ED units sold - FDEV trading update

[tarks382]

Good spot. I'd think that's pretty astounding for a "genre" or even ex-"cult" title.

Incidentally, I'd pay the same again - and more - for good, significant developments.

I paid $35 for Jurassic World the other day. Loved it - but it occupied about 100 minutes of my time. I've clocked multiple times that many hours on ED and still it satisfies. So - more investment? No brainer.

 

[deusx_ophc]

Does it bother anyone else that over the last 20 years, money has become increasingly central to game design? I find that more often than not this cripples the game.
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10-15 years ago, (generally) even big titles were made to be fun first, and profitable second.
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I find this humorous as that only recently games were allowed to be classified as a form of art. Thoughts?

consolidation is the main issue. if you want to keep a certain skill level and keep independent in your game design you MUST make sure you are on sound financial footing. that is the basis from where you can go and make great, innovative and fun games. if you looking at AAA titles, their budgets are the size of movies and the nonsense they produce over there at hollywood.

also the art world in the last 15 years has gone money crazy. it is so overheated, nuts really.

unfortunately the way of the world. internetz helps with long tail stuff though, like ks etc. there is a new dawn outside the mainstream

 

[Sgt.Barnes]

Does it bother anyone else that over the last 20 years, money has become increasingly central to game design? I find that more often than not this cripples the game.
.
10-15 years ago, (generally) even big titles were made to be fun first, and profitable second.
.
I find this humorous as that only recently games were allowed to be classified as a form of art. Thoughts?

I think its great they are doing so well for several reason but your main point. Are you seriously saying that by making proper money & being well funded the artistic content is reduced ? Just no. It means the opposite. Also I would like to point out the game is just not crippled. Its brilliant. Games today are hundreds of thousands of times better than they ever where before even from 10 years ago. I know I played many of them. This is classic rose tinted glasses attitude with no basis sorry.
I also collect and restore and have most of the "important" Home computer and PC's right back to 1978. I also have most of the landmark games for them (including lots of the Elite titles from the BBC onwards) I still take pleasure in loading them up from time to time for nostalgia's sake. But I will state this, they are nostalgic to play but they are terrible in comparison in depth, artistic creativity, vision, execution and gameplay. Yes they where amazing at the time but the stuff we have now we could only dream back then. Imagine going back in time to for example to the original Wing commander era and showing Elite to yourself with voice attack. Your head would explode !
You can only build games like this with big resource and support and that costs money. BIG money. Games that could be written by two blokes in a bedroom are long gone due to the complexity and depth of games today.

so ED has some 640k+ sold units.

official report via http://www.londonstockexchange.com/exchange/news/market-news/market-news-detail/12402020.html

is that good or bad news then?

Spoiler

i think it sounds like that plan is coming together nicely. looking forward to further fruition.

Great news indeed. A British firm again waving the UK flag in the gaming world market and with no financial constraints to further development can only be a good thing.

 

[vulkman]

If we look at some of the bigger titles from one to two decades ago, we see a lot more free/subscription and a lot less 'lets find inventive ways to make people pay for stuff'. You bought expansions that basically doubled the in game content. Not DLC that re-flavored your iron sight to look like a bunny. I feel that the marketing aspect has only grown in size in relation to every other aspect of a development team.
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Of course I'm talking about exclusively computer gaming. Arcades are basically vending machines and frankly I don't care much for console history.

The reason for that is the fact that game prices have been constantly going down for the last ten years, because they have been locked at $60 without adjustment for inflation. DLC, micro-transactions and all that stuff are ways to get the money creators got ten years ago without us complaining that prices have gone up.

And quite frankly: People are idiots.

DLC means that YOU can decide if you like the game enough to pay another ten bucks, so you should be happy it's not forced down your throat but you are given a choice. As long as you don't pre-order (and I have yet to see a pre-order incentive that is actually worth the risk), DLC and micro-transactions are a good thing because you can decide if the product is worth more of your money. Me personally, I often buy paintwork in the Elite store just because I like the game and want development to continue, even if I don't ever use the paint.

