"in coming months we’ll be able to talk about what’s next for Elite: Dangerous on PC and Mac too"

[Tiran Kenja]

"in coming months we’ll be able to talk about what’s next for Elite: Dangerous on PC and Mac too"

So. Yesterday was another brilliant day in the life of the ED community. FDev continues to play their odd marketing tricks on a a community that has already bought their game. And refuse to say anything with any actual meaning...

I read about the XBox game being launched and then came across this tweet:

Elite Dangerous ‏@EliteDangerous
David Braben on bringing #EliteDangerous to XboxOne and the big plans for PC and Mac https://community.elitedangerous.com/node/202

"great" I figured. Maybe it's one of those rare days where they have decided to actually say something. Off I went to read on the grand new "community site" about what was going on with the PC version... And there is exactly ONE sentence about the "big plans for PC and Mac":

in coming months we’ll be able to talk about what’s next for Elite: Dangerous on PC and Mac too

So... Nothing new on the PC version for the next several months then?

 

[lilikin]

until XBONE is out of beta at least..,..,.......

they know SC will win on PC and no man's sky on ps4 so they are developing for XBONE pretty exclusively PP was proof of that 3 months and look what we got? some pictures.......

lock down the content

 

[Patrick_68000]

No major expansions before 2016 in my opinion

 

[Ozmodion]

hopefully we are not going down the road of pushing PC players to the side now they know that this game will work on consoles.

 

[SteveLaw]

In coming months they will be able to announce that CQC is coming to PC and Mac. Don't get your hopes up beyond that.

 

[Brimstone]

How many times do the developers need to say that PC/Mac won't be left at the side of the road, and that PC is the primary development platform?

 

[Kulin]

So... Nothing new on the PC version for the next several months then?

Honestly: how could anyone expect anything else? Getting this engine to the xbox will be a major piece of work. And adding this exclusive features even more. Since they want to earn money they are not going to double the size of their development team. What they are going to do is to take away resources from core-game development and put them into the xbox team, delaying everything else.

 

[lilikin]

How many times do the developers need to say that PC/Mac won't be left at the side of the road, and that PC is the primary development platform?

I judge people not on their words but their actions, in over three months all they have produced is PP which is awful. 6 months the game is still half done.

 

[Kulin]

How many times do the developers need to say that PC/Mac won't be left at the side of the road, and that PC is the primary development platform?

And how many times is it necessary to explain that this words mean NOTHING. They would still say the truth if all but one developers are send to the xbox team. This one developer adds some content generated by non-developers(designers) like one or two new ships and fixes a few bugs. Then they combine this with a load of meaningless patchnote-entries and everyone thinks the work is still in progress while the game itself changes nothing at all. I'm a master of meaningless patch notes myself. Just enter 20 lines about something nobody is ever able to test. "Fixed a crash with blablabla", "Improved performance near neutron stars on certain pc configurations". And so on. Developers do it all the time.

You are only able to be sure that real work is done when you see it in the game. In my oppinion they are developing for pc on a pretty small team since release. Wings Update is not so big at all. And Powerplay is a perfect example for the term "Kippers and Curtains". Basically powerplay is all about number crunching and some fancy menus while adding nothing to the gameplay. You still kill ships, trade goods or do random generated missions in the same way we do it since beta. Does not sound too work intensive.

 

[TriumphANT]

So... Nothing new on the PC version for the next several months then?

I'd consider that to be reading too much between the lines, or at least quoting out-of-context. He does say "soon" in the same press release, and from playing the XboxOne version this morning, apart from the nice touches like the onscreen control prompts (I could actually play through the first four tutorials without thinking about a manual, and I've never used a gamepad for ED!), it's identical to the PC version. David Braben alludes to that in his press release too, as well as saying that the Xb1 version has helped improve the PC version. Given that the XboxOne is almost just a gaming PC anyway, there's no real reason to think that it's going to eat too much time up, any more than working on the Mac version will.

I think it's dangerous to read too much into pre-prepared press releases anyway. We'll see what's announced for 1.4 soon enough...

 

[zeq]

Honestly: how could anyone expect anything else? Getting this engine to the xbox will be a major piece of work. And adding this exclusive features even more. Since they want to earn money they are not going to double the size of their development team. What they are going to do is to take away resources from core-game development and put them into the xbox team, delaying everything else.

The engine is already working with Xbone. Was before they even started ED, I think. They have built the engine from the ground up to be flexible both in platform adaptability and usage. I mean, I think the engine is even ios compatible, though I am far less sure about that than I am about the Xbone compatibility. The problem lies mostly in porting the content itself and developing new content, neither of which are as much of a problem when you already have solid cross functionality in your engine. It will probably run its course faster than the mac beta did. Firstly, because I am not sure the Cobra engine supported mac prior to the mac release of ED, and secondly they don't have to deal with multiple hardware setups. So probably a week or two beta, then maybe a cross platform beta? Plus, I believe they have been working on the Xbone version for the past few months. If there was anything I might blame on Xbone development, it would probably be the lackluster launch of PP.

 

[Cosmo]

they know SC will win on PC and no man's sky on ps4 so they are developing for XBONE pretty exclusively PP was proof of that 3 months and look what we got? some pictures.......

SC's persistent universe won't be out for a long time. Elite Dangerous is the premier space sim that be available on every major gaming platform years before SC.

Elite is in its own league. It's the only space sim with a full-scale recreation of the milky way galaxy. No Man's Sky has childish graphics. Elite is hard-science fiction. The planet-side gameplay can be incorporated into Elite with the Planetary Expansion.

