Please be calm to FD – give them more time!

moonsword

moonsword
As being a ED Kickstarter participant and calling myself an enthusiastic ED pilot I want to see more features and content being implemented in ED more quickly.

Then I looked today at the numbers of sold PS4 stations.
More than 30 million PS4 stations are sold by now worldwide!

Let’s imagine that one out of three PS4 players will buy ED for his/her console.
This would mean roughly more than 400 million € cash (!!!) in addition to sold PC/Xbox One/Mac-version of ED for FD, probably even in this accounting year.

And more cash for FD means, more money to recruit more developers/designers/musicians/QA staff and for other investments.
The increase of the development staff will be very important for the further advancement of the game.

Therefore please try to be calm (I know it is hard… I feel your pain, it hurts me too...)

…But if you have some dough left in your pocket that you would spend normally for ice cream, cola and chips
… I would recommend to by some FD stocks instead.
:)
(No, I am not employed by FD! ….. *opening his online deposit, grinning ecstatically while looking at the FD stock quotation *)
 
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Monk

Monk
Four updates in nearly 2 years to make up one Horizons season.

Certainly, you must understand the frustration and the lack of patience.

Now, I'm not slagging FDev (too much). However, they clearly underestimated the size and complexity of what they set out to release for Horizons.

EDIT: Buying FDev stock does not give them more development money. You are just trading existing stocks in that scenario.
 
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Alec Turner

Alec Turner
I was thinking pretty much the exact same thing this morning while listening to Lave radio. They're probably focusing a LOT of attention and effort on the PS4 release right now. This does nothing for my game whatsoever ... on the other hand, compared with the "simple" issue (ho ho, ha ha) of porting the game to a new platform, it's revenue earning potential per dev man hour must be HUGE. So yeah - I totally understand why they're doing it.

But then ... once you've done all the console ports ... please can we get back to some real development of the core game?

:p
 

[VR] optimal_909

[VR] optimal_909
I am calm, enjoying the game as is right now and know that this season was hampered by VR, XBox and PS4 rollout. :)
In fact, I've just bought FDev shares despite missing out on the huge price increase in the past two months - no huge investment, but this is to pledge my trust in the team.
 

Stewart_

S
Frontier keep making the same mistakes.

They keep adding new features instead of building upon existing game play.
Build game play and then let it rot
Develop new gameplay that is so thin no one cares and its DOA.
 

Mengy

Mengy
The problem with this premise is that Frontier is not hurting for money now, their financials are rather good already. More money does not always equal more development. It's very clear that Elite's development has slowed since 2.0, for reasons only Frontier themselves know for certain. Maybe they moved resources to Planet Coaster, maybe they moved people to the new Hollywood IP, we don't know. What we do know is that Elite has become less of a priority for Frontier, the lagging schedule and anemic feature implementation demonstrates this.

Is it possible the pace will pick back up? Sure, it's possible. Will Frontier hire more people with the PS4 monies to aid in deveopment speed and effectiveness? They might. Then again, neither happening is entirely possible too. Maybe they will use the money to improve work on Planet Coaster, or put more resources into the mystery IP instead. Maybe they will use the cash to buy a fourth franchise to make a game about.

It's also entirely possible that the secrecy about Elite's roadmap might be due to the fact that they have very little planned for Elite, and that the slowed pace and updating will continue on like this. Maybe they are just using the loyal and devoted Elite community to fund other things instead.

The truth is that none of us know, we can only conjecture and guess, only Frontier can answer these questions and unfortunately they aren't talking about it. Time will tell, and most likely we'll all just have to wait and see what happens.
 

IndigoWyrd

IndigoWyrd
moonsword said:
As being a ED Kickstarter participant and calling myself an enthusiastic ED pilot I want to see more features and content being implemented in ED more quickly.

Then I looked today at the numbers of sold PS4 stations.
More than 30 million PS4 stations are sold by now worldwide!

Let’s imagine that one out of three PS4 players will buy ED for his/her console.
This would mean roughly more than 400 million € cash (!!!) in addition to sold PC/Xbox One/Mac-version of ED for FD, probably even in this accounting year.

And more cash for FD means, more money to recruit more developers/designers/musicians/QA staff and for other investments.
The increase of the development staff will be very important for the further advancement of the game.

Therefore please try to be calm (I know it is hard… I feel your pain, it hurts me too...)

…But if you have some dough left in your pocket that you would spend normally for ice cream, cola and chips
… I would recommend to by some FD stocks instead.
:)
(No, I am not employed by FD! ….. *opening his online deposit, grinning ecstatically while looking at the FD stock quotation *)
Click to expand...