The process is simple:

- check the reviews of the game without DLC and decide if they sound good enough to warrant a purchase
- buy the game
- play the game
- decide if you want more
- check the reviews of the DLC and decide if they sound good enough to warrant a purchase
- buy the DLC
- play more of the game

As long as you have one or more sources for credible reviews, there is no reason to hate on DLC, even if it's on disk, because if it were to be unlocked from the start you also would have to pay more up front without having the chance to check out the base game first.

 

[hoopy]

And 640K ought to be enough for anybody.

Rep for that (even if no-one else got the joke)

 

[FredTA]

They were on 400K sales with just the PC side a couple months ago..............what this tells me, is that they have made the bulk of their sales now..........where is the next major rush of development money going to come from?

I guess Xbox One customers, and maybe Frontier's new rollercoaster game

 

[Dibbler8]

I remember the days with my 486 pc falling asleep at the keyboard and putting floppies in every time you went some were different been playing ED with my son of 16 and he loves it as much as I do so that realy says a lot for the quality and depth of ED as 16 year olds are probably the most critical

 

[Xodz]

Does it bother anyone else that over the last 20 years, money has become increasingly central to game design? I find that more often than not this cripples the game.
.
10-15 years ago, (generally) even big titles were made to be fun first, and profitable second.
.
I find this humorous as that only recently games were allowed to be classified as a form of art. Thoughts?

Well, that's because most games were bought as is and they didn't have planned expansions. If the game did well, then they would do an expansion.

Gaming is a multi-billion dollar industry nowadays. Gamers are also quite different nowadays, for whatever reason we think that the more money we throw at a game the better our gaming experience should be. Maybe I am oldschool, idk, but if a game sucks I don't throw more money at it hoping it will get better. If it gets better, then I may come back and throw more money at it. (Interesting note, most games didn't use to be able to get better, they were what they were)

 

[Seonid]

I guess Xbox One customers, and maybe Frontier's new rollercoaster game

And as has been said, once the XBOX "exclusive" ends, PS4.

 

[Buio]

They were on 400K sales with just the PC side a couple months ago..............what this tells me, is that they have made the bulk of their sales now..........where is the next major rush of development money going to come from?

I would guess putting it up on Steam added a bunch of extra PC sales.

According to Steamspy, there are almost 200K owers on Steam now.
http://steamspy.com/app/359320
The free Steam key for previous owners was released 28/5 and it did not create a huge influx of owners on Steam according to the graph. But the summer sale on Steam did add a bunch of new owners when the price was reduced. Note that Steamspy is not fully accurate, but tests have shown that it's algorithms for showing number of owners are pretty good.

 

[Psycho Romeo]

I think its great they are doing so well for several reason but your main point. Are you seriously saying that by making proper money & being well funded the artistic content is reduced ? Just no. It means the opposite. Also I would like to point out the game is just not crippled. Its brilliant. Games today are hundreds of thousands of times better than they ever where before even from 10 years ago. I know I played many of them. This is classic rose tinted glasses attitude with no basis sorry.

Hello.
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If I made a song, but cut out the middle minute of audio asking for $1/mo to get access to it, I would be severely diminishing the artistic value.
This is what I'm saying. I don't exactly know what you've decided to interpret, but this is what I'm saying.

 

[Tinman]

And as has been said, once the XBOX "exclusive" ends, PS4.

I also expect to see a nice bump in sales at the end of the year (beginning of next) due to the VR helmets coming to market. Elite is probably going to be a "must buy" for many. It wouldn't surprise me if Elite has some nice deal with Valve either since ED appear on Steam pretty close to when they announced their helmet. (You need to be a Valve partner to get access to their development kit...)

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Hello.
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If I made a song, but cut out the middle minute of audio asking for $1/mo to get access to it, I would be severely diminishing the artistic value.
This is what I'm saying. I don't exactly know what you've decided to interpret, but this is what I'm saying.

Nobody would buy such a song. Some publishers have tried similar tactics with games, but its generally generated a lot of negative reviews. What ED is missing at the moment are side components that do not affect the main gameplay. Planetary landings should be awesome, but not affect base game. First person likewise. You'll be able to play without them.

