The developers of Elite: Dangerous have officially announced that the game will be released on PCs before the end of the year, on 16 December, reports EuroGamer. Plans for this modern sequel to the popular space combat game first emerged on Kickstarter in November 2012. It was a project seeking to raise £1.25m to turn game development plans into reality. Since being successfully crowdfunded in January 2013, raising £1.5m from 25,000 backers, maker Frontier Developments has been busy working on the game, presenting it in various states of progress throughout this year.

Although the December release date is later than originally planned, and the game will only be playable on PCs initially, the Cambridgeshire-based developers are already putting up a pre-order package of 'Elite: Dangerous Mercenary Edition' ahead of the launch date. This gives those who purchase the £35 ($50) bundle in advance ship liveries, day-one decals and some other goodies in addition to the full game.

"It is important we make a great game first, but then we will look at other platforms," said David Braben, co-developer of the original Elite game, when speaking about porting the game to consoles. Frontier announced that over 140,000 players had taken part in its alpha and beta testing programme and the studio confirmed that those who have paid to take part in the testing phases of the game have helped raise £7.5m in funds.

An event is being planned for 22 November which will give the public a taste of what the finished game will look like. However, in addition to patches, post-launch expansions are also planned, including planetary landing, meaning that the launched version will not be the end of Elite: Dangerous' game development.

The game's launch will face heavy competition from rival title, Star Citizen, which also has strong community backing and has raised more than $60m (£38m) from its backers and fans. That game is set to be released in 2016. In contrast to Braben/Frontier, Star Citizen creator Chris Roberts has previously expressed his lack of interest in porting the game onto consoles.

"Competition is always a good thing for the players, as it gives choice, but also it keeps the competitors on their proverbial toes," Braben said, welcoming the presence of rival space epics.