Keep in mind though that when developing and releasing a game on platforms like XBox or Playstation, Microsoft and Sony charge licensing fees as well as charges for the development kits - so not all of that is pure profit. There are likely other costs outside of just these, relating to platform development and release, but yes, there is a good deal of money to be made - why else would anyone do it?
 

Silaz

Silaz
One in one hundred PS4 owners are probably thinking about it. Even this is a large number.

Gambling your money in stocks and shares is a mugs game.

Having to build several console ports adds work, if this is necessary for every update then less time will be spent working on the core game than if it were developed for PC alone.

I don't expect FDev to make tens of millions from just this PS4 port, perhaps as much as five million bucks would be my hazardous guess.

Still it makes sound business sense, and Braben is clearly a competent businessman.
 

Thetele

T
Still waiting for that wing content, i mean its more than 2 years since 1.2 dropped...

Frontier had a lot of good will 2 years ago, but they used it during the first year. After that they have delivered too little, and most what they have delivered has been MVP and is still MVP.
 

Monk

Monk
Thetele said:
Still waiting for that wing content, i mean its more than 2 years since 1.2 dropped...

Frontier had a lot of good will 2 years ago, but they used it during the first year. After that they have delivered too little, and most what they have delivered has been MVP and is still MVP.
Click to expand...

Seriously...wing content...my gods how is this not low-hanging fruit for Frontier.
 

Deadspin

Deadspin
Alec Turner said:
I was thinking pretty much the exact same thing this morning while listening to Lave radio. They're probably focusing a LOT of attention and effort on the PS4 release right now. This does nothing for my game whatsoever ... on the other hand, compared with the "simple" issue (ho ho, ha ha) of porting the game to a new platform, it's revenue earning potential per dev man hour must be HUGE. So yeah - I totally understand why they're doing it.

But then ... once you've done all the console ports ... please can we get back to some real development of the core game?

:p
Click to expand...

So there's this..

Frontier Website said:
All of Frontier’s games are developed using our Cobra proprietary cross-platform technology, allowing code and resources developed on PC to be compiled and run on XBox360, PS3, iOS, Nintendo WiiU etc. (with new platforms in development), whilst offering the ability flexibly to take advantage of the different platforms’ capabilities (e.g. different artwork resolutions, shaders etc.).

This ‘Cobra’ platform represents the current state of an ongoing investment that Frontier has made in its proprietary engine technology and development tools since 1988.

The current engine is the fourth generation of our cross-platform technology. The engine provides a common platform-neutral core API and resource pipeline that isolates both the game code and resources from the underlying hardware, whilst maximising use of the multi-processor, multi-threaded environment.

This engine allows the game teams to develop and debug their games primarily on PC, without the need to concern themselves with the technical details of the individual target platforms unless necessary. It also makes for clean, structured code, where the game logic only needs one set of verification at the beta stage of the project – greatly reducing the amount of testing time required for additional platform versions of a game.
Click to expand...
 
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Arkantes

Arkantes
moonsword said:
As being a ED Kickstarter participant and calling myself an enthusiastic ED pilot I want to see more features and content being implemented in ED more quickly.

Then I looked today at the numbers of sold PS4 stations.
More than 30 million PS4 stations are sold by now worldwide!

Let’s imagine that one out of three PS4 players will buy ED for his/her console.
This would mean roughly more than 400 million € cash (!!!) in addition to sold PC/Xbox One/Mac-version of ED for FD, probably even in this accounting year.
Click to expand...

Worldwide numbers according to wikipedia:
Sold Xbox Ones: around 30 millions
Sold PS4: around 60 millions

Now if we assume (sounds safe) that both demographics are not vastly different, you should expect Elite to sell twice as many copies on PS4 as it has on Xbone, thrice at most.
 

Ziggy Stardust

Ziggy Stardust
Good point OP .... I'm willing to give them a bit of time. :)

...

Lovely weather isn't it?

...

Oh look, a sparrow. Magnificent creatures.

...

Hmmm ....

...

Right, now fix beigification damnit! [mad]
 

askavir

askavir
Its not easy to be patient, when 2.3 was the only update in past 7 months (with several more months to come before the next update - so probably the only update in 10/11 months) and it didn't even have anything of substance in it.

On the other hand, all this time without anything new (not even any kind of hint of things to come) grinds away any kind of hype or expectation, which in turn makes being patient easier due to the erosion of interest.
 
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