The Future an appeal to FDEV

AtkinsonCharlie

A
An Appeal to FDEV

Hi Fdev folks. Firstly: Elite is awesome, I have been playing since the mid 80’s when I was on a BBC Model B computer with a wireframe version of Elite. When I heard the news that Elite got an upgrade by Frontier Developments and it was amazing I was over the moon… literally…. AND it was available for Mac. As Mac guy it was the perfect storm and Elite did not disappoint. Then came the day when Fdev decided that MacOS would no longer be supported and part of me died. Salvation: PS4… YES!!! And it worked flawlessly. I was truly happy and the world was right again.

Then came the rumors of a major upgrade Odyssey was incoming, walking on planets, exo-biology and a big graphics update… I could not wait. Then…. Nothing. It was like being in the black at Beagle Point with nowhere to go and no help at hand. But wait…. PS5 was released and I felt for sure the Fdev would be truly excited by the new console…. I was wrong and as time went by it became clear the Fdev were just not going to support consoles and were moving everything to PC.

This news was not cool on many levels. Someone at Fdev was not thinking this through properly here’s why


  1. Most kids get introduced to gaming though console play
  2. Consoles are affordable
  3. Kids that grow up on consoles eventually want a better tool to play and will gravitate to a PC
  4. I have kids
  5. Im not buying my kids gaming PC’s but I do own a PS5 because its affordable and the game choice is great , it doesn’t take up too much room and my kids dont need a basic in computing to operate a PS5
  6. People at Fdev are not thinking this through properly - you need an entry level platform before people level up. PS5/Xbox are both incredible platforms
  7. By not developing Elite on Playstation/Xbox platforms Fdev are missing FUTURE opportunity
  8. FUTURE OPPORTUNITY = my kids who will not play Elite much longer as they cant walk on planets on console and have the attention span of a newt
  9. Business development at Fdev isn’t Biz Dev, if it was it would see the opportunity ahead of it with such a fantastic product
  10. I dont care about the tech challenges, that why programmers get paid a lot of money to figure out these exact problems.

So , Im not complaining about lack of console support. Im complaining that this game will eventually reach an event horizon and stop growing as there won’t be enough new players interested I it. Once that happens, the investment of both time and money will be more difficult to justify and eventually the game will stagnate and die. Gameageddon. Game over. NOT ready player ANYONE.


Come on Fdev, think this through. Think of your future players in 5/10 years time. Think that PC’s are not for everyone. Think about consoles, who plays on them and the value of the platforms. Just put some thought into the whole thing and get back on the console train to success.
 

Spaceman-FXL5

S
AtkinsonCharlie said:
An Appeal to FDEV

Hi Fdev folks. Firstly: Elite is awesome, I have been playing since the mid 80’s when I was on a BBC Model B computer with a wireframe version of Elite. When I heard the news that Elite got an upgrade by Frontier Developments and it was amazing I was over the moon… literally…. AND it was available for Mac. As Mac guy it was the perfect storm and Elite did not disappoint. Then came the day when Fdev decided that MacOS would no longer be supported and part of me died. Salvation: PS4… YES!!! And it worked flawlessly. I was truly happy and the world was right again.

Then came the rumors of a major upgrade Odyssey was incoming, walking on planets, exo-biology and a big graphics update… I could not wait. Then…. Nothing. It was like being in the black at Beagle Point with nowhere to go and no help at hand. But wait…. PS5 was released and I felt for sure the Fdev would be truly excited by the new console…. I was wrong and as time went by it became clear the Fdev were just not going to support consoles and were moving everything to PC.

This news was not cool on many levels. Someone at Fdev was not thinking this through properly here’s why


  1. Most kids get introduced to gaming though console play
  2. Consoles are affordable
  3. Kids that grow up on consoles eventually want a better tool to play and will gravitate to a PC
  4. I have kids
  5. Im not buying my kids gaming PC’s but I do own a PS5 because its affordable and the game choice is great , it doesn’t take up too much room and my kids dont need a basic in computing to operate a PS5
  6. People at Fdev are not thinking this through properly - you need an entry level platform before people level up. PS5/Xbox are both incredible platforms
  7. By not developing Elite on Playstation/Xbox platforms Fdev are missing FUTURE opportunity
  8. FUTURE OPPORTUNITY = my kids who will not play Elite much longer as they cant walk on planets on console and have the attention span of a newt
  9. Business development at Fdev isn’t Biz Dev, if it was it would see the opportunity ahead of it with such a fantastic product
  10. I dont care about the tech challenges, that why programmers get paid a lot of money to figure out these exact problems.

