Elite Dangerous in the Media thread

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The review in the Swedish print of PC Gamer that came out this month gave it a 90% score.

And here is a roughly translated snippet from an interview with David in the magazine:

Thanks a lot for that! Very good to read that those ambitions are still alive!
 
The March 2015 *print* issue of Maximum PC has a review for ED, and it's kinda gushy. (and the reviewer has been playing since first Alpha) I've copied the summary bits from the review.

Elite Dangerous:
Should have sent... a poet

"We won't pretend it's the perfect game- it can get grindy scaring up cash for a new ship or vital upgrade- but your experiences in this brave new frontier will be entirely your own and brilliant"

Verdict 9
+ELITE: Huge scope; open universe; striking visuals; great soundscapes; intense space battles; continually evolving
- MOSTLY HARMLESS: No hand-holding; little direction; can get grindy; text-only interaction breaks immersion
 
text-only interaction breaks immersion

I couldn't agree more with especially this one point. NPCs without personalities and faces (see my suggestions for character creation tools here: NPCs with faces) is the one central point that often alienates me from the game. I assume this shortcoming will be addressed eventually, when walking around ships, stations and then even planets will make real NPCs with character models inevitable, but the current state of NPCs is more than lackluster. (apart from the very nice job Sarah Jane Avory did to improve their AI!)
 
The March 2015 *print* issue of Maximum PC has a review for ED, and it's kinda gushy. (and the reviewer has been playing since first Alpha) I've copied the summary bits from the review.

Elite Dangerous:
Should have sent... a poet

"We won't pretend it's the perfect game- it can get grindy scaring up cash for a new ship or vital upgrade- but your experiences in this brave new frontier will be entirely your own and brilliant"

Verdict 9
+ELITE: Huge scope; open universe; striking visuals; great soundscapes; intense space battles; continually evolving
- MOSTLY HARMLESS: No hand-holding; little direction; can get grindy; text-only interaction breaks immersion

Their interview with DBOBE made clear that ED is built out to 16K...incredible! !!!
 

SlackR

Banned
If the translation is correct that is very exciting indeed, but also amounts to DB admitting we bought an unfurnished house! :p
 
If the translation is correct that is very exciting indeed, but also amounts to DB admitting we bought an unfurnished house! :p

If I could afford and buy unfinished castle in which I can live in already, but I get rooms decorated and updated along the way....sign me up!
 
6 month results:

http://www.iii.co.uk/research/LSE:FDEV/news/item/1393307/half-yearly-report?context=LSE:FDEV


"Following the period end a further 100,000 downloads of Elite: Dangerous were sold over the Christmas period. "

Abysmal for christmas release sales of such a huge production.

LOL - I can feel it coming now, not only is this forum full of coding experts who appear to know better than FD about their own game and/or how to manage their servers but now we're going to get a flurry of financial experts telling us what's wrong with their business plans :)

P.S. jamotide ... I'm not specifically having a go at you, just at the flood I've no doubt is soon to follow.
 
LOL - I can feel it coming now, not only is this forum full of coding experts who appear to know better than FD about their own game and/or how to manage their servers but now we're going to get a flurry of financial experts telling us what's wrong with their business plans :)

But armchair experts are always [sat] at the leading edge [of their chairs] on any subject. :p
 

Viajero

Volunteer Moderator
Don't have to be a financial expert to read the report and realise that 100000 games sold during release at christmas is not alot.

I dont know man. Fun fact that those 100K sold in a few weeks seem to be around 50% of any and all other pre ordered units sold during the previous 2 years or so? No idea how much FDEV was expecting to be honest (and this is obviously no WoW), although according to their 9 Jan release units sold were trending between their mid and bull scenarios. FWIW.
 
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I dont know man. Fun fact that those 100K sold in a few weeks seem to be around 50% of any and all other pre ordered units sold during the previous 2 years or so? No idea how much FDEV was expecting to be honest (and this is obviously no WoW), although according to their 9 Jan release units sold were trending between their mid and bull scenarios. FWIW.

They always expected comparingly low sales numbers, that's what they wrote in their reports more than year ago. 100k in two weeks and and 300k in total is very good (as you said, according to their predictions).

As game grows in feature richness and stability, I expect more or less steady growth of sales.
 
100k at £40 a pop is still £4 million gross. Not too shabby over Christmas.
IIRC the total spend for ED was around 8 million and they have broken even already.
 
100k at £40 a pop is still £4 million gross. Not too shabby over Christmas.
IIRC the total spend for ED was around 8 million and they have broken even already.

As I would like this to be true, 8M was original budget. Current total for 1.0 is bigger than that, according to David. Their total on 6th Jan was 14.4M btw.
 
They always expected comparingly low sales numbers, that's what they wrote in their reports more than year ago. 100k in two weeks and and 300k in total is very good (as you said, according to their predictions).

As game grows in feature richness and stability, I expect more or less steady growth of sales.

You really think this will be the only expensive PC game production ever that doesn't have most of its sales during preorder and release time while all the marketing hype is going through? 100k is terrible for the period in which they did the most marketing.
 
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