 This is Witchface news for Friday the 16th of June 2023, I'm CMDR Buur. And Elite Dangerous news this week, if you're playing on Steam you need to know what's happening to your game next week as Fdev reports to the stock market we take a fascinating look at the trends in Elite Dangerous player numbers and the Frontier livestream teases new content together with a release window for updates 16 and more. As always if you enjoy our videos please do hit the like button and if you haven't already be sure to subscribe and click the bell so you don't miss any of our Elite Dangerous content. You can also join our Patreon if you'd like to help directly support our work, links to that and everything else are below. A quick hit up before we start proper this week, if you're playing any version of Elite Dangerous through Steam then you need to be aware of the changes that are coming to you on Monday next week. This will particularly affect you if you are still playing the legacy version of Elite Dangerous in any fashion. Fair warning now, Frontier are affirming that the live version of the game should now be the default version and the update to the Steam build that Fdev are pushing through on Monday will uninstall the legacy version and install the live version in its place. If you wish to play the legacy version of Elite Dangerous you will need to download and install it again following the update. The full details on how this will affect all players of Elite Dangerous on Steam are in a forum post made by Frontier this week which I've linked to in the description below this video. This week's community goal launched on Thursday afternoon following the regular weekly server cycling. It's an intriguing one this week that is likely to yield some fascinating results. It's a two sided affair that pitches Xeno research agency Aegis against the corporate rivals Azimuth Biotech. With paint jobs up for grabs as a reward that in and of itself would be interesting just to see which way the community favours. This CG however is asking for samples to be taken directly from Fargoid Titans and then handed in as part of the CG. Just getting to a Titan is no insignificant task for the average player. To then collect commodities note not materials and then escape the Titan all the way through Fargoid held territory carrying a vulnerable cargo that is let us not forget caustic in nature drops even more railway sleepers in front of the player. A regular haul this thing or kill this other thing CG can expect to attract on average between a thousand to four thousand participants over the course of the week. It's obviously very early days for a CG that was released just yesterday but as of this recording there are around 170 commanders signed up for the CG this week. How that number changes before the end of the week will be a fascinating litmus test to help the community at least understand just how commanders are finding accessing the Titan gameplay and whether or not the barriers to entry for these particular loops are set too high. Frontier developments released their full year trading update to the London stock market this week including with it the result of their review of the Frontier Foundry Publishing Arm. In the last financial year FDF has generated around £104 million in revenue with 72% of that revenue coming from the company's stable of older titles released before June of last year. Of those titles the Dino theme park movie tie in sequel Jurassic World Evolution 2 was the strongest performer financially. Jurassic World is the newest of these older titles, benefits from the movie it's tied into being released finally and it's also the most expensive game of the older bunch coming in at £50 for the basic game. The Frontier's newer titles released since June 2022 perhaps unsurprisingly F1 manager 2022 was the best performer selling around 800,000 units in total. The big headline which I don't think will come as a huge surprise to anyone who looks even casually at this stuff is that the underperforming Frontier Foundry Publishing Venture is no more. The one big success from the Foundry project was Warhammer 40,000 Chaos Gate Demon Hunters the developers of which Complex Games were quickly snapped up by their Cambridge based publishers. Elite Dangerous doesn't get a mention in this top level overview of the company's performance and to be honest we didn't expect it to neither does Planet Coaster or Planet Zoo. Its publication however did get us looking at the only public credible source to gauge the trend in player numbers for Elite Dangerous steamcharts.com I was curious to understand better not necessarily how well Elite Dangerous is doing in isolation but rather how it compares to other games in the Frontier's stable in terms of player retention. My main motivation being to try and get a better understanding of how the game might be viewed at the corporate level within Frontier as that obviously has significant bearing on any future investment and support for Elite Dangerous that Frontier might be willing to make past the end of this year especially as we're now talking about a ten year old game. Before looking at these numbers it's important to understand that what the steamcharts can show you for all the Frontier titles we looked at that's to say Planet Coaster, Planet Zoo, Jurassic World 2 and F1 Manager 2020 is a trend rather than an absolute definite number of players as Fdev don't publish player figures for