General / Off-Topic Frontier financial interim results

I wouldn't discount Star Citizen at all. *If* its a *successful* release, it will prove to be major competition for Elite. SC will have a huge initial player base.

I think 2018 will be make or break for quite a portion of the player base. Fortunately, Chapter 1 of Beyond looks solid. After Beyond, FD will have to up their quality because a re-run of Horizons will be a disaster - and very disappointing - that FD would have appeared not to have learnt any lessons.


That's because they use "maintenance mode" as a synonym for "dying", instead of looking at the facts and seeing just because FD is focusing on improving core game it doesn't mean in any way that the company or the game is "suffering".

Having said that, at the end of the day- FD has a clear advantage in the Space-Sim arena. They have an actual released game, a pretty massive customer base, and enough development funding to really accomplish a great deal. But they're not going to hold this advantage forever. In this, I agree with the sentiment that it's "now or never" time for FD- either they choose a course of action and put some effort into really making it all work together, or they're eventually going to end up losing their advantage to a competitor who will do what they won't. One in particular has had a 5-year head start and is watching and learning from FD's example... and I'm sure keeping close tabs on the course of development (and the lack of).

Sure, ED has a "niche" carved out... but it may indeed be overshadowed by others who are willing to do the work FD isn't willing to do. I'm in no way a "naysayer", as many can attest to- but I am by nature a realist.
 
I wouldn't discount Star Citizen at all. *If* its a *successful* release, it will prove to be major competition for Elite. SC will have a huge initial player base.

I think 2018 will be make or break for quite a portion of the player base. Fortunately, Chapter 1 of Beyond looks solid. After Beyond, FD will have to up their quality because a re-run of Horizons will be a disaster - and very disappointing - that FD would have appeared not to have learnt any lessons.

Completely agreed with this assessment, and I'm also a SC backer. I've been keeping close tabs on development of SC, and the biggest concern I have so far is the same as most, which is the tremendous amount of development time and financial resources they've had and still not managed anything close to a "release" yet.

Time is forever, but the advantage is not. In terms of overall focus, SC also has a clear advantage over ED in sheer scale... they don't focus on just the "ships" or "flight model", they're making it a whole and completely expansive individual type game where you can really do "anything", "anywhere", rather than limiting focus to pew-pew activities in ships. If FD wants to keep the arcade-style pew-pew focus without further expanding this game, so be it. They're clearly missing out on a huge opportunity. They need to stop catering to a small portion of niche players who want only one type of game play (combat) and really go Beyond to "depth" in terms of the setting.

SC isn't going to "kill" ED nor FD, as they've already gotten the money from the customer and how long someone continues to play doesn't factor into it... there's no subscription. But they're likely not going to sell very many more copies afterward, and even if they ended up going F2P it's going to be a minuscule comparison to the depth of SC in terms of competition. Given the choice between combat-focused pew-pew arcade shooter or an infinite possibility setting where I can do anything, anywhere- I know where I'll be. And it won't be sitting in the cockpit all the time pressing a fire button and watching ships explode.
 
What worries me is the fact that FDev is making less profit and is investing less. The total cash flow as it is described there is on an all-time low, meaning that (if the trend continues) FD will be at a neutral balance with next to zero cash flow, eventually leading to losses.

Yes, I think it is fair to say the the imminent release of a new IP tied in with a blockbuster movie probably means 'the trend continues'. Solid prediction right there! :p

I wouldn't discount Star Citizen at all. *If* its a *successful* release, it will prove to be major competition for Elite.

Yes, and if I can jump to the moon I will prove to be a major competitor to NASA. You can safely discount it though. ;)
 
An advantage that ED has over SC is console support. I very much doubt SC will be ported to PS / Xbox.

Like others, I'm looking forward to 'space legs', but Frontier had better following this up with decent game play, otherwise it will be another headline feature destined for Life Support.


Completely agreed with this assessment, and I'm also a SC backer. I've been keeping close tabs on development of SC, and the biggest concern I have so far is the same as most, which is the tremendous amount of development time and financial resources they've had and still not managed anything close to a "release" yet.

Time is forever, but the advantage is not. In terms of overall focus, SC also has a clear advantage over ED in sheer scale... they don't focus on just the "ships" or "flight model", they're making it a whole and completely expansive individual type game where you can really do "anything", "anywhere", rather than limiting focus to pew-pew activities in ships. If FD wants to keep the arcade-style pew-pew focus without further expanding this game, so be it. They're clearly missing out on a huge opportunity. They need to stop catering to a small portion of niche players who want only one type of game play (combat) and really go Beyond to "depth" in terms of the setting.

SC isn't going to "kill" ED nor FD, as they've already gotten the money from the customer and how long someone continues to play doesn't factor into it... there's no subscription. But they're likely not going to sell very many more copies afterward, and even if they ended up going F2P it's going to be a minuscule comparison to the depth of SC in terms of competition. Given the choice between combat-focused pew-pew arcade shooter or an infinite possibility setting where I can do anything, anywhere- I know where I'll be. And it won't be sitting in the cockpit all the time pressing a fire button and watching ships explode.
 
