Frontier Developments
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Formerly called
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Frontier Developments Ltd. (1994–2013) |
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| Public | |
| Traded as | : |
| Industry | Video game industry |
| Founded | 28 January 1994 |
| Founder | David Braben |
| Headquarters | Cambridge, England |
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Area served
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Worldwide |
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Key people
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| Products | |
| Revenue |
 GB£21.4 million (2016) |
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GB£16.3 million (2016) |
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GB£1.3 million (2016) |
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| Total assets |
 GB£28.4 million (2016) |
| Total equity |
GB£22.8 million (2016) |
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Number of employees
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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 in January 2015. In 2013, the company reincorporated as a public limited company, and entered the stock market.
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.
Between 2005 and 2011, the company experienced a turmoil while developing it's next generation title The Outsider. Its feature list was ambitious from its initial announcement, although little was seen of the game in public following this. The project was initially self-funded by the developer but failed to maintain publisher backing. When Codemasters withdrew from the deal the studio was also forced to make 17 staff members redundant. Although Braben didn't describe the project as "cancelled", it is commonly assumed the project is on indefinite hold.
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.
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