Frontier Developments
 | |
Formerly called | Frontier Developments Ltd. (1994–2013) |
|---|---|
| Public | |
| Traded as | LSE: FDEV |
| Industry | Video game industry |
| Founded | 28 January 1994 |
| Founder | David Braben |
| Headquarters | Cambridge, England |
Number of locations | 2 studios (2016) |
Area served | Worldwide |
Key people | |
| Products | |
| Revenue |
 GB£21.4 million[1] (2016) |
|
GB£16.3 million[1] (2016) | |
|
GB£1.3 million[1] (2016) | |
| Total assets |
 GB£28.4 million[1] (2016) |
| Total equity |
GB£22.8 million[1] (2016) |
Number of employees | 300 (2016) |
| Website |
frontier |
Frontier Developments plc (formerly Frontier Developments Ltd.) is a British video game developer based in Cambridge, England founded in January 1994. The company is headed by David Braben as chief executive officer. It has produced several games in the Elite series, including 2014's Elite: Dangerous. A second studio, Frontier Developments Inc., was opened in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada in August 2012, headed by David Walsh as its president, and closed again in January 2015. In 2013, the company reincorporated as a public limited company to enter the stock market.
History
Frontier Developments' first game was the 1993 Amiga CD32 port of the largely successful Frontier: Elite II followed by Frontier: First Encounters, second sequel to the seminal 1984 game Elite by Acornsoft. The company describes the original Elite as a "Game by Frontier", in its back catalogue during the company's 2013 sale of shares to the public, with David Braben owning all rights to the game assigned to the company in 2008.
Frontier Developments had been planning a new Elite sequel, under the working title Elite 4, since 1998. The company completed a successful Kickstarter campaign at the end of 2012, where the new sequel's name Elite: Dangerous was revealed. Early-access versions of the game have been playable by backers since December 2013. The full game was released to PC on 16 December 2014.
Frontier Developments has made many other games, including Dog's Life, Thrillville, and RollerCoaster Tycoon 3. The company also made games for the Wallace and Gromit franchise, and has released Wallace & Gromit in Project Zoo, and a tie-in game for Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. In 2008, Frontier released LostWinds, a launch title for Nintendo's WiiWare platform. It received critical acclaim, scoring 81% on Metacritic. It was followed up with a sequel in 2009, entitled LostWinds: Winter of the Melodias, which scored 86% on Metacritic. In 2010, Frontier developed Kinectimals for Microsoft's Kinect controller on the Xbox 360. In 2011 Kinect Disneyland Adventures and Kinectimals: Now With Bears were developed, along with ports of LostWinds for iOS and Kinectimals for iOS and Windows Phone. In 2012, Frontier released Coaster Crazy, and started to work on Elite: Dangerous Kickstarter, which successfully closed at the very start of 2013. In 2013, Frontier released Xbox One/Xbox 360 exclusive Zoo Tycoon, published by Microsoft Studios, and launched backers alpha for Elite: Dangerous in December. In 2015 the company released Screamride, a theme park construction and management simulation game for the Xbox 360 and Xbox One. The company is currently developing Planet Coaster, a construction and management simulation video game similar to the RollerCoaster Tycoon franchise. The game is set to be the second major self-published franchises from Frontier along with the Elite series. Frontier announced that they will begin self-publishing all their future games, starting with Planet Coaster.[2]
Games developed
References
- 1 2 3 4 5 "2016 Full Year Results". Frontier Developments. 8 September 2016. Retrieved 24 September 2016.
- ↑ Jarvis, Matthew (31 March 2016). "Frontier cements total independence with self-published Planet Coaster". Develop. NewBay Media. Retrieved 24 September 2016.