Well done Frontier!

[Pville_Piper]

This makes me very happy and I'm looking forward to at the very least - an interesting future. Well done Frontier! I hope that all designers, developers, managers, everybody - enjoy what they are doing - you are doing good! It is very heartwarming to see

DOOOOOOMMMMM!!!!! We can't allow such positivity! It is firmly against forum rules and traditions!!!
keep it on the down low... But I've been enjoying the new powerplay immensely!

I've purchased all four. Can you please tell me what I won?

Seriously, try to explain what advantage it brought me so I won the game?
(and while we're at it, what is the shape / nature of that victory?)

Well I feel better, I've purchased 3 and didn't win anything! Thought I was missing something...

 

[DjVortex]

Should we be grateful to Planet Coaster 2 for, kind of indirectly, giving ED a new lease on life? Or at least greatly helping in stopping it from just going quietly into the night?

I don't usually like building games, but maybe I'll give it a try. (Heck, I thought I don't like space simulator games yet here I am, two years later, still playing one actively, so who knows...)

 

[Darrack]

Joking aside my guess is that Fdev have finally realised what they have in Elite.
I think for years it was seen as a vanity project just plodding along, living on nostalgia, a bit like Man Utd

In fact what they have is without doubt (imo) the best space game ever created, i play or have played pretty much everything out there and whilst i enjoy X4, Empyrion, NMS with my little one and yes the occasional jaunt back to CS for laughs nothing comes close to Elite for actually flying and fighting in a ship.
Everything they have done here, combat, mining, exploration and lore is way ahead of anything else, this is the only game where i feel actually in the ship.

The freedom Elite offers combined with the time required to do stuff or travel long distances is the appeal for me, i don't like quick travel, automated systems (X4 is an exception) or hand holding, this game makes you think and communicate with other players to solve things, what other game has anything like Raxxla or TDW?
Elite doesn't have the player base that other games have and that needs to change, but not at the expense of the games direction or core.

Anyway finally they get it and im more than happy to chuck my hard earned cash into the game to give them an incentive to continue and improve, which lets face it 2024 was a complete triumph.
Don't get to hung up on the financials, im not going to get political but just like any other business they will get hit hard by our current governments employment changes, they need all the Arx funds they can get.

This game is special, at the festivals i work in summer i meet up with old commanders (many in bands you will know!) and the passion for Elite is amazing we just need to spread the word.

As a bonus im unashamedly proud to see a British gaming company continuing to succeed.

O7

 

[vanFace]

I've purchased all four. Can you please tell me what I won?

Seriously, try to explain what advantage it brought me so I won the game?
(and while we're at it, what is the shape / nature of that victory?)

I guess you have interpreted my statement wrong. The "for the win" part, which are also the later 3 letters in P2WFTW, was regarding the win for FDEV, not the win for players. Since they are postulating that themselves, I don't think I have to explain anything here. The P2W part has been discussed quite a bit elsewhere, we don't have to continue that here.

 

[Rat Catcher]

Priceless!!

FD "Increased revenue from PDLC in ED" (has to be factual, not imaginary)

"Informed" Forumite "Lies! They laid folk off!"

Love it...

(I also remember that the story writing team were employed on a fixed contract, perhaps it had ended?)

 

[Rat Catcher]

The P2W part has been discussed quite a bit elsewhere, we don't have to continue that here.

Very true, and still, after thousands of posts screaming PTW!, the screamers have successfully failed to provide evidence that purchasers have won...
After all, nobody else here mentioned PTW, did they?

 

[vanFace]

Very true, and still, after thousands of posts screaming PTW!, the screamers have successfully failed to provide evidence that purchasers have won...
After all, nobody else here mentioned PTW, did they?

Boy, you guys sure have hair-triggers. See, what I meant was that the business practice of having that kind of paid downloadable content has obviously worked out for them well. This is certainly a good thing for the company, the game, and the player base. Instead of addressing the "kind of paid downloadable content" with some arbitrary euphemistic explanation, I was using the very term the game industry has for it, which is "pay to win", or abbreviated P2W. I will stick to that term, because everybody else knows what that means, even if the definition of it is more of a spectrum.

It seems like some players feel some kind of shame when their beloved game is described with having P2W elements, so furiously try to make it go away with the defensive "what ever have I won, anyway?" argument. I don't understand that, why not embrace what it is: a good way for a company to keep a quality game up? I think FDEV actually managed to reasonably keep it in the lower parts of the P2W spectrum, why should they not be proud of how it was achieved? Sure it was not P2W only, it was the tons of additional content they delivered along with it as well.

