Thats a shame they lost 700 million lets hope they can turn it round next year or the games dead threads will be true this time.
Elite Dangerous is losing (out on) about 700 million or more. Why?
- Thread starter Hooplah
- Start date
The market for these toys is in the 5,000 - 10,000 unit range. I count myself in that market if the price is around $20 per ship. That's not huge profits, maybe break even if they're lucky.
You'd have a better chance of having someone create lego instructions and charge 20 bucks per parts list and manual than finding someone who can do the tooling costs and manufacturer and shipment of only a few thousand units for 20 bucks a unit even at a scale of only a couple inches.
My lego anaconda cost over a hundred usd. My small version of the anaconda that eucl3d put out was 30 bucks (the larger 12" version was 100). 3d printing your own ships can be cheaper depending on the size, but there's a lot of time and labor involved and you still dont end up with something as cool as a model with moving parts and such and how it turns out revolves around your artistic abilities. But a good 1.5-2ft print is going to run you a good portion of a full spool of 1kg - so roughly 16 bucks in just material. Days of print time. Days of post-processing/painting.
I have probably 2-3 hundred bucks in elite dangerous merch that they dont bother creating themselves. (though I also have their books and hutton mug...which really, could have been a bit more stylistically true to a space mug than just a silkscreened white generic mug).
Elite needs to make better inroads in other media since it can't rely on the popularity of the game to grow it. Be it books / comics or animated series geared towards adults. Something to expand the userbase beyond the limit that the game has hit. With elite, I'd rather spend 2 days building a gun-pla style model of a ship from the game than play the game 90% of the time.
![[DOOK] Droogie](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/124/124078.jpg?1553527149){kind=avatar}
Think of how much space tuna can fit in the Asp Scout!
I'd just make the comment that very few games actually make any money from direct merch - licensing would be a better option, but requires someone to want to use the IP.
The Python I've printed has functional gear and cargo hatch.. I'm looking at whether I can get the heat vent 'flaps' to PiP. I've seen the weapons done as 'pop in' deals for the hardpoint bays, but not deployable weapons yet.. Next year maybe. I didn't do the original model, but I have been modding it. I've also most of the ships as 'small' models, suitable for printing at sizes up to about 6". A station is my next major project.
As far as painting and post-processing goes, I found with my setup, I can choose print time or pp time.. Better quality print means less PP but longer print time, lower quality print is quicker, but will require more PP(maybe). Painting is about the same time investment either way..
The Python I've printed has functional gear and cargo hatch.. I'm looking at whether I can get the heat vent 'flaps' to PiP. I've seen the weapons done as 'pop in' deals for the hardpoint bays, but not deployable weapons yet.. Next year maybe. I didn't do the original model, but I have been modding it. I've also most of the ships as 'small' models, suitable for printing at sizes up to about 6". A station is my next major project.
As far as painting and post-processing goes, I found with my setup, I can choose print time or pp time.. Better quality print means less PP but longer print time, lower quality print is quicker, but will require more PP(maybe). Painting is about the same time investment either way..
The subject line of this post borders on trolling and click-bait. 700 Million losses? Really? 700 million what? ARX? 
Anyone who has read their Annual Report would know that COVID notwithstanding, FDEV is NOT losing money. I find the tone of original post accusatory and inflammatory towards the developers and as a fan of this game, if find it offensive but then again, that's the point of a troll post isn't it?
But after all, it is a free world and you know what Dirty Harry said about opinions. ☑
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2_AiQLCb3U&ab_channel=DimitrisMoraitis
Clearly someone missed the Frontier Merchandise Store because one can purchase items there TODAY such as mugs, lapel pins, keychains, Audio CDs and yes, even T-Shirts. If memory serves, there was once upon a time where one could purchase desk trinkets of objects found in the game.
The original post appears to suggest the following which I reject as silly and moronic.
Anyone who has read their Annual Report would know that COVID notwithstanding, FDEV is NOT losing money. I find the tone of original post accusatory and inflammatory towards the developers and as a fan of this game, if find it offensive but then again, that's the point of a troll post isn't it?
But after all, it is a free world and you know what Dirty Harry said about opinions. ☑
Clearly someone missed the Frontier Merchandise Store because one can purchase items there TODAY such as mugs, lapel pins, keychains, Audio CDs and yes, even T-Shirts. If memory serves, there was once upon a time where one could purchase desk trinkets of objects found in the game.
The original post appears to suggest the following which I reject as silly and moronic.
- Somehow the developers are guilty of gross business mismanagement because they failed the "happy meal test" Oooookaaay.... let's look at that another way.
- They are in the Gaming business!!!! They know what they are good at and are sticking to it. That deserves applause not ridicule.
