Tag Archives: david braben

Influential game designer David Braben has spoken out against the hacking of the PlayStation 3 and release of custom firmware, describing the freedom of speech argument as “rubbish”.

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According to an earlier report from RPS, Frontier’s David Braben had confirmed that The Outsider was canned.  However, Braben has since told Develop that is not the case.

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David Braben has reiterated Kinectimals does not include any of Lionhead’s Milo & Kate tech.

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David Braben, the founder of Frontier Developments and a long-time opponent of the pre-owned games market, has written up six potential fixes to the “problem” – while also sinking his boot into the presently in-vogue “online pass” method.

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Frontier has said its feline-filled Kinectimals does not use any technology based on Lionhead’s Milo & Kate, despite comments made earlier in the week by Microsoft.

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Frontier boss David Braben has said that Infinity Ward, as we used to know it as, is “dead”.

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Frontier’s put on hold Elite IV, according to a report from Eurogamer.

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Frontier Developments boss David Braben has told Eurogamer that The Outsider is still being worked on at the studio.

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Frontier has announced that LostWinds: Winter of the Melodias will be released on WiiWare in the US on October 19.

“The original LostWinds was embraced by the US, and the sequel has major new gameplay features and improvements across the board,” said David Braben in the press release.

“After the incredible reception in Europe for Winter of the Melodias, we’re excited to see what the American reaction will be.”

We can’t wait.

Frontier founder David Braben has told Develop that those who think PSN, WiiWare, and XBLA games don’t take the same amount of effort to create really annoy him.

“One of the things that really annoys me is when people see XBLA, PSN and WiiWare as a dumping ground, in terms of ‘you don’t need to put the same amount of effort in’”, said Braben. Actually, it’s quite the opposite.

“It’s like how novelists approach short stories. It’s a way to try out a radical idea, and quite often a lot of those do become novels later on.

“What I don’t like, is the idea that people can scratch one out at the bus stop, which I’ve overheard at conferences.”

If it was really that easy, we’d be on it.

More through the link.

LostWinds and Elite creator, David Braben, has said that the approval system implemented by Apple for the iPhone App Store has resulted in many of the games being a “pile of rubbish”.

Because of this, Braben feels a stronger approval process should be considered for the service.

“There’s a little bit of a ‘gate keeper’ thing with Nintendo which raises the bar very slightly because you’ve got to have dev kits, but that’s a good thing,” he told CVG. “Look at iPhone; there are so many games that aren’t up to scratch, without being too negative about it. It’s very hard to find the good stuff amongst the rubbish.

“Another thing I resent is applications or games that are designed to look like something else that’s been successful and people accidentally buy them, or they’re slightly cheaper and they assume they’re getting a cheaper version or the same thing.”

More through the link.

David Braben has said that expectations are huge for Elite IV, but at the same time it won’t be released until he is pleased with how it looks and its ability to differentiate itself from the others.

When asked if work was being done on the title by GI.biz at the A Life in Videogames event, Braben admitted “it would be mad for us not to work on it”, but that he would have to be satisfied that it was “going to be a different type of experience”.

During his session, Braben commented on the importance of taking chances new types of games, citing Rollercoaster Tycoon and The Sims as examples.

More through the link.

Elite is 25 this month, worryingly, and to celebrate Frontier’s launched a new website and a bunch of promo stuff.

Creator David Braben’s going to be taking questions through Twitter for a chat on Wednesday, September 23. Follow this to get involved. You can win t-shirts if you get a response to your question, and there’s a grand prize of a signed bit of artwork.

PR after the break.

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Frontier’s David Braben, creator of Elite and the upcoming sequel to LostWinds, has defended Lionhead’s Milo & Kate and the reputed “smoke and mirrors” aspect of it.

“I think there is absolutely nothing to be ashamed of with good, complex smoke and mirrors,” he told Eurogamer during Develop. “With all of these things, we’re building interesting worlds, and there are so many different ways you can do that. Milo & Kate showed some of that, and some of the things we’re working on will show some of that too.