I say Elite has gone P2W in its own way, and this is a good thing. I'd like to see more of it. More ARX ships, more ARX options, maybe even for things like FC and upcoming colonization. If it helps to fuel dev work to deliver more content, more power to them!

 

[Nowski]

my guess is that Fdev have finally realised what they have in Elite

You would really hope so. While last year showed some substantial and well-placed work by FDEV which has moved sentiment significantly, I'm not sure that hope for a similar level of commitment in the coming year is justified at this point.

Looking back to the annual report from last October it's apparent that from that report's point of view at least, the future of the company lies with their CMS portfolio. They describe themselves thus:

With a rich history spanning over 30 years, we are best known for our creative management simulation games, including our Planet Coaster Franchise, Planet Zoo, and our Jurassic World Evolution Franchise. Our portfolio also includes critically acclaimed titles in alternative genres, such as Elite Dangerous,

While those well versed in Elite's place in gaming history might find it a little shocking to see the company's raison d'etre relegated to an "also included", it's possibly accurate if "best known" is measured by a simple headcount. As far as the future goes, however, the focus is definitely on the CMS games:

we refined our strategy in FY24 to refocus on CMS games, an area in which we are considered an industry leader, in order to leverage experience from our most successful titles and deliver more predictable returns. [.. details of 3 upcoming CMS releases: PlanCo2 ('24), Jurassic World X ('26) and unannounced CMS ('27) ]

As well as nurturing and developing our CMS portfolio, we continue to support Elite Dangerous, Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate – Daemonhunters, and our F1® Manager Franchise

CMS portfolio gets nurturing and development (see how this feature/expansion fest looks for PlanCo2) while ED gets "support", which it's hard to avoid reading as significantly less developer hours and critical focus elsewhere.

It's entirely understandable that the company wants to spend its resources on the titles it sees bringing in the most cash for shareholders, but also entirely regrettable if this means a loss of the vision and ambition that put it on the map. While we might snicker just a little to read:

Frontier has a strong track record over 30 years of making the correct project decisions and executing effectively and efficiently on those projects

it's not a claim wholly without merit - their effective 2024 strategy on Elite Dangerous is illustrative - but (getting to the point) for them to show they "finally realised what they have" I think we need more than mitigation and "support". While 2024 has been great, it's also apparent that its development efforts have stretched the resources available (proliferation and longevity of bugs) and have shied away from the "roadmap" expansions that would indicate a return to the ambition and vision that the game deserves.

A true recognition of its potential as a genre exemplar, as a unique gaming legend, and as a significant revenue source (yes, I ackshewally believe this!) would see it up there in the first rank of portfolio items, with the appropriate investment, instead of being an "also included". This would be a "correct project decision" in terms including, but not wholly defined by, the company's financial goals.

Reducing game development to an exercise in financial management, to the exclusion of vision and creativity, is a malaise that has swept across the industry and we are all the poorer for it. With a little faith and adherence to their founding ideals, FDEV can resist and rise above it.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

There are some interesting points in the associated presentation
- for all the complaints about the cosmetic price increases and the semantics of the ship releases, the overall effect was essentially neutral to very positive in terms of income from that source (with the new ships being particularly successful)
... but...
- most of Elite Dangerous' income still comes from new base game purchases. PDLC revenue, presumably both ARX + Odyssey, was 7x higher in Nov/Dec 24 than in Jan/Feb 24, but total revenue only doubled. The Python 2 release caused a temporary >tripling of PDLC income for a month, which had only rounding-error effects on total ED income.
- this makes it highly unlikely that PDLC makes up more than 10% of ED's income
- and ARX specifically is only a subset of that, of course


Some interesting consequences of that:
- existing players are valuable to Frontier for many reasons but their direct financial contribution isn't really one of them (and therefore, things which only bother long-established players, which includes a lot of the bug list, might not be a high priority)
- any proposal involving "Frontier should bring in X because they could sell lots of cosmetics for it" would be a footnote in terms of game revenue even if it worked spectacularly well
- if - and this is a very big if! - the income rate of the last two months is sustained across the remainder of ED's 11th year, then this will return ED to its pre-Odyssey levels of annual income (which would be the first though definitely not the only prerequisite to considering further large-scope paid expansions)
- even if it doesn't do that well, it should still mean that year 11 ends up as the best post-Odyssey year, which is still good news for the future


(There's also a note in there about the recent boost being in their opinion to do with both new content and narrative, which will be interesting to see what they do with)

 

[Ozric]

Priceless!!

FD "Increased revenue from PDLC in ED" (has to be factual, not imaginary)

"Informed" Forumite "Lies! They laid folk off!"

Love it...

Those two things are not mutually exclusive. You should read the report, they reduced their operating costs by 25%

(I also remember that the story writing team were employed on a fixed contract, perhaps it had ended?)

