Elite Dangerous  

When Elite: Dangerous launched on December 16, Frontier offered a £1,000 cash bounty to the first players to make Elite in Trading, Exploration and Combat, and a £10,000 prize for the first player to make it to Triple Elite.

Three months later, we'll hand over to Frontier CEO and Elite co-creator David Braben to announce the winners, with some stats on the marathon play sessions that made four players the first of the Elite.

Hello, Commanders

This morning we’re announcing Elite Dangerous: Horizons – another full season of major gameplay expansions for Elite Dangerous, beginning later this year with ‘Planetary Landings’.

I’ve been fascinated by the exploration of space since I was young, and especially with the almost unimaginable scales involved. Going down to the surfaces of planets was a key part of my dreams of exploration, and soon we'll realise that dream in Elite Dangerous.

We're beginning with airless, rocky worlds – places where a great deal of new gameplay can take place. These are planet-sized sandbox environments, with all sorts of things to discover hidden on them. You'll find surface starports, crashed ships, mineral deposits, hidden bases and more.

These worlds are gigantic, and - like the open galaxy - you'll be able to go anywhere. You'll be able to fly over the surface in low orbit and choose your spot to land, you'll be able to venture out in your Surface Recon Vehicle and hurtle across the surface at high speed. You'll be able to sneak around or go in all guns blazing. The nimble SRV is tiny compared to your ship, and is virtually invisible on a long range scanner – ship-based weapons will find it very hard to hold a lock on them, but airborne and ground-based players can explore the same worlds together, so watch the skies!

As I’ve said already, I’ve wanted to do surface landings in Elite Dangerous for quite a while now – and we have been planning how best to do it since the Kickstarter. Elite Dangerous: Horizons is the first stage and a huge step. The quality people expect is, as always, very high, and the team have done a great job hitting that benchmark. These worlds will feel real and meaningfully unique.

You’ll read about some of the exciting things you’ll find on surfaces this week in the press and on our Community blog, but Planetary Landings is just the start. Elite Dangerous: Horizons is a full season of content extending into 2016, introducing new features and gameplay in each major expansion. As with Season One, this season of expansions is not just about planet surfaces, but other major features are coming too.

Of course support will continue for Elite Dangerous even outside of Elite Dangerous: Horizons, and we’re keeping the community together. All Elite Dangerous and Elite Dangerous: Horizons players will share the same galaxy together and you’ll retain all your progress whenever you choose to join our new season of expansions.

Elite Dangerous: Horizons will be available to pre-order on our store today, and I’m very happy to announce all existing Elite Dangerous players will receive a 25 percent loyalty discount off the Horizons retail price. Existing players will also unlock the exclusive Cobra Mk IV ship in Elite Dangerous: Horizons. The Cobra Mk IV will be available in the game only to players who joined us in the first year – forever. It’s our ‘thank you’ for your faith in the game, and you’ll see more of the Cobra Mk IV in Friday’s Peek Of The Week.

Due to popular demand, we’ve also decided to bring back for a limited time the lifetime expansion pass. It should appear in our store later today.

We’re committed to seeing Elite Dangerous grow the right way, and we hope you’ll join us planetside as we embark upon the exploration of our galaxy’s undiscovered worlds together. We have a great team, and I believe Elite Dangerous: Horizons will bring players closer than ever to the dream of touching other worlds.

There will be lots of questions, I know! Elite Dangerous’ Lead Designer Sandro Sammarco and I will be taking your questions in this afternoon’s livestream at 16:00 CEST, so please visit twitch.tv/elitedangerous for that.

The Community team will do their best to answer your questions about the ongoing evolution of Elite Dangerous on our forums, and tune in to our Twitch stream throughout the week for more on Elite Dangerous for Xbox One, Elite Dangerous 1.4: CQC for PC and Mac, and Elite Dangerous: Horizons.

Thank you for playing, and Right On, Commander!

