2020 has, it seems, been a successful year for MMO space sim Star Citizen. The game enjoyed its most successful year on record (by revenue), beating last year's historic financial high point by over 60%. All in all, Roberts estimates Star Citizen will close at over $80 million in sales in 2020. To date, the game has raised around $338.5 million in crowdfunding.
How has 2020 been for Star Citizen?
This news comes via the official Star Citizen website. Cloud Imperium CEO Chris Roberts sets out Star Citizen's achievements - along with where the developer is planning to take it in the future - in a Letter from the Chairman on the site. Roberts says that in addition to the aforementioned financial milestone, Star Citizen also enjoyed almost 750,000 players this year. According to Roberts, 250,000 of these players were new recruits to the game, while the remainder were returning players. This player base is spread across over 200 countries and 56,340 cities, resulting in over 26 million hours of Star Citizen being played in 2020.
Today marks the release of the all-new Roadmap, designed to give you more insight and visibility into the development of Star Citizen and Squadron 42 than ever before. 🚀
— Star Citizen (@RobertsSpaceInd) December 23, 2020
Details: https://t.co/6YShlZ2w3M pic.twitter.com/5DvkShIk82
In addition to these figures, Cloud Imperium also released a brand new roadmap for Star Citizen. Roberts says the new roadmap is intended to "pull back the curtains for all teams" and show players what each team is working on. The roadmap contains over 200 items of individual "deliverables", as Roberts calls them, and stretches across the next four financial quarters. You can check out that roadmap - which Cloud Imperium is calling the "Progress Tracker" - here. It contains items for both Star Citizen and the upcoming single-player adventure Squadron 42.
What's coming up in the world of Star Citizen?
The roadmap promises plenty of stuff including mining and harvesting materials, a personal inventory system, and improvements to various aspects of Star Citizen's environments. As well as the features themselves, the Progress Tracker roadmap also shows when Cloud Imperium roughly intends to have them finished. As you might expect, some features will take longer than others depending on the complexity of the feature. Roberts also shared some development news on Squadron 42.
What is the Squadron 42 release date?
In the letter, Roberts says it is too early to discuss a Squadron 42 release date. If you don't recall, Squadron 42 is a single-player title set in the Star Citizen universe and was what began this whole crazy adventure with Roberts seeking crowdfunding to make a Wing Commander spiritual successor. Roberts says that much of Star Citizen's core gameplay - especially flight and on-foot combat - "will be the same between both games". Despite this, Roberts is promising "a more crafted feel", combined with famous actors playing key story roles and more bespoke locations and assets.
If you want to read the full Letter from the Chairman - which also goes into more detail about the year Star Citizen has had - you can do so right here. You can play Star Citizen right now on PC. It's currently in its alpha phase.
Are you playing Star Citizen? What do you want to see finished first on the roadmap? Let us know in the comments below!