Elite Dangerous console development canceled, new content will be for PC only

polygon.com:

Development of the console version of Elite Dangerous is canceled, meaning that players on PlayStation and Xbox devices will never get to play the latest expansion, Elite Dangerous: Odyssey. Frontier Developments made the announcement on Thursday. The decision follows a lengthy effort to shore up the game on PC.

“Over the last several months, we have been wrestling with the best way to move forward and it is with a heavy heart we have decided to cancel all console development,” wrote CEO and franchise co-creator David Braben. “We need to be able to move forward with the story of the game, and in order for us to do this we need to focus on a single codebase. Elite Dangerous will continue on console as it is now together with critical updates, but we will focus on new content updates on PC on the post-Odyssey codebase.”

The Odyssey expansion added new gameplay opportunities to the spacefaring game, including atmospheric flight and new settlement locations that offer dynamic first-person gameplay based on player actions. But it also drastically changed planet generation, meaning that the game literally does not look the same as it did when it launched in 2014. Add in frame rate and connectivity issues, plus other problems, and it’s been quite a rocky road since Odyssey launched in the spring of 2021. Now it seems that Frontier is cutting its losses to focus on the PC platform, which has the largest player base by far.

“We appreciate this news is not what our console community were hoping for. This was not an easy decision to make, but it was made with the long-term future of Elite Dangerous in mind,” Braben said. “With regards to what is coming next in Elite Dangerous, we look forward to sharing further news in due course.”