Frontier Developments
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Public limited company | |
Industry | Video game |
Founded | January 1994 |
Founder | David Braben |
Headquarters | Cambridge, England |
Key people |
David Braben (CEO) David Walsh (COO) Jonny Watts (CCO) Neil Armstrong (CFO) |
Products |
Kinectimals LostWinds Series Thrillville Series RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 Elite series Wallace & Gromit series Darxide Dog's Life Zoo Tycoon |
Number of employees | 240 (June 2014)[1] |
Website | Frontier Official Site |
Frontier Developments is a British video game developer based in Cambridge, England. It is a public limited company and was incorporated in January 1994. The company is headed by David Braben, in the position of CEO.[2] It has produced several games in the Elite series, including 2014's Elite: Dangerous.
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",[3] in its back catalogue during the company's 2013 sale of shares to the public,[4] with David Braben owning all rights to the game assigned to the company in 2008.[5]
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 December 16th, 2014.[6]
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 and 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 Coaster Park Tycoon, 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.
Games developed
References
- ↑ Handrahan, Matthew (17 June 2014). "Frontier Developments: 240 people and still indie". GamesIndustry.biz. Retrieved 4 August 2014.
- ↑ "About Page". Frontier Developments. Retrieved April 23, 2014.
- ↑ "Games by Frontier".
- ↑ "Frontier Developments Admission to Trading on AIM, Selected back catalogue p.12".
- ↑ "Frontier Developments Admission to Trading on AIM, IP Assignment Agreement p.101".
- ↑ "Darxide EMP". Frontier Developments. Retrieved 2013-07-08.
- ↑ "Announcing ‘COASTER CRAZY’ – A Brand New Rollercoaster Game". Retrieved 2013-07-08.
External links
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