4Game

A lot of discussions around Elite include a reference to a "10 year plan", as if Braben has a clock on his desk counting down to Dec. 16, 2024 at which time development will immediately cease. I think the wiki is partly to blame for the persistence of this myth, as there is a section titled "10 Year Development Plan" on the Development Plans page. Here is the one and only source for the existence of the "10 Year Plan":

"Looking back at those (developer videos), you can see what we've done, we're executing on the plan. There's still a lot of things that are to come and those are very exciting. We do have a long plan. It would take us a long time to deliver all the things that we want to do. The great thing is the more things get added to the end of it. So it may well be never ending. I've said sort of 8 years, 10 years, but actually it could end up and I'm hoping it'll be a lot longer than that. The key point is we'll keep doing exciting things and we'll work out how best to do that." – David Braben

How people extract "10 year plan" from this quote is beyond me. Obviously Frontier is going to keep developing Elite for as long as it makes them money, be that more or fewer than 10 years (I think we all hope more). A complex software project like this just isn't planned out 10 years in advance in the way that some people seem to believe. There is constant re-evaluation and adaptation to changing factors. Let's put the "10 year plan" talking point to rest.