individual titles. A trend however is still a useful tool to be able to judge player engagement and retention. In the snapshot we took this morning Elite Dangerous is second only to Planet Zoo and even then not by a huge margin. The next closest competitor is Planet Coaster with a thousand less players then its Jurassic World 2 and finally at the bottom the current iteration of F1 manager. Planet Zoo's peak at just over 38,500 was on its release day and as you can see Elite Dangerous numbers peaked at 27,568 on the release of the Odyssey expansion in 2021 but at that point Elite was already a six and a half year old game. The problems that then came with Odyssey sadly saw the number of players drop off after that peak but even then those numbers returned pretty much to their pre Odyssey levels. Looking at that we thought it would be interesting to take a snapshot of the trend in player numbers year on year and what you can see in the table is that away from the launch of fleet carriers in 2020 and the month following the Odyssey launch in 2021 player numbers have remained largely consistent year on year. What will be interesting however is to see how these figures are affected by the release of the much hyped Bethesda title Starfield which is in some quarters at least being hailed as an elite killer despite it being a single player RPG and not a massive multiplayer sandbox spaceship simulation. I do think it likely that Elite will see a drop in player numbers in the months after Starfield's launch that's heavily dependent obviously on what state the game ships in what I am curious to see is how those elite numbers pick up again afterwards. If we look closely at this stuff you can also bet a bag full of conquerors that Frontier do as well and I'm curious to see if Frontier react to the release of something like Starfield with a content release of their own for Elite Dangerous especially as next year is the 10th anniversary of the full release of Elite Dangerous and the 40th anniversary of the very first Elite game. Last night it was time for Frontier's now once a month frameshift live Elite Dangerous live stream. Aside from the regular community features, news, competitions and free paint jobs there were not only two developer guests but a sneak peek at the forthcoming Update 16 to the live game which the team revealed is currently targeting a release window of the first week in August. Host community managers Sally Morgan Moore and Arthur Tolme were joined on the stream by graduate gameplay programmer Max making his first appearance on an Fdev live stream and the now old hand at Frontier live streams designer Tom. For this fascinating look behind the curtain the duo spoke at length about the design and development process for the settlement Thargoid Revenant encounters that were introduced in Update 15. The team spoke about where the skimmer like biomechanisms fit into Thargoid tactical thinking, why they behave as they do and the challenges involved in bringing the new enemy unit to the game. They also brought along some test footage captured during the development process showing early versions of the Revenant's dropship like redeployment process and footage showing exactly why the Revenant's signature sticky bomb like attacks can't be allowed to stick to a commander's face. Always entertaining, a visit from the dev team behind Elite Dangerous is not to be missed and you'll find a link to the YouTube archive of the conversation linked below this video. It was promised on last month's show and as part of the dev team's visit this month the stream was shown a short new teaser video of just some of the content from Update 16. Here's the clip that was shown last night. The video shows what is clearly another new vessel in the hunter class of Thargoid ships. Far from being super fast and aggressive like the Glaive however, the new as yet unnamed hunter class vessel can be very clearly seen collecting escape pods from destroyed human vessels using what appears to be the Thargoid equivalent of a limpid drone. In fact Commander Simon in our own discord upon seeing them quickly coined the phrase Thimpits. Long time commanders in Elite Dangerous will know that this isn't the only time Thargoids have been known to take escape pods as regular Thargoid vessels have been seen scooping them up since they first appeared in the game. This is however the first time we have seen what appears to be a vessel dedicated to the task. What use the Thargoids have for humans in escape pods has long been the source of speculation and I suspect many a nightmare. Frontier did say we'd need to work out what this new hunter is up to. Could it be we're finally about to get some answers on the question to the fate of the escape pods occupants. Are the Titans just a big drive through restaurant and this new hunter class is simply gathering the raw ingredients for a quarter pounder. As I mentioned update 16 is scheduled for the first week in August, the team did also reveal last night that there will be an update 17 as well, where all this is headed time will tell. The next frontier Elite Dangerous livestream is scheduled for the 20th of July. Are you still playing the Elite Dangerous Legacy Edition on Steam? Are you participating in this week's community goal and what do you think the Thargoids want with human escape pods? 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. Thank you very much, look forward to seeing you next time.