Frontier Developments
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Frontier Developments are a video game development company based on the Science Park in Cambridge, UK. Founded by the co author of the 1984 Acornsoft classic Elite, David Braben in January 1994, they have been responsible for such games as Lost Winds on the Nintendo Wii, up to Elite Dangerous, a modern take on the famous space sand box series, released for PC and modern consoles. The company holds all the rights to the Elite games, and lists them as Frontier products. The Amiga CD32 version of Frontier Elite II, and the sequel First Encounters on PC are the copyright of David Braben, but are now also attributed to Frontier, all published by Konami/Gametek, Braben has stated his displeasure at First Encounters being released in an unfinished state, requiring heavy patching. They were then responsible for the Sega 32X title Darxide, released in 1995, now extremely rare, and V2000 and Infestation developed for Windows and Playstation in 1998 and 2000 respectfully. Other titles developed by Frontier include A Dog's Life, Roller Coaster Tycoon 3, Thrillville, and a series of Wallace and Gromit titles. Two highly acclaimed Lost Winds games were released on Nintendo's Wiiware service in 2008 and 2009. In 2010, the company released two games for the Xbox 360 peripheral Kinect, entitled Kinectimals and Kinect Disney Adventures. Between 2005 and 2011, Frontier were developing an ambitious title called The Outsider, a project eventually cancelled when a deal with publisher Code Masters fell through. In 2011 the company concentrated on IOS versions of the Lost Winds games and Kinectimals for Windows phones. 2012 was a particularly busy year for the company, they developed Zoo Tycoon exclusively for the Xbox 360 and Xbox One, and Coaster Crazy. But the big news was after a very successful Kickstarter campaign that raised £1.7 million, the company were to begin work on Elite Dangerous, a modern take on the old classic. The game took two years to complete and was released in 2014, it was released on PC first, then Xbox One a year later, then finally PS4 in mid 2017, the game earned them a BAFTA nomination. While continuing to support Elite Dangerous with add on packs, the company also released new games, Screamride arrived in 2015 and was Published by Microsoft, and in 2016 Planet Coaster, a management simulation that was self published. This earned the company their second BAFTA nomination. It was reported in 2017 that Frontier were to sue the publisher Atari for lack of royalty payments for Railroad Tycoon 3. On July 17th 2017, Tencent, a Chinese investment company bought a 9% stake in the company. In October of that year The Frontier Expo was held at the Queen Elisabeth Olympic Park, where the company showcased Elite Dangerous, Planet Coaster and Jurassic World Evolution. Frontier announced at this time that all future games would be self published, the first being Jurassic World Evolution, released in June 2018. Today key people at the company are David Braben (CEO) David Walsh (COO) and Jonny Watts (CCO) The company entered the stock market in 2013.
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