 This is Witch Based News for Friday the 1st of December 2023, I'm CMDR Buur. In Elite Dangerous News this week, Frontier announced there is a future for Elite Dangerous, there's a huge anti-Xeno event happening this weekend and the stability patch expected in November has been delayed. You know how this bit goes, please like, subscribe and ding that little bell so that YouTube is kind enough to show you all our content and if you'd like to help our work here at the Burpit you can also support us through Patreon, links to that and everything else are in the description below. The huge player community and the galaxy's foremost experts on plapping Thargoids, the anti-Xeno initiative or AXI is celebrating its 5th anniversary this Saturday night with one of their now regular organised trips to a Thargoid spire site in order to ruin the evening of the toxic turnips and generally remind them just whose bubble they're now infringing on. The anti-Xeno community is a huge and particularly at the moment very active part of the game and the anniversary event has at the time of recording attracted well over 500 interested commanders to its call. Whilst it's unverified at the moment it's looking possible that this Saturday's AXI combined arms assault on a Thargoid spire could well be the single biggest concurrent player event that the game has ever seen. The party kicks off at 200 hours UTC on Saturday the 2nd of December. To participate yourself just head over to the AXI Discord server which you'll find linked in the description below this video. Last month Frontier had promised that an interim stability patch would be incoming to the game at the end of November. By late this week the patch had not been forthcoming and after being queried on the forums by commander DJ Wiley it was confirmed by Paul Crowther that the patch has indeed been delayed. As we'd expected following Sally's recent departure with no replacement in sight right now the dramatic thinning out of front-facing staff at Fdev and the launch of Age of Sigma more on that in a moment the comms from Frontier are very much on the down low right now. The company and the folks left there working within it are absolutely riding the rapids at the moment as a result we're in a period of upheaval and likely huge change. Expect some wobbles here and there. We think this is likely to continue for a short while so steal yourself, grab your towel and importantly don't panic. We've reported extensively on this channel about the growing financial problems at Fdev and this week saw another development on that front. We were waiting for the next business update to land in January which would see the company reporting back on their recently announced operational review and the company's interim results. As we reported a few weeks back Frontier had already taken action in an attempt to shore up it's now wobbly foundations with the last few weeks seeing significant redundancies across the company as they attempt to save 20% of staffing and operational costs. The latest chapter in this saga is the newly released real-time strategy game Warhammer Age of Sigma Realms of Ruin which had the company's future financial hopes proudly pinned on its plated chest armour. But as of this recording Realms of Ruin released just two weeks ago now has by every metric that is publicly available to us spectacularly underperformed with the game only managing to garner 1,556 concurrent players on Steam at least on the launch weekend. These numbers have since only headed downward from there with player reviews already taking the game to a mixed rating on Steam and fairly negative press coverage overall. This quite dramatic underperformance was then confirmed by the company issuing a business update to the stock exchange on Monday this week warning that because of the lower than expected sales they now needed to lower the company's overall revenue expectations for financial year 24 an update that caused yet another 20% to get knocked off of the company's share price. Having reported the problems with Sigma's launch the report then goes on to underline the company's recently announced commitment to refocus their business around the core genres that they know best and have seen great success with in the past most notably the creative management simulations however there was one very interesting line relating to the future of Elite Dangerous. As well as committing to release three new CMS games for financial years 25, 26 and 27 the report then goes on to state quote alongside this we will continue to develop and support our portfolio of existing games including Elite Dangerous, our F1 manager franchise and realms of ruin unquote. The good news being that's a clear and unambiguous commitment from Frontier's top brass to support and develop the game continuing the journey with Elite Dangerous for the foreseeable future. The creative management game arena is a place that Frontier have become a major player in and rightly so. The planet and Jurassic games if you've not tried them are quite honestly the market leaders in their genre. Frontier are quite comfortable in that space and know what they're doing. Their CMS games are a tried and trusted formula and business model for the company, a one and done boxed product that then utilizes paid expansions and DLC to monetize itself going forward. Planet Zoo being their best performing management sim from its launch and through its paid DLC earning the company good returns in a very timely manner. This is now obviously something the company is keen to focus on and replicate as a top priority as stated in the announcement. So what does all this mean for Elite Dangerous? The space trader simulation is a genre that Elite invented and Elite Dangerous was the foundation stone that Frontier Development's PLC was very firmly built on. But unlike their CMS games it's my perception that Fdev have struggled to find a place that both they and their player base are comfortable with when it comes to the daily needs of a live service environment such as forward funding of the service and constant community engagement etc. Other than the odyssey bump in the road Elite Dangerous has always done well for Frontier but in a world where space trading sims are enjoying somewhat of a zeitgeist moment and the continued appetite for them is being so clearly demonstrated for example by Star Citizen being funded at this point to the tune of half a billion dollars it's difficult to argue against the sentiment that perhaps Elite Dangerous the inventor of the very genre is not making the most of itself. I'd personally like to see Fdev re-evaluate and understand better what the needs of a live service game are from the perspective of both the players and the business and then explore those needs to the fullest. Now more than ever with the current financial woes at Frontier Towers, Elite Dangerous is going to have to start paying for its dinner to really have the best chance of a proper development path going forward. At least for now it's been clearly stated that in Frontier's eyes the journey for Elite Dangerous continues. What shape that journey takes is of course yet to be determined and we shall of course be watching every turn very closely from here. Have you tried realms of ruin? If so what did you think of it? Or instead will you be clapping zenos with the AXI this weekend? Let us know in the comments below. That's it for now. Thanks very much for watching. We'll be back later this week with more videos. Until then 07 Commanders, follow the Greens on the way out and do keep clear of the toast rack. We very much look forward to seeing you next time.