- History is replete with the tombstones of industry giants who forgot the business they were in and strayed outside of their core competency. Anyone remember the Zilog Z80 CPU made by a division of that small company known as Exxon? Or how about General Motors Communications Satellite business when they owned Hughes Satellites? Or even McDonalds Pizza?
- This post suggests that there is a huge market for buyers of trinkets? Who knows, there may be something there. I'm sure the unemployed 30-something neckbeards living in their parents basement would buy these things in a heartbeat and put them right next to their Luke Skywalker bedsheets. But wait!!! They don't have any money, Ooops!
- Can it honestly be believed that if such a market existed, FDEV wouldn't have cashed in? Incidentally, there were more items in the merchandise store in years past that are no longer there. Anyone want to hazard a guess as to why? Because they didn't SELL!!!
- A parallel question would be; would we honestly believe that some merchandising company didn't already approach FDEV or FDEV them and nothing happened?Why? Because profits, like water, seeks its own level and if there is money to be made by anyone, it will find a way.
Well - the OP says it all below, really,
But, no doubt, it will be referred to as "light-hearted banter" in order to save face
aside from generics that can be basically printed with elite stuff, that's what they've done.. licensed out.
the market just isn't there for this ip. But that's because for all intents and purposes, it's basically brand new to the current generation of teens and 20 somethings and elite dangerous hasn't done a great job at making that generation want to dive deeper.
Another thing Fdev hasn't been much help with is releasing 3d printable meshes so we dont have to pull game models out (which aren't that great for printing without a lot of work to clean them up). A lot more people would print the ships and that would help grow interest in the IP if they had models that had 3d printable hardpoints you could swap into the hardpoint spots on the ship models and docking bays and landing gear etc builtin. Haven't seen any models with landing gear but that sounds fairly tedious to edit in to any available models (which dont come with them). They may not make hundreds of millions off them but it gives players and non-players even some way to participate in the property ...which is valuable by itself.
I have lots and lots of 3d printed space ships (many from elite dangerous). Unfortunately, nobody has pulled the fleet carrier model out of the game (in the various ship mods). So i haven't been able to recreate my carrier.
The last one i printed was my secret Utopian cap ship.
Source: https://imgur.com/a/WaA952o
You missed your calling, Lucasfilms should employ you for model making with talent like that.
it's not uncountable... it's an attempt to make sure their trademark doesn't become synonymous with the individual iconic general shape and function of such blocks so they dont lose control of their trademark like other products where the name was associated with the generic item and enough alternatives were also referred to as the original namesake that the general item became just known as that.
Eventually it will be known as legos because the term legos just works as a plural in english and imparts additional information about what's being discussed vs just "lego" and all of the resistance to that is synthetic nonsense that will be drowned out by the masses over time.
Despite all the nonsense spouted in these forums and the disingenuous thread title...
I would so buy models, whether, 3d printed, airfix or even POP! bobbleheads... I would love an Asp Explorer on my desk.
What we should be doing is discussing how many forum dads would and can afford to buy models, somebody who can produce and is willing to produce something at the very least... and then do what we do...
get on with it.
I have plenty of stickers, badges, mugs and etc from the store and from the community because that's what awesome people do. Stop sitting around with your thumb up your donkey bits expecting FD to come round your house and give you everything and the moon on a stick.
I would do something myself but I am technically challenged and would never get a 3d printer on the budget past my wife, but $30 for a decent model would only get an eye roll, a sigh and the promise of a bottle of wine to balance things out.
I would so buy models, whether, 3d printed, airfix or even POP! bobbleheads... I would love an Asp Explorer on my desk.
What we should be doing is discussing how many forum dads would and can afford to buy models, somebody who can produce and is willing to produce something at the very least... and then do what we do...
get on with it.
I have plenty of stickers, badges, mugs and etc from the store and from the community because that's what awesome people do. Stop sitting around with your thumb up your donkey bits expecting FD to come round your house and give you everything and the moon on a stick.
I would do something myself but I am technically challenged and would never get a 3d printer on the budget past my wife, but $30 for a decent model would only get an eye roll, a sigh and the promise of a bottle of wine to balance things out.
Not unprecedent at all. Square Enix does a lot of stuff like books, comics and animated films.
Rebellion Developments is currently building up it own film and tv studio with a least one film and one tv show in the works. They already own the largest comic book business in the UK.
Activision as also move into making films with Activision Blizzard Studios.
Frontier Development did self publish some Elite Dangerous books as license titles. An to be honest, I don't know why they didn't invest more into that side of the business.
Uwe Boll has entered the chat
I'm no expert but my guess is it didn't make enough money to invest further in.
It doesn't cost them any money to license ip. They dont have to publish such books themselves.