Tag Archives: frontier developments

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, 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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You can’t say interactive tigers aren’t fun. Especially Skittles.

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Microsoft’s announced its teaming up with Burger King to have small, interactive Kinectimals plush toys in its kids meals. Brilliant.

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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’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.

David Braben’s Frontier Developments now exploys 200 staff, the company announced today.

Despite the growth, Braben said more jobs are available at the UK developer.

“Although we already have 200 talented development professionals here, we are still hiring for all aspects of games and technology development,” he said.

“We are working on some tremendously exciting projects in several genres, and we are continuing to build an exceptional, meritocratic organization that allows talented people to contribute their best work and progress in an open, stimulating and professional atmosphere.

“We have always planned for the long term and remain as passionate as ever about the creative, technical and commercial potential of the medium.”

Frontier’s currently working on action game The Outsider, as well as a distant revamp of Elite.

Press release after the break.

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Frontier Developments, headed by Elite-creator David Braben, has revealed internal project LostWinds today, a “beautiful” game that will only be available via Nintendo’s WiiWare download service.

“The object of the game is to explore the world and solve puzzles, but it’s the joy of the way the whole thing works that’s key,” Braben told videogaming247. “The idea is that an evil spirit, Balasar, has imprisoned all of the spirits, including the Wind Spirit, and your character has found a wind stone. So it’s a story of restoring things to the world.”

He added: “We’ve gone for a beautiful style. We’re trying to get a style that’s recognizably Lost Winds. It’s a nice, consistent style. It’s not trying to go for the very standard look annotated by so many games in the last few years, which is the Manga, big-eyed look. We’re going for our own look.”

The game’s control method involves moving the wind and protagonist, Toku, in tandem using Wii’s motion-sensing features.

“It’s about using the Wii controller in a novel way, where you’re controlling essentially one character – your little guy Toku – with the Nunchuck, and the other character – the wind, in the form of the Wind Spirit – with the Wiimote,” Braben said.

LostWinds came about through an internal process called Game of the Week, a company forum for debating ideas and general game design, and has been a completely independent project for Frontier, and the first designed for distribution solely by download. Braben explained that the focus on digital distribution in no way meant LostWinds was a lesser game.

“We’ve come at it as if it’s full game development, for the want of a better term,” he said. “We haven’t seen this as short-changing people. [WiiWare] is a different way of getting games, and it’s not had all of the overhead that tends to come in a normal process of publishing games. We’ve been able to go directly to the good bit, and make sure we’ve tried that out without necessarily making it look pretty for that process.

“The main difference is the fact that we’re doing it ourselves. We don’t have to gain the approval or the cooperation of a publisher first. We’re really thinking like customers, like the people who buy the game.”

As soon as we have a release date, so will you. The game will be a WiiWare launch title, as detailed here.