Hello Commander,

This morning in Los Angeles (the evening for our team and players back in the UK) we were thrilled to announce Elite Dangerous will be available for Xbox One’s new Game Preview Program TODAY. Elite Dangerous will be one of the first ‘early access’ game on console, and it’s a hugely exciting moment for the whole team at Frontier.

We hope you’ll join us in the Xbox One Game Preview. Elite Dangerous will be available for Xbox One later today for the special early access price of £24.99 ($30.99 €30.99).

On Xbox One we’re introducing all-new gamepad controls, Achievements, support for Xbox Live Parties and Friends Lists, and a new controller UI layer with context menus for important actions. And this morning we’re also announcing Close Quarter Combat – instant-action PVP combat in the Elite Dangerous galaxy for PC, Mac and Xbox One. You can play CQC first on Xbox One in the Game Preview Program next month. CQC is a new way to play Elite Dangerous, and we’ll be testing it first with the Xbox Live community.

We’re proud to be leading the way on the Game Preview Program, and we wouldn’t be able to do it without our amazing community. Elite Dangerous Game Preview is a true beta test on a console, and the first ever “early access” console game. Of course we’ll be optimizing the game further over the course of the Game Preview Program.

Elite Dangerous means a lot to us. The more platforms we add the more we’re able to improve the game overall. We’ve put a lot of work into optimization already to bring Elite Dangerous first to Mac, and now to Xbox One, with all that effort benefitting the PC version too.

We have lots more coming for our players on PC and Mac soon. For now I’m pleased to announce that if you already own Elite Dangerous for PC and Mac, you can buy it for Xbox One and automatically receive a £5 coupon for FrontierStore.net. I'm also happy to say CQC and the new controller functions will be a free addition to PC and Mac later in 2015.

I’m looking forward to meeting the press at E3 this week, and we have a whole week of content for you here on the new Community blog. Tomorrow our Xbox One Producer Gary Richards will be here to talk about bringing Elite Dangerous to Xbox One, on Wednesday our Close Quarter Combat design team will explain how CQC works, and later this week our Executive Producer Michael Brookes will be here to talk about how the work we’ve put into Elite Dangerous for Xbox One will feed back into PC and Mac, and make the game even better on every platform.

This is a great day for Frontier and a great day for Elite Dangerous, and it’s not the last of our announcements for the week. Tomorrow we’ll announce our new PC game on stage at the E3 PC Gaming Show, and in coming months we’ll be able to talk about what’s next for Elite Dangerous on PC and Mac too. We have some great things to come; this is just the beginning.

Right on Commander!

David Braben