I've been looking at this game for the past week when I heard about it on kotaku, it was funded by kickstarter and will go live on Tuesday for Windows and a mac version will be out in a few months.
Now I've wanted to try out a space sim after seeing how Spoony prasied WingCommander: Privater(and bashing Privater 2) but I noticed that while they were everywhere in pc gaming in the past, the market has dried up. Now this is being done by the people behind the orignal Elite that came out in 1984 and while they have big plans for down the line, their is alot of stuff to do right now, you have the entire milky way galaxy to explore(Yes, the whole thing). The game will be compatitable with keyboard/mouses, flight sticks and even xbox 360 controllers and gamepads.
You can make money any way you want, mining, cargo runs, hired guns, piracy, bounty hunter, etc. You don't have to play online if you want and just play ai ships, but you still need an internet connection.
You can buy it only on the site now for $50(the price will go up on launch), and you can play the combat tutorials to get a taste right now. There's no word if or when it's coming to steam but it will have always online DRM so make sure your connection is good.
http://www.elitedangerous.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lm_0S9hNMMc Someone showing off the game(won't go full on the thread for some reason)
The reason people are playing this now on twitch(aka the beta version) is because they backed the kickstarter.