David Braben

Elite Dangerous - On the Horizon Episode 4 - Q&A with David Braben 6PM GMT - 04/11/2015

Frontier Developments

Streamed live on Nov 4, 2015
Stream starts at 6PM GMT - 04/11/2015

Come and ask Frontier Developments CEO, David Braben, questions about Elite Dangerous: Horizons.

ELITE DANGEROUS: HORIZONS FOR PLAYSTATION 4

Greetings Commanders, we've got some very exciting news today! We're bringing Elite Dangerous: Horizons to PS4 in Q2 of 2017!

We think CEO David Braben said it best in today's Playstation EU blog:

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"I’m thrilled to announce today that Elite Dangerous is coming to PlayStation 4.

In Elite Dangerous, every star in our night sky – the whole Milky Way – is there for you to explore how you choose. Fight, bounty-hunt, trade, assassinate, mine, explore your way across human space and out into the immense galaxy beyond, flying with your friends or travelling alone.

Elite Dangerous has been a wonderful project to be involved with, made by a great team here at Frontier. Its roots go all the way back to my first commercial game, Elite, first released in 1984 with Ian Bell, while we were both at university. Two sequels followed. Over thirty years later, Elite Dangerous is a huge step forwards from those games, but the principles are the same – do what you like and live life in an immense galaxy – and today you can play with (or against!) friends and our amazing community as you travel the galaxy alone, together in a ‘wing’ or even fly aboard the same ship.

It is great to come to PlayStation. When Elite Dangerous arrives on PlayStation 4 next year, we’re bringing the full game with everything in our ‘Horizons’ season of expansions included, so not only can you fly your ship, but you can carry an ‘SRV’ – Surface Recon Vehicle – in your hold, and charge around the surfaces of planets and moons at up to 100mph, finding materials, attacking bases, or seeking out hidden secret things with your friends.

When you progress far enough in to the game to buy one of the larger ships you might choose to carry a ship-launched fighter to help defend yourself; you can employ crew or even allow other players to help you pilot your larger ship. Craft special weapons with the Engineers, collaborate with the community and engage in massive-scale community goals. Elite Dangerous is a game you’ll play your way.

Elite Dangerous does not follow many of the rules of other games. It lets you move as fast or as slowly as you like, without telling you what to do or how to do it. Play purely as a sandbox – exploring and looking for some of the many mysteries within the game – or follow missions and work with other players to re-shape humanity’s control over the galaxy, as you make your way to Elite status in any or all four categories in the game – Combat, Trade, Exploration and CQC.

We’ve worked hard to make Elite Dangerous the richest space simulation ever. From our love of science and astronomy, the galaxy is as real as we can make it. You’ll look up at the night sky in our own Solar system and you’ll recognise familiar constellations, then see them change as you travel away from Earth. Visit real white dwarfs, neutron stars, even black holes that exist in our real night sky. Every distance, orbit, planet, moon, ring and crater is as real as we could make it, with some 160,000 stars in the game taken from real star catalogues, with the rest of the 400 billion stars coming from stellar density maps to make the whole galaxy as accurate as possible. It’s a huge, real galaxy you can leave your mark on.

The galaxy is gradually evolving as players overthrow governments, align themselves with powers in the game, play with one of the giant like-minded player groups, or simply strive to discover something new. Two giant superpowers are on the edge of war, and there are hints of a nascent alien threat that may emerge as a quite real one any time now… We’re excited to let PlayStation 4 players jump aboard at this critical moment for our galaxy!

We’re making full use of the PS4 system and the unique features of the PS4 and PS4 Pro to deliver an experience unlike any other on the console, with features tailored to the DualShock 4 controller, whether you’re down on the surface of a planet or cruising around a stellar system, connected with your friends or meeting strangers out in the black of space.

We’re looking forward to telling you more about how we’re supporting PlayStation 4 in the coming months, before we launch in Q2 2017. We have had a great time with Elite Dangerous already. I hope you’ll come and join our fantastic community, and I’m looking forward to meeting all the PlayStation 4 players exploring our galaxy!"