Not sure where you remember that from but Ben had been working at Frontier for over 8 years, originally being part of the CS team.

- most of Elite Dangerous' income still comes from new base game purchases. PDLC revenue, presumably both ARX + Odyssey, was 7x higher in Nov/Dec 24 than in Jan/Feb 24, but total revenue only doubled. The Python 2 release caused a temporary >tripling of PDLC income for a month, which had only rounding-error effects on total ED income.

Out of interest as I was discussing this elsewhere the other day, do you think that ARX is included as PDLC? PDLC is used on all their other games to refer to the DLC packs that you can buy that unlock game content. I'm not sure where the legal terminology distinction between external game content and internal gamestore content lies. But I feel like there would be a distinction.

 

[Cosmo]

- if - and this is a very big if! - the income rate of the last two months is sustained across the remainder of ED's 11th year, then this will return ED to its pre-Odyssey levels of annual income (which would be the first though definitely not the only prerequisite to considering further large-scope paid expansions)
- even if it doesn't do that well, it should still mean that year 11 ends up as the best post-Odyssey year, which is still good news for the future

System Colonisation will probably be released in Q1 or Q2 2025. So they should already be working on a paid expansion / DLC with potentially high cosmetic sales. Because, they know what players want, they've read it on the forums, subreddit, Steam. If they only start considering it by the end of year 11 (Q4 2025).... that means it could be 1-3 years from release. I'd prefer the DLC in smaller chunks than having to wait for years.

 

[Mr Lindsay]

There are some interesting points in the associated presentation
- for all the complaints about the cosmetic price increases and the semantics of the ship releases, the overall effect was essentially neutral to very positive in terms of income from that source (with the new ships being particularly successful)
... but...
- most of Elite Dangerous' income still comes from new base game purchases. PDLC revenue, presumably both ARX + Odyssey, was 7x higher in Nov/Dec 24 than in Jan/Feb 24, but total revenue only doubled. The Python 2 release caused a temporary >tripling of PDLC income for a month, which had only rounding-error effects on total ED income.
- this makes it highly unlikely that PDLC makes up more than 10% of ED's income
- and ARX specifically is only a subset of that, of course


Some interesting consequences of that:
- existing players are valuable to Frontier for many reasons but their direct financial contribution isn't really one of them (and therefore, things which only bother long-established players, which includes a lot of the bug list, might not be a high priority)
- any proposal involving "Frontier should bring in X because they could sell lots of cosmetics for it" would be a footnote in terms of game revenue even if it worked spectacularly well
- if - and this is a very big if! - the income rate of the last two months is sustained across the remainder of ED's 11th year, then this will return ED to its pre-Odyssey levels of annual income (which would be the first though definitely not the only prerequisite to considering further large-scope paid expansions)
- even if it doesn't do that well, it should still mean that year 11 ends up as the best post-Odyssey year, which is still good news for the future


(There's also a note in there about the recent boost being in their opinion to do with both new content and narrative, which will be interesting to see what they do with)

On the first bit, I think the obvious (but unprovable claim) is that with the ship releases is having measurable positive effects on Arx spending, their strategy on selling paint-jobs and baubles hasn't been a disaster but it also been ineffective and still needs a major overhaul to encourage more spending in that area. That doesn't mean just making things cheaper, but having a coherent sales strategy for them which clearly isn't the case just now with various paintjobs being threatened to be pulled from the store. (I think buying a single, higher priced, paint scheme bundle which gets your paintjob of choice across all ships would encourage more spending than the individual ship paint system they have now, but it would need a lot of work from the art team to make that possible.)

As new game sales has been such an important part of their income, I hope now that the console versions of Planet Zoo and Planet Coaster 2 are out the door, that the team members that work on the console porting are being tasked with PS5/XB versions of ED to drive another wave of sales. A console version which has Odyssey included in the price I think would sell reasonably well, as there's still very little competition besides NMS in that area.

 

[vanFace]

As new game sales has been such an important part of their income, I hope now that the console versions of Planet Zoo and Planet Coaster 2 are out the door, that the team members that work on the console porting are being tasked with PS5/XB versions of ED to drive another wave of sales. A console version which has Odyssey included in the price I think would sell reasonably well, as there's still very little competition besides NMS in that area.

I think the projected return of investment is too small for that. If I understood their reasons for the console sun-setting right, they simply can't get their current code-base up to speed for this feat easily. I guess ED on consoles is as dead as ED on Mac, at least I wouldn't hold my breath.
Not everybody can pull a Hello Games.

 

[Rat Catcher]

Not sure where you remember that from but Ben had been working at Frontier for over 8 years, originally being part of the CS team.