So , Im not complaining about lack of console support. Im complaining that this game will eventually reach an event horizon and stop growing as there won’t be enough new players interested I it. Once that happens, the investment of both time and money will be more difficult to justify and eventually the game will stagnate and die. Gameageddon. Game over. NOT ready player ANYONE.


Come on Fdev, think this through. Think of your future players in 5/10 years time. Think that PC’s are not for everyone. Think about consoles, who plays on them and the value of the platforms. Just put some thought into the whole thing and get back on the console train to success.
Click to expand...
Succinctly said.
I agree that Consoles should always be 1st choice for new content/DLC - get it working on one, voila, it works same ON EACH ONE, as all have EXACTLY the same HW, THEN AND ONLY THEN, port to PC as all PC's are different/unique and any graphics/CPU problems would have been mostly ironed out by then.
 

GroG79

G
I never got a console when I was a kid

(/me calls parents to shout at them)


A gaming pc is soo overrated. I am happy we can continue without controller support which is a burden on GUI design. Imagine playing star craft on console..
 

Maolagin

M
Honestly I'm not too concerned about this angle. I agree that consoles are probably going to remain widespread, perhaps more so than PCs as desktop computers increasingly become specialist tools. However the other trend to keep in mind is the drift towards pushing everything into the cloud. In 5-10 years I strongly suspect streaming a game from the cloud will be as or even more common than downloading a game and running it on a local machine. Port your game to a streaming platform - probably architecturally more similar to a gaming PC than a console - and you'll be able to serve gamers on any hardware in existence (provided you pay the gatekeepers their cut of course, they won't be going anywhere).
 

alexzk

A
AtkinsonCharlie said:
Im not buying my kids gaming PC’s but I do own a PS5 because its affordable
Click to expand...
I got laptop with i5 and rtx 3050 for 850 eur, deleted windows and put linux/wine/elite there. In theory I can refund that windows from microsoft for 110 eur. But not sure If I will try.
PS5 looks like 200 eur cheaper only then but I bet worse HW is there.
 

Sakashiro

Sakashiro
Spaceman-FXL5 said:
Succinctly said.
I agree that Consoles should always be 1st choice for new content/DLC - get it working on one, voila, it works same ON EACH ONE, as all have EXACTLY the same HW, THEN AND ONLY THEN, port to PC as all PC's are different/unique and any graphics/CPU problems would have been mostly ironed out by then.
Click to expand...
But which console should be the lucky one?
 

Dillon Fallon

Dillon Fallon
alexzk said:
I got laptop with i5 and rtx 3050 for 850 eur, deleted windows and put linux/wine/elite there. In theory I can refund that windows from microsoft for 110 eur. But not sure If I will try.
PS5 looks like 200 eur cheaper only then but I bet worse HW is there.
Click to expand...
Rough comparisons rate the PS5 GPU at around the performance of an RTX 2070, which performs comfortably better than the 3050 and with the added benefit for the console that games are specifically designed around this hardware. If it's games you're after, you'd be better off with the console - assuming it's actually on that platform.
 

rootsrat

Volunteer Moderator
rootsrat
As unfortunate and disappointing the decision to stop the console development was, it was the right decision IMO. We can already see the results - the game improvement sped up, things are FINALLY happening story-wise and the overall community perception of Odyssey is much more positive from what I can see.

I feel sorry for the console community, really do, but it was definitely a good move in general.
 

Dillon Fallon

Dillon Fallon
rootsrat said:
As unfortunate and disappointing the decision to stop the console development was, it was the right decision IMO. We can already see the results - the game improvement sped up, things are FINALLY happening story-wise and the overall community perception of Odyssey is much more positive from what I can see.

I feel sorry for the console community, really do, but it was definitely a good move in general.
Click to expand...
Hate to have to agree, but yeah. There's only so much fixing you can do before it's time to push on and give those who can buy the DLC something narrative driven to do with it.
 
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