Soldato
I find it much easier not to follow development very closely these days.I just have a look at the (horrendous) forums occasionally.
Now that Chris is back in LA after his 66 day SQ42 performance capture shoot he's had some time to have a chat with Ben for a new 10 For The Chairman.
It's 1h 26mins long
00:00:00 - Introduction and Squadron 42 Update
00:19:39 - What is the status of Star Marine?
00:31:08 - Have you been in contact with the team?
00:34:12 - Why is there stuff in the leak we haven't seen?
00:38:20 - What are your thoughts on controller balance?
00:46:57 - What's the story behind recent staff departures?
00:54:09 - Why isn't the concept ship I bought playable, yet?
00:58:48 - Why do you still have concept sales?
01:02:28 - How has Star Citizen changed since the beginning?
01:14:11 - Is Star Citizen impossible to finish?
01:24:41 - What's next for Star Citizen?
There is also a new Letter from the Chairman covering a bit on SQ42, Star Marine and the development of Star Citizen.
Has this game even been released to the public yet?
It's only around 3 years into development, so no.
The first release to expect will be 'Squadron 42', which is the first of several standalone story episodes. It's supposed to clock in at ~20 hours of content, with full mocap and dialogue, etc. That won't be out 'til mid-late 2016 from what can be ascertained this early on. After that will come the full multiplayer 'persistent universe', and though unofficially slated for 2016 it's more likely be 2017. The additional story content will come along over the years following, as it's primarily handled by their UK studio in parallel to the main content.
If you consider that some of the biggest (I don't mean procedural) games out there take upwards of 5 years to develop -- often with smaller scope and depth than Star Citizen -- I don't think it's at all shocking that we're nowhere near finished yet at only 3 years into it's development. If this were a publisher funded title (never would have happened), then it's quite likely this wouldn't have been officially announced yet. With this being crowd funded the development has to be quite transparent, and it is, which is also why you hear about all the nitty-gritty in the gaming press, whether it's good or bad.