Chris Roberts' Cloud Imperium Games sent a newsletter to backers giving some information on the upcoming plans for future updates of the alpha of Star Citizen.

Update 3.1 is scheduled for late March, as the developer moves to quarterly update releases. According to the announcement, there are "a lot of content and enhancements" planned through the year.

Backers finally received alpha 3.0 just before Christmas, and according to Cloud Imperium, this allows them to "deliver new features and refinements into the game more consistently through improvements to core tech."

A new website will also be launched later this months, bringing new web features and a sleeker interface.

The crowdfunding total for the game also keeps growing, and back on December 23rd, it was just north of 174 million dollars. Looks like quite a few pilots bought themselves some shiny new starships in the meanwhile, as the tally is now over 176 million. More precisely, the game is comfortably sitting on $176,157,353.

If you want to see more of Star Citizen, you can enjoy a spectacular vertical slice of the single-player campaign Squadron 42, a version of the same footage with commentary from the developersa teaser featuring Mark Hamilla video on hoverbikes, one on atmospheric flight, and one on the Cutlass Black.