Sell Elite: Dangerous; give me a number.

[PS4 Pro - PC] earthtone99

[PS4 Pro - PC] earthtone99
Siobhan said:
I wonder if the OP works for a certain rival space sim that's yet to be launched... and just wants to buy E:D so they can use it to get theirs closer to a launch state?
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I wonder if the OP is a secret dev from another dev team, dev-ing around.

CMDR Maylor Rom said:
What?

"Star Elite Citizen" with spacelegs, fleet carriers, and atmospheres....
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No Mans an Elite Citizen
 

Lestat

Banned
Lestat
amadeus1171 said:
Hello FD,

Just as the title says. What number would you sell Elite: Dangerous for? Or are you willing to spin it off into a subsidiary?

I know the engine is proprietary and only the subsidiary spinoff would be viable to use the Cobra engine. But as a sale, Elite: Dangerous could be rewritten in a different engine and take advantage of its features. Algorithms, design, and mechanisms would be needed to reimplement the game in another engine. And with new engine, the developers would be able to coordinate with the engine creators to implement features specific to Elite: Dangerous.

Why use a third party engine? Using a third party engine would split responsibilities into two companies. The engine company would focus specifically on engine features, including implementing features necessary for Elite: Dangerous, as stated above, and fix engine bugs as they pop up, not only to support Elite: Dangerous, but other clients they may have. Having other clients is a huge incentive for fixing bugs because licensing is how they make their money.

I ask this because FD doesn't seem to have the time or resources to properly develop and manage Elite: Dangerous. It is an incredible game and could become so much more if it had the proper resources and talent.
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Maybe what you should do is look at the history of companies using third-party engines. You know partly why Star Citizen is not released yet. It because they tried using a different engine. I think they started with CryEngine And had to switch to a different engine because CryEngine had some limitations.

Frontier has the right idea. To use an engine they built and use for years. If there a problem. They don't have to call the Company and ask how do I fix it.
 

ZeeWolf

ZeeWolf
I worked with Codemasters in-house engine for a while, they had a dedicated 'core' team at the time. They were able to adapt it specifically for the kind of in-house games Codies make and quickly move with the latest hardware (new consoles, perhipherals etc.) which was awesome. In the case of Cobra it's adapted around some very specific stuff for Frontier's games including VR for ED and the cloud/P2P hybrid stuff. It probably ports well to different consoles etc. It's tailored to everything they have from sound-scapes to HOTAS controllers. I believe the 'engine' is even used to run the company website (or some variation of it) I'm sure it's completely ingraned into the company work-flow.

Relying on a third-party engine can have problems, you're using 'off the shelf' typically tailored torwards something different (usually FPS arena combat type games). If, as OP suggests, you are able to get in some kind of partnership you are still loosing complete control of some pretty important stuff. That might be something simple like communication difficulties where Frontier ask for something but aren't able to 'spec' it out in a way the vendor can deliver on, but more likely you just won't get the commitment to rapid refined changes as the vendor persues new projects and other commitments. What happens if the vendor goes under? Typically, you can licence the source, but your in a worse position - stuck with an obsolete game engine and all the technical debt that the vendor never fixed and all the additional (engine) code to support games you don't even make.

Third party engines are great for 'hitting the ground running', employing talent that already brings relevant experience. Great if the game follows conventions such as earth based FPS single player combat. Not so great for a less conventional milky way based space traders.

I can see absolutly no scenario where Frontier think it's a good idea to move over to a third party engine when they seem to be benefiting a great deal from what they have and the architecture is unique. It would incur massive costs to rewrite everything and retrain all the staff and take away a significant advantage.
 
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ThatFuzzyTiger

ThatFuzzyTiger
Assume for a moment you're genuine and you have genuine monetary backing (both of these are long shots but what the hell, I'll bite).

Quick estimate? £50 million would get you to the negotiating table.

The game currently turns over around £12m a year, and that looks to be stable, not growing much, nor decreasing much either. I don't honestly see the 2020 x-pac making that big a dent on that figure (it might blip up during release year, but overall I think that's about where you can reliably expect it to be).

Of that I'd probably say a third is profit, but they'll be looking at the headliner (revenue) figure as a place to work out estimated value (that's the one they put as the key figure to shareholders in the latest investment report), and Frontier will assume the game will be running at least for another four years (the x-pac commits them to that much at least).

So yeah. If you've £50 mil to blow, that'd probably get their attention. Considering the game is functionally in maintenance mode (and it's not like they can't find other places to put the devs if someone did actually come up with an appropriate offer) that'd be about where you could pitch. I can't see Frontier not at least entertaining that kind of a bid against Elite Dangerous if someone was bonkers enough to walk in with a dump truck full of cash and go "I want this, here's an assload of money"
 

A D

A D
Siobhan said:
How many systems?
How many players per instance (or per universe I guess if it's one)?
You know, the usual questions.

I will look, of course, but not tonight.
Thing is, games come and games go, with legs, atmospheres, cities, big worlds, fancy worlds, and with no loading screens (or maybe cleverly hidden ones), but in the end, there is only one Elite Dangerous.
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  • It's still beta so not many systems (planets) right now. It will probably have quite a few, but I'd be surprised if it had a whole galaxy like ED unless there were loading screens somewhere. It's aimed at PvE and PvP in any case so probably wouldn't want an entire galaxy.
  • Claiming 100+ players in a single instance no problem. o_O
Obsidian Ant has done and in-game review on YouTube. Worth a look.
 

GeneralIdea1964

G
Ezren said:
We don't need to know because your idea is "since we can't fix everything in Elite, let's rebuild literally everything in Elite and then fix everything in Elite".

You're trying to solve a flat tire by putting all of your old car's parts on a new car, including the flat tire. Problem: solved!
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I agree,

If you want a rework of Elite to fix all the (let's face it, minor) issues, then you'll be at it as long as they've been writing Star-Citizen.
😁
No complex software written that relies on layers of software providing services is going to work fully first time. Elite has been written to be expandable with time, this means leaving holes and placeholders that may makes bits of the game appear pointless.

FD are currently still sorting out the bugs and I suspect have a much better informed staff able to tackle them.

To OP
Maybe you could write another game using the Cobra engine, FD might be happy to help... At a charge.
 

[PS4] Lorenzo Waringos

[PS4] Lorenzo Waringos
This has become like one of those terrible pitches on Dragon’s Den where the person is sweating hard, visibly has the driest mouth on record then asks to take a step back to compose themselves.

Well, maybe it has, I haven’t read it all.
 

Garbarrage

Garbarrage
Siobhan said:
Does anyone seriously expect FD to respond to this? On the forum?
If the OP was even marginally serious, his lawyers would be making the offers to FD's, not making noise in a forum.
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He has a very real shot at this. Quit messing it up with your negativity. He's probably had at least a PM by now.
 
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