Despite Frontier Developments’ best efforts to improve the situation since the launch of the Odyssey expansion, it looks like console players of Elite Dangerous are going to be stuck in a holding pattern for a lot longer than originally planned.

As posted on the Frontier forums, CEO and Founder David Braben updated everyone on the state of affairs with the game and to put it simply, until the PC version is in a better state we won’t see the console versions get a release date. The full details are here and though it’s not ideal for Xbox and PlayStation pilots I think it’s a smart move. If Odyssey on console had released with the problems I’d seen that first day on PC it could have killed the game on those platforms. Especially in the age of Xbox Game Pass (which the game is currently on) if players see something they don’t like it doesn’t take much to download another game. So I can understand Frontier being conservative in their rollout as they might not have a second chance to come back from this again if the situation got worse.

I do hope that these issues get sorted out and the team find a better way to handle releases in the future. Over the game’s lifespan there’s been no shortage of problems and setbacks and for them to have any success from this point onward they’re really going to need to put the dramas well and truly behind them.

Elite Dangerous is out now on PC, Xbox and PlayStation.