There’s more in store for Elite Dangerous following the Beyond storyline, developers Frontier have said in a post on the game’s community forum. While there aren’t any firm details on what’s coming with that next milestone, head of communications Zac Antonaci did provide some new details on the roadmap for Elite Dangerous in the year ahead.
“A while ago, our development went from pre-production into full production on our next major milestone of Elite development,” Antonaci wrote in the Friday post. “What that means in the simplest terms is that the team are actively working on the next major landmark which takes us into our next era for Elite.”
That said, Antonaci was careful to point out that this next milestone is still “early in the development” process and that it’ll be a while before players get to experience whatever it is they’re making. In the post, Antonaci explains that it will be scheduled for “a considerable time” after the final chapter of the currently-running season of Beyond content, which will wrap up in the next several weeks.
Along with this announcement, Antonaci also had some less exciting news: certain features players have been hoping for won’t be showing up until later. Specifically, ice planets and squadron fleet carriers have been pushed back and will not show up with the final chapter of Beyond.
Antonaci also wrote that the development team has also been focused on “future content,” as well as new planned features and an across-the-board visual upgrade, and decided not to create new purchasable premium content this year – which means that players who own the Lifetime Expansion Pass won’t be seeing any new premium goodies this season.
“The most important thing we would like for our community to take from this, is that there are some incredibly exciting things just over the horizon,” Antonaci wrote. “The Elite Dangerous development team is larger than it has been at any point in the last 6 years.”