So a few things I'm going to add to this conversation, as I was a part of the drafting of both of the Seal statements presented in this thread...
1) The intention from the Seals, as I have stated previously, was not to say we were closing Console cases. We never have intended to do so. The original statement from months ago was that we were seeing a disturbing trend and were unsure if we would have the player-power to respond to every case, with what we perceived at the time to be a lack of numbers on our end to ensure total coverage. This was backed by what we thought at the time was an appropriate analysis of the data we had on hand and our genuine concerns that we were at risk of not having the numbers we needed to cover cases reliably.
While at no point would we have canceled console offerings, and we would still respond as best we could to situations, our concern was that we didn't know if we could state that we could respond to the majority of our requests.
2) In the past several months after that statement originally went out, a few conclusions were drawn. Firstly, our fundamental understanding of the data was wrong. This is more or less my own fault more than anyone else's. While yes, we were and in a manner still are lacking in numbers at times on Console and especially in overall coverage in all timezones, and yes there have been incidents where cases simply HAVE NOT been responded to because of available numbers on all platforms, this was not due to a "failing" or "major shrinking" of the console player base compared to the rest of the community. In addition, our understanding of the trends on a yearly basis failed to account for yearly average fluctuations on more than a 1-year scale. I could go on but... the data behind our original concerns were not entirely accurate, however some of the concerns as to the ability to continue to cover all cases we're asked to take remains even without that.
3) As to the new statement, simply put it is what it says on the tin. As long as there are CMDRs willing to fly our cases, we're going to offer our services. We will continue to recruit, train, and operate on all platforms where Elite's servers are up for as long as we can. That's all. No more, no less.
4) This thread is like... 7 months old. There are a number of threads with updated information or current on the status of Odyssey on console and places to discuss it. Is this the appropriate venue to be discussing the issue or will it cause people starting from the beginning to become confused? (Hint: Let's let sleeping dogs lie and move to a more current location
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