Elite Dangerous Financing

Aaron Shadai

A
Hi,

I was wondering how Frontier Developments finances Elite Dangerous? The initial cost of the game and some paid updates will only go so far.

Is there a reason why Frontier Developments didn't make this game require a paid monthly subscription? I would have been more than happy to pay a few pounds per month. This really is a great game and I want to help support it and help secure a job or two in this difficult climate we're all facing.
 
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WR3ND

WR3ND
Well about 240 USD for the game (ED + 2015 LEP) in addition to maybe another 100~200 for cosmetics goes pretty far, I think... 😏

And I'm not a backer/kickstarter.
 
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gorankar

gorankar
P2P keeps server costs down, and ARX.
At this point, to go even partially sub based, it would likely require more content, moving towards full dedicated servers and not P2P instancing, or P2W bonuses for subscribers.

The P2P instance model is one of the bigger issues with multi-player in ED.
 

Ian Doncaster

Ian Doncaster
Aaron Shadai said:
I was wondering how Frontier Developments finances Elite Dangerous? The initial cost of the game and some paid updates will only go so far.
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Surprisingly well, though. On their latest published figures - which are somewhat old now - they've had about 3.5 million sales of the base game, and about half that of Horizons.

At full current price that would be about £100 million. Obviously many copies were bought in sales for less than that (though many were also bought pre-release or just after release for more than that), but still, it's a pretty substantial amount of money, and cosmetic sales will add a bit more. Certainly enough to fund a development team of the size they've claimed for the amount of time they've been working on it, and have plenty to spare.


However: their published strategy is cross-subsidy. Their plan is to get sufficiently many successful franchises going (four, so far) that each year sees a release for one or two of them, and that income then funds the whole business - future expansions for their existing ones, and the initial development of their next ones - for the following year. So at the moment, in terms of the actual pound coins involved, Elite Dangerous is mostly funded by Planet Zoo ... next year, Odyssey will release, and much of that literal money will fund the development of their next project, which will in turn - provided the Elite franchise remains long-term profitable - partly fund the next development cycle of Elite Dangerous (whether that's another chargeable one like Horizons or Odyssey, or another free one like Beyond).

They also use a common in-house engine across all of their projects, so cross-subsidy can come in the form of code as well as cash - though that's hard to pick up on.


So the exact profitability of Elite Dangerous in any particular year isn't relevant, provided that over the long term (perhaps a five-year cycle) it remains profitable. How well Odyssey does - both in being purchased itself and in attracting new players to the base game - will obviously be very important to their future plans for the franchise.
 

Tyvolus

T
Aaron Shadai said:
Hi,

I was wondering how Frontier Developments finances Elite Dangerous? The initial cost of the game and some paid updates will only go so far.

Is there a reason why Frontier Developments didn't make this game require a paid monthly subscription? I would have been more than happy to pay a few pounds per month. This really is a great game and I want to help support it and help secure a job or two in this difficult climate we're all facing.
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It is definitely not financed by any recent DLC's.
 

Bottom Hat

Bottom Hat
They also 'employ' a large team of about 300 retired garden gnomes to do a lot of the server side work, which includes feeding and replacing the hamster when it dies of old age or exhaustion.

I put employed in quotes, as technically it has been argued that they are enslaved. Sure, they might not get paid, but I think the shed they live in counts as free accommodation. Gnomes don't need much to eat though, so the occasional hamster seems good enough, according to the expenses page on their last annual report.

It's little known that David is descended from a long line of gnomes as well, which is probably why he uses them instead of oompah loompahs, or leprechauns in any case.

So much of the staffing is almost free at the end of the balance sheets, you see. I read a story about some fraud by staff, channeling surplus arx purchases towards unnecessary cosmetics, such as gold plated miniature fishing rods, and tiny woollen hats for the winter, but I never caught up with an outcome of the case. I suspect it's still being investigated by people from HR, including looking at the terms of the gnometracts they were all given.

I don't know if this helps answer you. Just don't make any of it public, as I could be liable for prosecution under the Garden Ceramics Act 1995.
 

VR Golgot

VR Golgot
StevieG said:
You need to read the yearly published financial report to FDEV investors. A third of the revenue comes from ARX/paint packs.
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I’ve never noticed an earnings breakdown in the reports. Is that from the latest one?

Back in FY18 it was a lower ratio than that, IE: In FY18 cosmetics brought in £4mil. The majority of their revenue came from new units sold. The overall revenue for ED in FY18 was £22m.

Admittedly it was a big year for unit sales as PS4 had just launched.

Edit: One of their brokers did project ED revenue in the £10-15m range pa for this period, so if cosmetics have held fairly steady that would be about the right ballpark.
 
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badibeat

badibeat
Stelar 7 said:
content is funded by purchases and by ARX so buy ARX and it gives Fdev money and makes your ships cooler.
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"and makes your ship cooler" is something I don't dig. I am glad others do.
Makes it maybe harder to see or ignore, makes it more difficult for others to guess which weapons they are facing, clutters the already limited view out of your cockpit - these would be my responses.

I'd love to be able buy more commanders with the same account, that would be real value for me.

What I like is FDevs take on the server side and networking to keep costs low, even though many bemoan it. It's innovative and may prove to be a valuable asset for FDev and could make it easier to maintain the service long-term. Edit: The P2P peer to peer topic has already been mentioned in this thread.
 
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Drelthar

Drelthar
Well, they were going to release regular expansion packs, and even sold a lifetime expansion pass after they released their first expansion....

Well that was five years ago.

In actual fact, they make the money from sales of the base game, and that one expansion plus, the ARX store.

Which is a crying shame, because if the money only came in due to sweet new expansions, we'd probly have more sweet new expansions.
 

Patrick_68000

Patrick_68000
Ian Phillips said:
Strange as it may seem, Frontier Developments sells copies of their games to make their money. They have many games, some released and some in development, Elite: Dangerous being just one of them.
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Exactly, the overall sales of the different products, balances the accounts of companies in general.

🦠 🦠 🦠 🦠 🦠 🦠 🦠 😷
 
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