News Frontier Developments plc IPO announcement

[el_tel]

AIM shares can be put into a share ISA, but the rule (unless it's changed) is that the the company must be listed on at least two exchanges (AIM being one of them).
An online broker with the lowest commission I've seen is X-O (£5.95 per trade). Run by Jarvis Investment Management.
If £4mil has been raised, and the market cap is around £40 mil, that means around 10% of the shares have been sold, so control of FD will stay with DB, who has 70% (easily over 50%).

 

[Patrick_68000]

it would be great if we could buy shares through the backers app - a reward that rewards (should the share price go up).

I think all the box sets of the game should come with 1 share certificate in it as a thank you for backing the game, I'd frame mine and put it on my wall

+1 for you the guys. I can only approve your suggestions

 

[jabokai]

It's kinda funny how much the shares listing utterly dwarfs the Kickstarter backing. But then without the Kickstarter and the showing of fan support they may never have had that confidence in their listing...

Now I just feel used!

I'm curious as to how valuable Cobra actually is... they clearly plan to licence it out but isn't there a tonne of this stuff out there already, with even bigger money behind it? Unity springs immediately to mind.

 

[Gimi]

Now I just feel used!

I'm curious as to how valuable Cobra actually is... they clearly plan to licence it out but isn't there a tonne of this stuff out there already, with even bigger money behind it? Unity springs immediately to mind.

All depends on the technology. The fact that Cobra supports multiple platforms across computers, consoles and mobile devices seems to be pretty unique.

 

[jabokai]

All depends on the technology. The fact that Cobra supports multiple platforms across computers, consoles and mobile devices seems to be pretty unique.

So does Unity, that's why it sprang to mind - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unity_(game_engine)#Platforms

 

[Gimi]

So does Unity, that's why it sprang to mind - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unity_(game_engine)#Platforms

Interesting, Unity would be one of the main competitors then I suppose. Unfortunately there is far to little information available about Cobra to be able to identify what sets the two apart.
Guess we will have to wait and see.

 

[Darren Grey]

Unity is extremely competitively priced too - would be very hard to go up against it. But I'm guessing they're targeting more premium customers than Unity's mostly indie userbase.

 

[jabokai]

Interesting, Unity would be one of the main competitors then I suppose. Unfortunately there is far to little information available about Cobra to be able to identify what sets the two apart.
Guess we will have to wait and see.

There are a lot more than Unity out there too - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unity_%28game_engine%29#Platforms - quite a few of those seem to be cross platform. I'm not saying Cobra isn't good because, as you say, there is little information, I'm just saying that it's not unique. I think even UDK (Unreal) is cross platform now!

 

[Gimi]

There are a lot more than Unity out there too -

You are right. A more comprehensive list here (was it this one you were trying to link to).
I went ahead and reread the description of Cobra, just to see if anything stood out. It dawned on me that it's not really presented as a game engine, but more as a cross platform development environment for creating portable code. Must be some sort of engine in there as well I suppose. Going to be interesting to see what the uptake is within the industry.

 

[jabokai]

(was it this one you were trying to link to)

Oops. Yes, that was the list! As with all those lists on Wikipedia, many of them are probably non runners, or even abandoned, but it does seem like quite a competitive field. I guess they're hoping that ED does incredibly well so that it acts as a showcase for the technology... if we get a great game in the process, I'm happy with that.

 

[Caribou]

...how valuable Cobra actually is... they clearly plan to licence it out ...

I just read the IPO announcement as a sales brochure. It is selling Frontier and one of their selling points is the fact that they can leverage a framework (stable,tried and tested) to target many platforms - meaning they are not just a windows shop/Linux shop/Console shop - basically it's meant to spread the risk so to speak - if one avenue becomes extremely profitable they will already be there and able to take advantage. Did they say something about releasing an API/Engine?

 

[Patrick_68000]

I guess they're hoping that ED does incredibly well so that it acts as a showcase for the technology... if we get a great game in the process, I'm happy with that.

Yes it is great news that Elite Dangerous, become the showcase of Cobra technology. We are even more convinced that the game will be of very high quality. So does the perenity and strength of the company Frontier, after its IPO.

 

[jabokai]

Did they say something about releasing an API/Engine?

"Cobra development will be undertaken in conjunction with development of its Elite: Dangerous title, in a move that will enable Frontier to ultimately license key elements of its technology and related services to third parties"

 

[Patrick_68000]

They said that they would put that some of the Cobra technology for sale. Not mad at Frontier ... They will not give the whole

 

[jabokai]

They said that they would put that some of the Cobra technology for sale. Not mad at Frontier ... They will not give the whole

Speculation, but - they won't sell it, they will licence its use so that other people can use it to create entire games. Cobra would remain wholly owned by Frontier, other people would just pay to use it.

 

[Slawkenbergius]

In an article (Building a pipeline from scratch) by one of the Godus devs, he says that Unity has its shortcomings, such as not giving enough low-level control over meshes (or something like that). I'd imagine Cobra is pretty good for people who need deep control over the code. Also, the testing environment sounds like it might be quite useful, so it could be that the overall package is attractive to some devs.

 

[Caribou]

"Cobra development will be undertaken in conjunction with development of its Elite: Dangerous title, in a move that will enable Frontier to ultimately license key elements of its technology and related services to third parties"

interesting - i wonder if there are third parties actually inquiring now...

 

[MikeSnos]

interesting - i wonder if there are third parties actually inquiring now...

EVE-Online and EA probably...

 

[Dr Wookie]

Is this because of our in system travel requests? It is isn't it !

I don't know the first thing about IPOs, but I am guessing that they will only be getting a small fraction of the total value, since they are keeping control. If DB says it's good for ED, then I'm happy

 

[Jason S]

No, we still retain control, it's a minority offering.

Michael

Phew... I was a worried for a moment that frontier might become just another maximize shareholder wealth beast. Keep the game at heart. Keep control by those that would do best for the game. Keep it a minority offering in the future too, I am hoping.