Elite: Dangerous drew in nearly £1.6 million—that's roughly $2.6 million—on Kickstarter, and that's a lot of money by just about any measure. Yet it was only a slice of the total development budget, and not even a particular large slice at that.
"The original budget, because we put a lot of our money towards it, was £8 million," Frontier Developments founder David Braben told Eurogamer . Since then, "It's grown by quite a lot," he added.
That amount is also a tiny fraction of the $53 million (and counting) raised by Star Citizen, but Braben said "we're very, very happy" with the budget, especially since fans are continuing to pay for beta access and preorders. "We already have enough [money] to see it through," he said. "It all means it just de-risks it in a really good way."
As for the future, Braben said it would be "silly" not to at least look at a console version of the game, but for now the PC is the focus. "The important thing is I don't want it to disrupt development of Elite," he said. "We are doing the best game we can on PC and then we will look at console."
Frontier Developments also revealed in the latest Elite: Dangerous newsletter that the final release version of the game will sell for $60, although preorders can be placed at a $10 discount. Preorders will be automatically upgraded to the Mercenary Edition at launch, which comes with an Eagle fighter docked at a secondary location, special ship paint jobs, a "day one" ship decal, digital players guide and concept art book, and "loads more digital goodies to be announced over the coming weeks." The Mercenary Edition upgrade will also be given to all Alpha and Beta participants.