I remember, around the time EDO launched, one of the streams (I think) mentioning that they had budget for a story writing team for 2 years, which, it might be reasonably assumed, meant that it was contracted writers rather than permanent staff.

Those two things are not mutually exclusive. You should read the report, they reduced their operating costs by 25%

Yes, they (in common with others in the industry) reduced their staffing levels - I think many of us were aware of that - but the intimation I referred to was that the layoffs were solely responsible, which may not be entirely truthful...

At least, regardless of where the finance is coming from, FD are developing new content for ED/O, which is slightly better than just sunsetting the game - well, for those who enjoy playing it, I suppose.

 

[Coolgroove]

"Frontier should bring in X because they could sell lots of cosmetics for it"

OK, haha, jab counted.

Lets see a bit wider.

Player numbers and base game sales have increased, due to enriching the game with ongoing narrative, new features.

So new players buy the game and stay to play because there are new interesting features for them.

Monetisation has improved, including the introduction of the sale of ships.

After they bought the game - some of them partake in additional monetisation. As well as older players.

Revenue from PDLC more than doubled in the first 7 months of FY25 compared with the same period in FY24

The game successfully attracted new players with ongoing narrative (media) and new features that these new player like (game).

Extra monetization - is not something every single player will go for, in any game. It's optional. So, the more players the game has - more and more potential sales for extra monetization. After the initial sale of the game - Extra monetization is what generates additional revenue from customers. PDLC is Odyssey that has to be bought in order to play the lates content (ongoing narrative), get new ships, play the full game. Technically optional, but not really for a new player.

Every single feature/content that was released with new monetisation approach has microtransactions attached to it in one way or the other, obviously to go for the extra optional sales. With what report says - New players bought the game, some of them went to spend extra money. That means that everything that was created/made/released and how it is - added to revenue, is successful.

Note - majority of Store items in 2024 are old stuff that older player already have or not interested in - not all playerbase could engage in microtransactions to the fullest they wanted to.

With all that:

• New features attract new players.
• More players = More extra revenue.
• Releasing every new feature with monetisation attached works and generates revenue.

It was never so simplified as "Frontier should bring in X because they could sell lots of cosmetics for it", as it is never just one thing. Extra monetisation is one of the benefits, clearly an important one. The full sentence would be "Frontier should bring in X because they could make the game more appealing for new players, improve the game and sell lots of cosmetics for it".

Ship Interiors + EVA is still very good to check all those boxes. And it is clearly a PDLC.

 

[Rat Catcher]

If I understood their reasons for the console sun-setting right, they simply can't get their current code-base up to speed for this feat easily.

I have no idea how FD management operate, but, oddly, the current iteration of EDO plays at a reasonable 30 FPS on my mini-PC that only has the integrated graphics on the AMD Ryzen 8700G, with some sacrifice to quality, which indicates that the couple of years of optimisation must have achieved something.

As the little PC is probably less powerful overall than current generation consoles, a port could be viable, maybe the perceived market is too small to pay for development?

 

[Rubbernuke]

 

[Shadowsnog]

• New features attract new players.
• More players = More extra revenue.
• Releasing every new feature with monetisation attached works and generates revenue.

you are forgetting player retention.
fdev showed they can do hype, but can they keep the new/returning playerbase in the game?
i live pretty frugally, so besides christmas i rarely allow myself some game purchases*, but i bought elite for two of my friends. neither of them kept playing, mainly because of bugs.

*elite has been my 'main' game for the past few years, so naturally if im buying something i look at elite stuff primarily. last winter i got so disenfrenchised with the game i was barely playing and havent bought anything. this year elites marketing finally got me to buy chaosgate demonhunters.

but hey, at least shareholders got their value...

 

[Leadfoot]

Well there have been many threads on this, ive purchased all 4 ships and nobody has yet told me what i won

O7

You purchased all four ships?

You, sir, have won our deepest admiration!

 

[Coolgroove]

you are forgetting player retention.
fdev showed they can do hype, but can they keep the new/returning playerbase in the game?
i live pretty frugally, so besides christmas i rarely allow myself some game purchases*, but i bought elite for two of my friends. neither of them kept playing, mainly because of bugs.

*elite has been my 'main' game for the past few years, so naturally if im buying something i look at elite stuff primarily. last winter i got so disenfrenchised with the game i was barely playing and havent bought anything. this year elites marketing finally got me to buy chaosgate demonhunters.

but hey, at least shareholders got their value...

Fixing bugs is very important, often overlooked for various reasons.

New features - that is something that brings new & old players and influences player retention much more than fixing bugs, for better or for worse, it is what it is.