BUY OUT of our current ship (s) and that credit can then be used immediately within the final version to buy back what we had before or completely different ships etc.