"The MMO was the big tipoff, he implied there was an offline game." It was "implied" when people started demanding it during the Kickstarter and was not part of the original pitch. We shall see soon enough how well it does financially, "spamming" for the Mercenary edition is not necessarily just to push sales, but also because once they hit the 22nd these offers will no longer be available...

Whilst I was replying to another person I realised they seem to be currently delivering on the original proposal set out before any offline compoment was added during the campaign, or even when an additional ten ships were going to be added. Original proposal did not mention offline at all, and it was to ship with 15 ships, so far they are close to this number. We may not see all 25 (10 more raised as a stretch goal) on the 16th, but sometime after, so I think they've so far done pretty well.

Elite's Kickstarter was more of a proof of market exercise, they received additional private backing after the Kickstarter ended as well as a sale of shares a year ago. Why would David Braben taken anyone for a "ride"? Elite is his baby basically. Having said that, planetary landings will not be in the release, as was well described by Frontier at the time, but we're also not seeing all 25 ships this December either (it was 15 originally) and at the time of me writing this we're expecting more content, few additional features and lots of bug fixes, plus polish. Oh and now another 5 more over time, to make at least 30. I've backed SC too, and well...I agree, things will change for them too and they have more riding on trying to keep all their backers happy which in itself will be impossible. Interesting, whilst writing this I have realised we're actually getting what was described in the original Kickstarter, before any mention was made of an offline mode, or any of the stretch goals, so honestly aside from the poor communication they seemed to have done remarkably well for just around two years work.

You can still play single player, offline is gone, so we'd better hope the game is a success and if they ever decide to shut down we had better hope they get a chance to put the code back in the client so that it can be played offline.

Erm, no. Would you trust a chef who wouldn't eat his own food? The question is not that a "gamer is developing games", rather the passion that goes into it coupled with professional skill. If you have someone who simply is in gaming for the money, or a publisher completely focussed on the profit margin what do you expect to see?

That's been mentioned before, it will be interesting to see if they actually implement it, and as long as it isn't jarring or out of place it should be OK. Anyway, code was moved off of the client computer to the servers, I suspect "cheating" during Alpha and early Beta phases may have led, at least partially, to this decision as I know credits were moved from client to server as people had used Cheat Engine to get credits. Of course, this is what testing is about...

People voted for this believe it or not as a way to avoid subscription fees, selling cash for credits or even ships.

I backed early, probably the second day of the Kickstarter before people asked for an offline mode, and I feel truly bad for those who were actually reliant on it or deemed it an essential mode, but the game itself is really solid and fun so far. Honestly, there is nothing like it out there right now which allows you to control a spaceship from the 3D cockpit in a realistically scaled 1:1 galaxy with realistically scaled planets and even space stations.

Really? Troll much? Frontier has been around since the 90's, they've seen many other developers come and go which makes me doubt they're anywhere near going to fold. Actually, when they got close to 100K backers they were mentioning about breaking even with Elite, so they should be in the black now they hit 140K +. How did they do so? Despite reacting to an obvious troll Kickstarter was pretty much a proof of demand exercise as they received not only private funding, but also successfully raised funds through shares. Oh and now they're creating a game for Amazon, might not seem like much to you, but they're going to around for awhile...

I read this as, "do you trust Microsoft to be producing and supporting the Windows desktop platform and DirectX?" We have reports of falling PC sales, don't you think Microsoft is going to be looking elsewhere? Microsoft closed the Aces studio, and sold off its assets for Microsoft Flight Simulator to Lockheed Martin, one foray into PC gaming was with Microsoft Flight which ended in disaster, so I would expect MS to be spending more and more time with Xbox and much less time on bothering with the PC market, indeed the Microsoft Store seems to heavily favour Xbox. I wouldn't be surprised if they stopped work on DirectX as we know it and shift the development to support the mobile/Xbox market. It is business, pure and simple...

Any clue on the prices for a SteamBox? If they can sale it around the $100 to $200 mark I think it will have have the potential to be highly competitive.

Simple solution which may stop this move. Require workers who are using any state or nationally critical service or utility to only use workers who are US Citizens or Permanent Residents and be able to pass an appropriate background check.

It'll be a lesson for other developers, perhaps they would have been better off adding the hardware controller as a stretch goal and getting the main product out without the controller to begin with. All this in hindsight of course :)

Elite: Dangerous is going to be dark horse, plus Notch backed the project from the start and will be in the Alpha, finally Frontier do not seem to be doing as much marketing as SC, yet don't seem to be hurting financially (maybe cheaper labour around Cambridge? Coupled with the IPO?).

Yes, and with Unity game engine doing well and likewise the amount of new titles from well known developers, especially those on Kickstarter who are making games for Linux things are looking better than ever. But, to be honest the biggest issue generally I have with Linux has the been the audio, for example when installing the Nvidia proprietary driver it "activates" the modules needed for HDMI and is a bit of a pain to work-around through blacklisting/kernel recompile if you're using the card through DVI and a separate audio card.