 

[Parmo]

To give you guys an idea, It probably took someone in the vacinity of 45hrs to create the Anaconda, and that's probably not including the drafts. Imagine that sort of time investment spread over the entire game.

You're taking the mickey, surely!
One too many probablys for credibility.

 

[althaz]

Does it bother anyone else that over the last 20 years, money has become increasingly central to game design? I find that more often than not this cripples the game.
.
10-15 years ago, (generally) even big titles were made to be fun first, and profitable second.
.
I find this humorous as that only recently games were allowed to be classified as a form of art. Thoughts?

lol, what rubbish. The majority of developers have always and still to care more about making a good game than making a more successful game - but games have, for at least the last 25+ years been driven more by publishers than developers. Publishers have always been about money first, second and third, quality fourth. Money has *ALWAYS* been absolutely central to game design outside of indie developers coding out of their bedroom/attic/garage. And it always will be, making games is huge business (games now generate more revenue than movies and music combined).

What did go missing is all the game titles of the level of quality of Elite - games in-between <$20 indie titles and AAA franchises. Thanks to kickstarter and other developments in the industry we are starting to get more of those games. Generally, those games tend to sell much worse than AAA titles - but often they spawn AAA franchises. Publishers have certainly become more risk averse, but mostly you can ascribe that to "they are now smarter". Those "A" level titles have significant budgets and almost never have a huge payoff. They can and frequently are successful enough, but for a long time the industry went well away from them.

 

[Buio]

10-15 years ago, (generally) even big titles were made to be fun first, and profitable second.

That is simply not true.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Ah, very nice:

he Group had net cash of approximately £10.5 million after having repaid its interest free loan to the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency early, once again making the Group debt free and placing it in a strong financial position to support its continuing investment plans going forward

 

[Sgt.Barnes]

Hello.
.
If I made a song, but cut out the middle minute of audio asking for $1/mo to get access to it, I would be severely diminishing the artistic value.
This is what I'm saying. I don't exactly know what you've decided to interpret, but this is what I'm saying.

And that point makes no sense as that's not the business model of Elite.

Then perhaps you need to re word what you said ?

Psycho Romeo
"Does it bother anyone else that over the last 20 years, money has become increasingly central to game design? I find that more often than not this cripples the game. 10-15 years ago, (generally) even big titles were made to be fun first, and profitable second. I find this humorous as that only recently games were allowed to be classified as a form of art. Thoughts?"

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

FD full financial year update

http://www.londonstockexchange.com/exchange/news/market-news/market-news-detail/12402020.html

Revenue: more than 22M
Income: 1.25M (unaudited)
Expenses: paid off debt, starting development of Planet Coaster, ongoing development of ED, finished two games for Amazon and XBO
Cash: 10.5M in bank

FD is debt free according to this update, having only 1M credit line in bank which expires in 2016

 

[Psycho Romeo]

lol, what rubbish. The majority of developers have always and still to care more about making a good game than making a more successful game - but games have, for at least the last 25+ years been driven more by publishers than developers. Publishers have always been about money first, second and third, quality fourth. Money has *ALWAYS* been absolutely central to game design outside of indie developers coding out of their bedroom/attic/garage. And it always will be, making games is huge business (games now generate more revenue than movies and music combined).

I think this one pretty much nailed it dead on. Developers often care very much about their game, but investors/publishers care little, and unfortunately I believe that relationship has only been emphasized in the last 20 years.

And that point makes no sense as that's not the business model of Elite.

Then perhaps you need to re word what you said ?

Psycho Romeo
"Does it bother anyone else that over the last 20 years, money has become increasingly central to game design? I find that more often than not this cripples the game. 10-15 years ago, (generally) even big titles were made to be fun first, and profitable second. I find this humorous as that only recently games were allowed to be classified as a form of art. Thoughts?"

Hello.
.
According to every single one of my posts, nowhere do I mention that I am specifically talking about elite. In fact, I (intentionally) used broad and vague terms, as my discussion point was equally open ended. If elite is what you're talking about, you brought it into the picture, not I. Again, I don't know what you've decided to interpret, but it's little to do with the content of my posts or quoted material.