Elite: Dangerous – will it achieve parity on Xbox One?

GameCentral speaks to Elite creator David Braben about the limits of Xbox One and PC cross play, and dumbed down console games.

We don’t usually go to Game Developers Conference (GDC), as there’s rarely any major news or new game announcements. This year was more notable than usual though, with Valve, Microsoft, and Sony using it as a platform to reveal more about their VR headsets and, in Microsoft’s case, their plans for integrating Xbox and Windows 10. But in terms of actual games the big news was Elite: Dangerous on Xbox One.

Although Elite will eventually appear on PlayStation 4 the implication was that it wouldn’t happen for a long time, leaving Microsoft with the reboot to one of British gaming’s most beloved classics as a console exclusive.

But while we weren’t able to talk to creator David Braben in person we did pass the following questions along anyway, about how close the Xbox One version will be to the PC and how confident he is that console gamers actually want to play an MMO style space trading game…




GC: If you’re adamant that Elite: Dangerous won’t be dumbed down on consoles how can you be confident that there will be an audience for the game on Xbox One? Since there’s so little else like it on consoles, in terms of complexity and subject matter.

DB: Well, we are coming into a console world, much as we did with the PC, where there has been a lack of games like this for quite a long time. And I think the reason is that publishers were cautious on the PC, of making a space game like this. And Kickstarter and the progression of the game so far has shown that not to be the case.

Now, I’m confident we’ll see the same on Xbox. But having said that we are looking at and are continually improving the game. The thing to remember is that we’ve brought out updates regularly on the PC to address where we think the game can be improved, and we’ll keep doing that.

The game will keep getting better and all those improvements are going to be folded into Xbox anyway. We’ve already done a lot to help with tutorial and things like that. Obviously we can keep doing more but we’ve brought out the community challenges, we’ve brought out Wings – which is in beta now and will got to release next week, and Powerplay to come after that.

All of those things will be rolled into Xbox so the game you’ll be getting on Xbox will already be a different game to what the PC was, back when. But I think the point is we’re certainly taking it very seriously and doing something different isn’t always a bad thing. I’m very excited about how we can bring out a game that hasn’t been dumbed down and how the Xbox audience will respond to it.

Elite: Dangerous – there’s nothing quite like it

GC: Will the experience of playing Elite not always be inherently inferior on a console, given the limited controller options? And will this make cross format PvP player impossible? How different do you think the PC and console experience will be overall?

DB: Well, I think the first thing to look at with that is that a lot of people on PC are already playing on console controllers, so there’s already an element of parity there. One of the great things with consoles, for us, is we have a very level platform from a development point of view. One of the issues with the PC is that there’s such a wide range of CPUs, GPUs, memory, audio solutions, memory speed, display resolutions, that it’s very, very hard to be certain that your PC home at home matches one of our PC’s in the office. Because there are so many combinations.



And so with that we can be pretty confident in the office that our experience does match the one that you will get at home on the Xbox, because they’re all the same. So that immediately addresses the question that the games will both be running well, assuming your PC runs it well, and so it is fairly level; especially given the controller issue. But of course we will do our absolute best to ensure it is a good experience. We’ve been doing that on PC, we’ll be doing that on each platform and Xbox One will be no different.

GC: How will the frequent updates work on Xbox One? Will they be the same as on the PC and are Microsoft using Elite almost as a test case for MMOs on the console?

DB: So, there are several elements to this: we are doing daily updates of story and things like that, that will continue across all platforms including Xbox. The Xbox and PC, and Mac for that matter, all share the same galaxy, all share the same evolving story, all share the same community challenges.

In terms of wider updates to the game, obviously we’re working out how best to do that. But the beauty of that is that they don’t need to stay permanently in synch. Which is one of the things we’ve been looking at with cross play, because that is one of the factors that affects it. We haven’t decided whether we will do actual face-to-face cross play, other than participating in the same worlds and larger challenges.


So, more on that to come – other than we have solutions that we know will work.

GC: Will Elite: Dangerous be released at retail and if not is there a specific milestone or content update that you’re waiting for in order to make that move?

DB: It’s obviously something we will be looking at. We haven’t made such a decision but the game is expanding rapidly now and how you can get it is expanding, so I don’t imagine that will stop!

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