"Capitalisation of development costs on game developments and game technology accounted for £15.8 million in the six months to 30 November 2021 (H1 FY21: £13.1 million). The percentage of gross research and development costs which were capitalised in the period was 71%, lower than the 83% recorded for H1 FY21 as more development staff were working on free updates (as opposed to chargeable content) during the recent period, notably the ongoing post-release support for Elite Dangerous: Odyssey. Frontier's normal expectations for capitalisation is 70-90% of gross development spending."
My take:
They can't afford to keep throwing money at the PC version of Odyssey, that they will never make back with new game sales on PC sales alone. This has to come to console so that they can capitalise on the development cost, but that is some way off and basically a write off until the next financial quarter. Their stock price took a hammering as a result of this news.
If they don't bring Odyssey to console, the future of the game is bleak unless they can massively improve PC sales, or release some chargeable content for the PC market. They also need to get new players in as the LEPers won't contribute anything to offset development costs over and above Arx spend.
** IMO every player should be concerned about the ongoing silence on plans for Odyssey on console, as it has implications for the future of the game. **
o7
It leaves it a bit ambiguous what "free updates" mean in this case, if they mean the updates for the screwed up release of Odyssey, in order to get the game into a playable state?
And if they don't throw money at the development to fix up Odyssey on PC, it won't make it to console, which would mean the past few years of development would have been a lot of wasted time, money and effort.
LEP players will hang around for a while, considering they already paid for all the extra content to come. (Little as it may be). Having said that, they have already contributed a lot more than any current player. One LEP pass was the value of 10 Horizon expansions at the time. Even with a higher paid content price (disregarding its functionality, viability or content), a LEP player (or early backer) would have contributed about 3 paid DLCs worth. (One DLC valued at $60 AUD and the LEP was about $200AUD).
With that said, it would take 2 more paid DLCs before a LEP or early backer will make bank.
So it's not like LEP players or early backers are here for a free ride, they have paid their ticket and are waiting to get their money's worth. Plus of course the money spent on ARX.
Sure console sales will be a fair chunk of income, something one wouldn't want to miss out on, but unlike on PC, they can't release an unfinished product like EDO.
I know, no game is 100% bug free, even the original Donkey Kong arcade game just crashes after level 87 out of 100. Never got fixed, still there. Some bugs will make it even to console. But there is a difference in a few bugs vs the game not getting over 30FPS on your average hardware.
![[Cancelled Consoleer] boppa_](https://d2aefvhu2f0gi9.cloudfront.net/data/avatars/m/159/159397.jpg?1610496247){kind=avatar}
