Frontier Developments today announced that Elite: Dangerous, the latest installment of the classic open-universe space-sim, has gone into Premium Beta.
From today, anyone who purchases or has purchased the Premium Beta will have access to downloadable single-player combat build of the game, allowing them to hone their skills ahead of the full Premium Beta, which will begin on the 30th May.
For those players who have bought into early access to the game, but haven’t upgraded to Premium Beta, there will be a 4th Phase of the Alpha, which adds Travel and Trading to the game.
In a press release issued today, Frontier’s founder and series creator David Braben said: “The Alpha process has worked well for us. We have gradually built out the key elements of the game, first locally, with single player combat, then with a few thousand players across the internet. On 30th May the Premium Beta extends this to many thousands of players worldwide, with an increasingly rich game.
“I want to take this opportunity to thank all those who have played such an important role in Alpha testing, and I’m very happy that we will continue to benefit from their valuable input as they test Beta builds approximately 2 weeks in advance of release.
“On 30th May we move into a new phase of Premium Beta testing, and I’m delighted to be able to welcome a significant numbers of new players to Elite: Dangerous today.”
Elite: Dangerous has been in development for a while now - almost ten years, in fact. In December of 2012, the company went to Kickstarter in a bid to obtain crowdfunding support to the tune of £1,250,000 - a not insignificant amount. Thankfully, they were successful, finishing their campaign last January with a total of £1,578,316.
Dale Morgan
@spamdangled
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