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Frontier has removed the standalone version of Elite Dangerous: Arena from sale due to a lack of players. Frontier’s senior community manager Edward Lewis made the announcement on Frontier’s forums, stating the game will be removed from sale on Steam, the Frontier store, and the Xbox Store.
"We’ve been looking at our metrics which suggest that the vast majority of new and regular Arena players tend to play Arena through the main Elite Dangerous client rather than the standalone Arena one," Lewis said.
He also reassured players that Elite Dangerous: Arena will still continue to be supported, and that removing the stand alone version from sale will help reduce the number of builds the team have to maintain going forward.
"We’ve made the decision to remove the standalone version of Elite Dangerous: Arena in order to reduce the number of builds that have to be maintained and managed across Steam, Xbox One and in 2Q’17 PlayStation Network, as well as clarifying the choices for new players of Elite Dangerous on these storefronts.
"Elite Dangerous: Arena continues to be available and supported as part of the wider Elite Dangerous game. Existing and new players that join the Elite Dangerous galaxy will continue to be able to enjoy the fast-paced action of Arena through the main menu. Existing Elite Dangerous: Arena client owners will still be able to enjoy Arena as they have always done. Not much change but we just wanted to give you a quick heads up, to avoid any confusion."
Elite Dangerous was famously crowd-funded on Kickstarter before launching on PC back in December 2014, and the title has since come to both PS4 and Xbox One. As of January last year, the title had sold 1.4m units on PC and Xbox One. Arena is the competitive multiplayer aspect of Elite Dangerous, but players will already have the title if they own either Elite Dangerous or the second year expansion, Elite Dangerous Horizons.
