Elite: Dangerous creator David Braben has confirmed that the space trading and combat game's alpha will launch in December.
Braben, whose seminal games Elite and Frontier have inspired more than 34,000 people to back his new game's crowd-funding effort, released a nine minute video today, talking about the alpha and answering questions.
"December is when we start the alpha process which everyone, including us, is very excited about," said Braben. A combat test build is the first roll-out planned, although not in multiplayer, which is planned later.
Published and created by Frontier Developments, Elite: Dangerous will take place in a procedurally-generated Milky Way that hosts more than 100 billion stars.
"This is where we bring out parts of the game in close to final form, play it, comment on it, criticize it and hopefully people will love it as well, and tune it," he said.
Different aspects of the game will be added through the alpha, after which a larger scale beta will launch. "We will take our time," added Braben. "We will do this so it's right."