 

[AnnuverScotinExile]

I judge people not on their words but their actions, in over three months all they have produced is PP which is awful. 6 months the game is still half done.

Unfortunately, FD's track record is such that you have to ignore what they say, and look at what they do.

In this case, I have no doubt that the PC is still the lead development platform. And I have no doubt that CQC will come to the PC. Beyond that it is all speculation. I do expect more stuff, indeed, quite a lot of more stuff. But I expect most of that to be things for a different target audience than me, so I will get a few crumbs here and there. I have already had 3 big free expansions where the core of the expansion holds no interest to me. It looks like I will be 0/4 when CQC comes out. And still we have just a rudimentary placeholder for exploration that will make it hard to add the DDA design. Smuggling that hardly works. And so on. But at least we do know why they 'forgot' to add the promised consequences for murder.

 

[Sandmann]

On the plus side, we'll probably get freemium android/ios versions soon. Yay for that.

 

[TriumphANT]

Honestly: how could anyone expect anything else? Getting this engine to the xbox will be a major piece of work. And adding this exclusive features even more. Since they want to earn money they are not going to double the size of their development team. What they are going to do is to take away resources from core-game development and put them into the xbox team, delaying everything else.

The Xbox version is complete. I played it today. It's utterly, utterly stunning. They now have 3 code bases, PC, Mac and Xbox, but Xbox is historically where FDEV have made a lot of games, so I don't see this as a sink for resources, so much as expanding the size of the ED gaming community in the first instance, and allowed more profit for FD which should lead to more time investment in improving the game.

 

[Sandmann]

The Xbox version is complete. I played it today. It's utterly, utterly stunning. They now have 3 code bases, PC, Mac and Xbox, but Xbox is historically where FDEV have made a lot of games, so I don't see this as a sink for resources, so much as expanding the size of the ED gaming community in the first instance, and allowed more profit for FD which should lead to more time investment in improving the game.

So, why would FDEV spend time/resources continuing to support the PC version now that they've got a version that THEY call complete when by your argument the consoles are where the big dollars are? Seems to me they're more likely to put the PC version on "life support" and develop primarily for the consoles (DB's already said they're doing the PS4 too, so we know what's next). MB's said the PC is still the "lead development platform" but they've said all sorts of things in the past that haven't happened - why should this be any different?

 

[OriginalBadBoy]

No major expansions before 2016 in my opinion

That was always going to be the case anyway ... Anyone would be living in a dream world to think otherwise ... This is hardly 'news'

A glimpse of that at E3 later would be nice though FD ??? ???? Pretty please ... With nobs on ...

- - - Updated - - -

So, why would FDEV spend time/resources continuing to support the PC version now that they've got a version that THEY call complete when by your argument the consoles are where the big dollars are? Seems to me they're more likely to put the PC version on "life support" and develop primarily for the consoles (DB's already said they're doing the PS4 too, so we know what's next). MB's said the PC is still the "lead development platform" but they've said all sorts of things in the past that haven't happened - why should this be any different?

Or maybe ALL platforms will get developed for equally .. Anything they do on the PC code front can now be easily ported over to Mac and Xbox ... None of this means the end of the PC version of the game! ... Over dramatising it a bit I think!

 

[AnnuverScotinExile]

The Xbox version is complete. I played it today. It's utterly, utterly stunning. They now have 3 code bases, PC, Mac and Xbox, but Xbox is historically where FDEV have made a lot of games, so I don't see this as a sink for resources, so much as expanding the size of the ED gaming community in the first instance, and allowed more profit for FD which should lead to more time investment in improving the game.

Any idea how the networking is handled on the XBox? Is it still P2P or have they had to do something else?

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I get the 'more money from XBox means we will get a better game' argument. It makes sense. But I still want to see proof of that. Using the money from that target audience to make more stuff that that target audience wants makes a better game for that audience. Whether it makes a better game for me is questionable. Unless they are seen to use it to actually, you know, build out the vision that DBOBE sold to us, more money does not really help. A ever, I wait to see what they do, not what they say, or what they allow us to imply. And for me, the game has had no significant update since the gamma (apart from a few ships that I have only flown in the betas, not in the game itself).

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

Any idea how the networking is handled on the XBox? Is it still P2P or have they had to do something else?

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I get the 'more money from XBox means we will get a better game' argument. It makes sense. But I still want to see proof of that. Using the money from that target audience to make more stuff that that target audience wants makes a better game for that audience. Whether it makes a better game for me is questionable. Unless they are seen to use it to actually, you know, build out the vision that DBOBE sold to us, more money does not really help. A ever, I wait to see what they do, not what they say, or what they allow us to imply. And for me, the game has had no significant update since the gamma (apart from a few ships that I have only flown in the betas, not in the game itself).

It's certainly peer to peer as consoles are even better suited for that (certainly console networking setups are).

I actually happy to hear that XBO version seems to be finished alpha level wise. I guess they will sit with beta together with PC and will tune 1.3 release for quite some time now.

As for PR I agree - David's post was confusing regarding any news about PC version. I am getting tired of these PR twists. Someone at FD PR department needs start to trust community instead of twisting words.

 

[Sandmann]

Or maybe ALL platforms will get developed for equally .. Anything they do on the PC code front can now be easily ported over to Mac and Xbox ... None of this means the end of the PC version of the game! ... Over dramatising it a bit I think!

That'd be a really altruistic attitude on FD's part... not known for their altruism are they however. I suspect they'll see that as "throwing good money after bad" and focus on expanding the money spinners - continued development on the xbox and bringing it out on the ps4.