Which sort of begs the question, why bother? There are a lot of space fighting/trading games out there now. If Braben is using the Elite brand name to disguise an attempt to make just another space sim, it's no wonder he can't get financial backing from the usual sources.
Elite's enduring reputation is due to the originality and playability of the original. It's far from clear that Braben can - or even intends to - produce another genre-defining piece of work with Elite: Dangerous. Possibly the title is an indication in itself, "Dangerous" being two ranks below "Elite" in the original scheme.
