The forthcoming update to Elite: Dangerous‘ Horizons expansion, dubbed ‘Engineers’, will not launch in April as previously planned. Instead, version 2.1 will come out in June at the earliest.
That news comes by way of a trading update from the London Stock Exchange, posted here on the Frontier forums. In it, Frontier Developments issue a ‘revenue warning’, on the basis that the full “release” of Horizons (in conjunction with the 2.1 Engineers update) will now take place in the next financial year (beginning 1 June).
Revenues associated with sales of Elite: Dangerous Horizons will therefore be included in the 2016-2017 financials, rather than the 2015-2016 ones. In what may be a welcome and beneficial move for Frontier Developments, the taxation associated with Horizons will also be deferred to 2016-2017.
David Braben has directly commented on this (via reddit), stating: “What it means is that 2.1 is pushed out by around 6 weeks. This is to push the quality up, which is a good thing for the game. It’s ready when it’s ready.”
A post from Zac Antonaci further down the initial Frontier thread linked above confirms that the Engineers beta is now planned for May.
Published: Mar 2, 2016 11:14 pm