Elite Dangerous: Odyssey sees short delay on PC, longer on consoles
The past year has been tough all around for game development, and the latest victim of those issues is now Frontier’s upcoming Odyssey update for Elite Dangerous.
“2020 was a difficult year for many, but in spite of those challenges we are pleased with our progress towards what is a truly ambitious new era for the game,” read today’s blog post from the official Elite Dangerous website.
“The ongoing impact of the pandemic however, including the renewed lockdowns in 2021, continues to put added pressure on our teams and ultimately our development timeline. We have therefore had to make the difficult decision to make some adjustments and changes to our existing development roadmap.”
Under that new roadmap, Odyssey will go into Alpha on PC in early spring. From there, the full PC release will be targeted for late spring.
On consoles, however, the delay is going to be more sizable, as Odyssey is now planned to hit the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 in autumn of this year.
“We understand that for many, this additional delay will be frustrating. Once again, we would like to apologise wholeheartedly to our community, especially our console Commanders,” the blog post continues. “However, as mentioned previously, we feel it is vital to ensure that the content being released on consoles meets the highest standards and this will require this additional extension to our roadmap.”
The delay of Elite Dangerous: Odyssey is obviously a disappointing one, but also one completely understandable in the current world of game development. And, COVID or not, it’s always preferable to give a project the proper time that it needs, rather than rushing it out only to be a worse experience for both players and developers.
Mollie got her start in games media via the crazy world of gaming fanzines, and now works at EGM with the goal of covering all of the weird Japanese and niche releases that nobody else on staff cares about. She’s active in the gaming community on a personal level, and an outspoken voice on topics such as equality in gaming, consumer rights, and good UI. Check her out on Twitter and Mastodon.