“There are so many different dimensions to it: I often bore on about film, but it shows how much more there is out there that we haven’t touched yet in the game space.”

Braben also went on to discuss how AI in games have improved by “degrees we haven’t noticed.”

Via KokuGamer.

Rumors that Frontier’s long-in-the-works Elite 4 will be hitting PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 have surfaced.

During a lecture, co-creator of Elite and Frontier bossman David Braben, gave a slideshow presentation that revealed the company’s current projects which include Elite 4, The Outsiders, and other unannounced projects.

Braben stated last summer that the firm was looking at bringing the title to consoles, and that it had been in development for so long because of resource issues.

The Outsider, previously confirmed for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360, is an open-world action game based around a police officer and has yet to receive a solid release date.

More through TheSixthAxis.

Frontier’s David Braben has been added to the roster at this year’s Games Eden event in the UK.

The Elite and Lost Winds creator will be talking about direct-to-consumer opportunities via digital content, writes GI.

Fancy hearing what he has to say? Well then, take yourself up to The Kaetsu Centre, Murray Edwards College, Huntingdon Road, Cambridge from 4pm on Thursday May 21 and you can.

More here.

Square Enix is to publish Frontier’s LostWinds in Japan, the company’s confirmed.

“Square Enix is a very successful, development-led organization with a total commitment to quality,” said Frontier boss David Braben.

“Frontier shares those same core ideals and we are very pleased to be doing business together. Square Enix’s strength in Japan will give LostWinds the chance to shine there, as it has done elsewhere.”

LostWinds topped the WiiWare charts in both the US and Europe upon launch of the new distribution system in May 2008.

Press release after the link.

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Frontier boss David Braben has stepped up his campaign against secondhand games sales, telling Eurogamer at Game City in Nottingham that retailers are essentially fiddling the trade.

“The shops are not giving us a way of distinguishing between pre-owned and new,” he said. “So the shops are essentially defrauding the industry.”

Braben added: “We’ve got a lot of retailers eating our lunch and refusing to sell full-priced games.

“I’ve been in a shop where I’ve tried to buy a copy of a relatively recent game, and I’ve taken an empty box off the shelf and they’ve given me a pre-owned copy. That, I think, is disgraceful.

“Not holding stock of new games, substituting them with pre-owned games at the same or much the same price… That is really destroying the shelf-life of our games.”

There’s more through there. None of it’s pretty.

Secondhand games sales are hurting single-player games, Frontier’s David Braben has told GI. Goddamn those secondhand games.

“I think it’s really damaging to the single-player experience,” he said. “Games like BioShock and Assassin’s Creed, where they’re perfectly valid games, but once you’ve played them they go into the pre-owned section.”

“The sales don’t reflect the actual sales of people playing them because someone has gone out and bought, at almost the same price, a pre-owned copy because they couldn’t get an original. It’s very frustrating that they don’t carry that stock any more.”

More though there.

Speaking to VG247, Frontier’s David Braben has revealed that “deep and dark” space game Elite 4 was intended to be not one product, but two.

“It was originally conceived as two different projects, where there’d be one online and one not,” Braben told us in Brighton earlier this month. “Two separate games set in the same world. Whether it [was going to be] in the same package or not is another matter.”

The LostWinds developer also said that there’s currently no competitor to the game’s primary mechanic.

“For the way the game mechanic works, there isn’t any current competition, but the obvious ones people think of are, I don’t know, EVE Online for example,” he said.

Braben told us that he hadn’t play EVE at all, and also said that he hasn’t seen NetDevil’s Jumpgate Evolution.

“Not really, no,” he said, when asked if he considered space-based MMOs in general to be competitive to Elite 4.

“But it’s also the way they play, and these things can change with time. We’ve got some very specific ideas.”

Intriguing. No date, consoles being considered. And nothing else.