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’Elite Dangerous: Beyond’ Chapter One arrives on February 27th
If you've been eagerly waiting for the third season of Elite Dangerous, your time has almost come. Today, Frontier Developments announced that the first chapter of the new season of the space MMORPG, called Beyond, will arrive on PC, PS4 and Xbox One on February 27th. The company also released a trailer for the third season, which you can see below.
Visit NASA's newly discovered planets in 'Elite: Dangerous'
Sadly, it's unlikely that you'll ever visit the Trappist-1 system's newly-discovered Earth-sized planets in your lifetime... not unless someone develops near-light speed travel, anyway. However, you'll at least have the option of a virtual tour. Frontier Developments is promising Ars Technica that the second Elite: Dangerous version 2.3 beta will let you visit Trappist-1 and its seven worlds. The developers are really just modifying an existing system in a similar location (Core Sys Sector XU-P a5-0), but that still means that you'll get a rough sense of what it would be like. You'll get to land on at least some of them, two of which will be Earth-like.
'Elite: Dangerous' finally beams onto PS4 in Q2 2017
Space adventure Elite: Dangerous is coming to the Playstation 4 in the second quarter next year, completing its gaming platform sweep. The trading and combat sim will have all the latest Horizon expansions, letting you tear around the surface of planets at up to 100mph using a Surface Recon Vehicle. The game is available on VR for the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, but the Elite team unfortunately didn't mention Playstation VR support for the PS4 version -- at least, not yet.
'Elite Dangerous' will return to Oculus Rift on launch day
Elite Dangerous has been a confirmed VR title since 2013, and has supported the Oculus Rift development kit for well over a year. But development hasn't exactly been fast-paced. At present, the giant open-world space adventure game only runs on a very outdated Oculus firmware, essentially meaning that gamers have to choose between playing Elite Dangerous or everything else. That's going to change soon though, as Elite Dangerous will officially be supported on the headset and released on the Oculus Store on launch day, March 28th. If you've already purchased Elite Dangerous through other means, Oculus says you'll be able to get the new edition free of charge. Players will be able to "migrate" their game to the Oculus Store using a free code from developer Frontier. It's not entirely clear if players will be able to enjoy the same experience directly through the launcher that shipped with the Steam version. Right now the Steam page only lists the HTC Vive as supported under VR, but that could change closer to the release date. We've reached out to Frontier for clarification.
Razer reveals the first games for its VR developer kit
Razer and the OSVR alliance have been working on their developer-ready VR headset for a while, but they haven't said much about what you'll play on this early hardware. That's a bit odd for technology that revolves around gaming, don't you think? Never to fear, though, as the first games have arrived for OSVR's Hacker Development Kit. They're mostly what you'd expect for a SteamVR-compatible device: a pair of Valve classics (Half-Life 2 and Team Fortress 2), a popular spaceflight game (Elite: Dangerous) and a racing title (Live for Speed). About the only outlier is Spermination, a shooter that's about as odd as its name suggests.
'Elite Dangerous' offers space combat in a separate game
Elite Dangerous is a trading, fighting and exploration space game, but if you're only interested in the "fighting" part, you can now do that for a lot less. Developer Frontier is offering a standalone module called Elite Dangerous: Arena for $7.50 on Steam ( £4.99 in the UK and €6.75 elsewhere in Europe). That's a big savings over the $30 price of Elite Dangerous, and you'll still get session-based player-versus-player gaming and the same physics and handling of the full title. In addition, you'll be able to play owners of the standalone Arena module, Elite Dangerous or Elite Dangerous: Horizons.
Explore the surfaces of planets in 'Elite: Dangerous' beta
The expansion pack for Elite: Dangerous, the one that lets you go planetside and explore the surface of places like Europa, is out now. Sort of. The Horizons Planetary Landings beta, teased in a video released last week, does exactly what it says assuming you've pre-ordered Horizons itself. Everyone else needs to wait for the official release sometime before year's end. Driving the all-new Surface Recon Vehicle, players can discover signals, crashed ships and mineral deposits, vastly expanding the range of gameplay. Creator David Braben recently showed off the expansion in a demo (below), and said that certain features, like textures and frame rates, might still have issues.
Space-sim 'Elite: Dangerous' comes to Xbox One on October 6th
We're still not sure when No Man's Sky is coming to PS4, but in the meantime Xbox One fans have their own slice of space exploration nirvana to look forward to. Elite: Dangerous has been out on PC for some time, and since June it's also been available to Xbox players as part of the Xbox Game Preview program. Now, creator Frontier Developments has confirmed that the full console version will be launching on October 6th. The game is incredibly immersive, with an enormous galaxy and beautifully designed ships to pilot. The vast, empty nature of space comes with its drawbacks, however -- if you're expecting an endless stream of dogfights and nail-biting supply runs, you might be disappointed. The first in a series of "Horizons" expansions is due on PC this holiday, adding planetary landings, but it's unclear exactly when it'll make the lightspeed jump to Xbox One.
E3 Streams: 'Volume,' 'Fortnite,' 'Elite: Dangerous,' and more!
Onward into E3 2015! Our week in Los Angeles has left us wild and crazed. We interviewed the director of the Final Fantasy VII remake. We played Star Fox Zero. Now we're going to give you a chance to talk to the developers of some of E3's biggest games right here on JXE Streams. Join us starting at at 12:30PM ET/9:30AM PT on Twitch.tv/Joystiq for a chance to chat with developers like Epic Games, Elite: Dangerous creator David Braben, and a special early look at Volume with Mike Bithell.