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An advantage that ED has over SC is console support. I very much doubt SC will be ported to PS / Xbox.

Like others, I'm looking forward to 'space legs', but Frontier had better following this up with decent game play, otherwise it will be another deadline feature destined for Life Support.

Agree here too, although I"m actually very thankful SC isn't and won't be catering to consoles. It's about time we actually had a game that utilizes the true power of a PC, rather than trying to squeeze everything into a small box for the sake of "simplicity". (or limiting an entire UI just because a game controller can't handle as many functions as a PC input controller)
 
THIS Quote by DB is the most interesting thing here. It makes me looking forward to the next years regarding the further development of Elite (which hopefully benefits from that decision).

While I'd love that, I think this pertains more to the launch of additional IP to which they've hinted. AFAIK they want to go to one new IP every year for the next few years.
 
Agree here too, although I"m actually very thankful SC isn't and won't be catering to consoles. It's about time we actually had a game that utilizes the true power of a PC, rather than trying to squeeze everything into a small box for the sake of "simplicity". (or limiting an entire UI just because a game controller can't handle as many functions as a PC input controller)

You do realize that the PS4 uses what is essentially 2 4-core processors, and have more processing power than I'd wager a decent swath of PC players around here?

Consoles have long been little more than Windows-less PC's for quite some time. They're a sort of Dedicated Computer, which in their own right, makes them potentially quite powerful.

Of course, now that they're trying to jam web browsing, netflixing, and the all-important sales-revenue-generating-web-based-marketplaces into them... I can get all of that on my PC and more. It's kind of no wonder I haven't touched a console in a little over a year now.
 
Frontier's next major game franchise, based on the Jurassic World movie franchise, was revealed in August 2017; Jurassic World Evolution will launch on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in summer 2018 alongside the movie launch of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.

I can't help thinking that this, together with stuff from The Outsider, is gonna benefit ED as well.
 
That'll never happen for legal reasons. More likely is they just go:"Thats it, its now released, see ya, I'm outta here!"

Like the legal reasons that lead CryTek to sue the biowaste out of them? https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/12/crytek-sues-star-citizen-developers-over-game-engine/

Oh, and that saga is far from over, but I can't link those articles from work. It won't be the last failed project in the history of gaming though when the bottom finally does fall out of this.
 
There, I fixed it for you. I'm still hedging my bets on "cancelled before beta".

LOL! I have my doubts about it being released too, but for the purpose of this discussion, I took the positive side that at some point before 2021, SC will be released!

:)

*2021, because for this post, I need to add some date, in the not too distant future. Realistic or not.
 
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People, please don't call SC a competition at the moment. That is insulting to less known, but much successful projects as games going after space crowd (Dual Universe? IB? And that's just few of them). SC is more of money vacuum cleaner which removes money from people and they aren't able to buy any other games. As game though it is so far away from release....Simply no.
 
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LOL! I have my doubts about it being released too, but for the purpose of this discussion, I took the positive side that at some point before 2021, SC will be released!

:)

*2021, because for this post, I need to add some date, in the not too distant future. Realistic or not.

Not a hope in hell of that. 2025 earliest. Everything will be quite different by then.
 
THIS Quote by DB is the most interesting thing here. It makes me looking forward to the next years regarding the further development of Elite (which hopefully benefits from that decision).

It is interesting indeed. FD does not lack business talent to produce and launch games. They have proven themselves very successfully at that. In age of early access indies they aim high and even when they miss it is because task turned out to be much more difficult than they hoped for.

So yeah, expect that profit to tank even more or even go red and FD hiring new devs like crazy :) Remember, during FX they said their end goal is to produce one extension AND one new game per year. Not sure if they can keep up with that pace, but that's remarkable goal for ED sized company.
 
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LOL! I have my doubts about it being released too, but for the purpose of this discussion, I took the positive side that at some point before 2021, SC will be released!

:)

*2021, because for this post, I need to add some date, in the not too distant future. Realistic or not.

Not a hope in hell of that. 2025 earliest. Everything will be quite different by then.


This is definitely the Elite fanboy in me talking, but 2021? 2025? It doesn't matter how long SC takes now, it's going to be a massive disappointment after the years of unending hype and promises. It's done, stick a fork in it.

Elite Dangerous is the definitive epic space game for the moment and it's multi platform releases only strengthens that. Not to say it always will be, this one is Frontier's to mess up if they're not careful. Some would say they already have. It's not without it's missteps but I'm still optimistic about it.
 
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Looks like FD are putting most of their eggs into the Jurassic world basket.

Guess ED will have to stay on the fringes a bit longer with it's reduced development priorities.
 
Looks like FD are putting most of their eggs into the Jurassic world basket.

Guess ED will have to stay on the fringes a bit longer with it's reduced development priorities.

We hear this a lot, but claims like this are never backed up with solid evidence!

I’d like evidence such as number of staff working on ED, and a work breakdown with comparisons of time periods in 2015, 2016, 2017, and up until today.

I’m, and probably others are willing to believe you, as long as you provide the evidence.
 
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