Frontier Interim Results: major new paid-for release will mark beginning of new era for Elite Dangerous, targeted for launch at the end of 2020

I'm incredibly sceptical about every announcement Fdev is making at the moment but just imagine them indeed coming with a phenomenal expansion in the end of 2020.
That would be a nice surprise and a great way to admit many of us were wrong, including me.

Untill then I'm still not holding my breath though but here's hoping.
 
It certainly won't suffice to just marketing-speak to the stock market. They need to address the existing user base and pull in the other 50% and new customers as well. Just trying to sell to the remaining players is an ever shrinking market.
They add funky stuff for new players like the tutorials and the free sidey skin.
If the positive review-trend of the past three months is any indication, the New Player Experience appears to be well-received
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Nah. that's just the normal reaction of a normal/straight-forward honest person to the massively tuned/tweaked/selective reality talk you'll always find in Publications for Investors.
I'm no different in that respect - when I read marketing hogwash, I call it out as such.

When people boast about "telling it like it is", it translates into considering their own opinion on everything to be "how it is".

If you were so intent on "calling out hogwash" you would have made note of the negative tone of the commentary aligning with what was said by Eliza. For instance, the nonsensical "no mention of quality" in reference to cosmetics, just a vehicle to shoehorn a complaint in where it made no sense to do so.

And maybe - a little - it could be because OP almost appears to have become some sort of PR outlet for Frontier (in other times found pushing OA Videos), judging the chosen emphasis, recent threads (Livestream summary with supposed FC news Thread) and how well he's prepared to dig up Information from uncommon sources almost in near realtime to step in for FDev.
Just a gut feeling though, so no harm done.
But you certainly felt the need to introduce that conspiracy theory. Stewart's the mod of the ED Reddit, of course he pays attention to this stuff. For somebody who declared to be so against hogwash, you certainly aren't averse to spreading it.

"No harm done", but you were quick to level an accusation and then hedge it in with "just a gut feeling".
I'm just the kind of guy who in the background sometimes wonders if someone is pushing/following an agenda and how trustworthy/honest/legit it is as a result.
So you're wondering how honest Stewart posting excerpts of materials posted by FD is. The OP of the threads you're so very suspicious about is just calling attention to information by directly referencing it. It's not "honest or dishonest" because it's not his content he's posting. You may as well suspect a thermometer of having a hidden agenda.

PS.
That financial report is stamped 05 February 2020 07:00, so less than 2 hours old when the OP got hold of it, found sufficient time to skim for highlights - which is something that's a tad unusual in my books.
The document isn't huge and it's not hard to navigate. He took the paragraphs with mention of Elite. Literally Find "Elite". 11 mentions in the document body, 11 instances in Stewart's post. Not very complex.
If anything, details like those raise eyebrows with me, so I personally read things from there on with a grain of salt so to speak (not finding the exact right words there).
Yes, you have mentioned how you think you approach things in such an enlightened manner compared to others.

Stewart posted excerpts from a document with no commentary attached in the OP. You posted a conspiracy theory with suspicions based on loose conjecture. But you're accusing Stewart of having an agenda?
 
We might miss some of the neatest crap the random number generator made. I don't think Frontier computes this stuff. I think they find out when we find out.
Yes, everything looks to point to that, at least certainly after release. Besides, why would they generate big batches of systems for testing anymore? To find errors? Players will find them on their own, and then Frontier might fix them. Sometime.
This is quite evident with how NSPs ended up distributed over the galaxy.

Anyway, back on topic. If I'm reading this right, then when it comes to revenue, Frontier's top game is now Planet Zoo, no?
 
Isn't 50% adoption rate on an expansion/DLC actually very good compared to the norm?
IIRC a few of us discussed the topic here on the forums a year or so back. Multiple sources of comparative information from other gamedevs were posted, and I think CDProjektRed and Witcher 3's Blood & Wine was mentioned from some presentation they did - something like 25% of W3's owners had bought the B&W expansion DLC.
 
Anyway, back on topic. If I'm reading this right, then when it comes to revenue, Frontier's top game is now Planet Zoo, no?
Elite Dangerous is still FDev's top game, at over £100m in revenue. For this financial year, Planet Zoo certainly.
 
4. New Era Elite is considered both a relaunch and an update. This implies that the game has had some form of overhaul/refactoring behind the scenes.

The only thing that concerns me is the New Era upgrade path. I suspect that everyone will be able to influence the BGS as they always can but I just wonder if the changes they're Woking on will mean that New Era players will not be able to instance with Non-New era players. Maybe an added incentive to upgrade?

I suspect (pure speculation) that if New Era is refactoring game code (seems likely), that Frontier will role that new code out to all players. Players who buy the expansion will get the new features. Players who don't buy the expansion will still get the new code, just not the new features.

There's precedent for this with other games, such as World of Warcraft...
 
I suspect (pure speculation) that if New Era is refactoring game code (seems likely), that Frontier will role that new code out to all players. Players who buy the expansion will get the new features. Players who don't buy the expansion will still get the new code, just not the new features.

There's precedent for this with other games, such as World of Warcraft...
Any persistent game worlds with a similar structure will have such changes consistent through the game. New or reworked mechanics are pretty normally released all the way through. Game structure has to be consistent between, but content is still able to be gated. I can't think of any online multiplayer games that made changes with an expansion that didn't affect people without the expansion in some way or another.
 

Harbinger

Volunteer Moderator
Be nice to reinvest more of that margin into the game instead of paying off DBOBE the shareholders.

Frontier doesn't pay dividends, the only way a shareholder makes money is by selling their shares for more than they purchased them for on the open market and it seems the market isn't that impressed as the price is down about 10% on the news.

Guess those shareholders are out of luck. Sorry T.j.
 
I suspect (pure speculation) that if New Era is refactoring game code (seems likely), that Frontier will role that new code out to all players. Players who buy the expansion will get the new features. Players who don't buy the expansion will still get the new code, just not the new features.

There's precedent for this with other games, such as World of Warcraft...

I am not a programmer, but I'd guess everything else would be an absolute nightmare to maintain.
 
IIRC a few of us discussed the topic here on the forums a year or so back. Multiple sources of comparative information from other gamedevs were posted, and I think CDProjektRed and Witcher 3's Blood & Wine was mentioned from some presentation they did - something like 25% of W3's owners had bought the B&W expansion DLC.
I'd say the tail end is more likely to pick up DLC when all is offered as package and maybe going on a sale. Of the 1st day buyers there is always bleed-off to be expected.
 
Frontier doesn't pay dividends, the only way a shareholder makes money is by selling their shares for more than they purchased them for on the open market and it seems the market isn't that impressed as the price is down about 10% on the news.

Guess those shareholders are out of luck. Sorry T.j.

Oh no, the harbinger of doom has arrived at last.
 
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