Frontier Dev Share News (FDEV)

LONDON (Alliance News) - Video game studio Frontier Development PLC Wednesday said it now expects to release a beta of its 'The Engineers' expansion for its 'Elite:Dangerous Horizons' franchise next week, having delayed the release earlier in the year.

Back in March, Frontier Developments said this expansion would be released after the end of its current financial year to end-May, delayed from the original time frame of April. This led it to warn its second half revenues would be "substantially below" previous expectations.

On Wednesday, the company said the beta version of this expansion will now be released next week, and a final release date for the complete expansion will be determined once it has received feedback from the beta testing. A beta release is part of the testing stage of a video game release, with users allowed test a video game for bugs and software glitches ahead of the full release.

Frontier Developments said that total sales of Elite:Dangerous franchise products now exceeds 1.5 million.

Elsewhere, it said it has been encouraged by reception to its first 'Alpha' build of its second franchise Planet Coaster, It will release its second Alpha build of this product later this month. An Alpha build means a version of the game that is playable and contains all of its major features, although these features may be further revised based on testing and feedback.

The company said its balance sheet remains strong, and it had cash of GBP8.9 million as at the end of March.

"Frontier has built its reputation based on the quality of its games and players rightly have high expectations of us. We announced a delay to the release of 'The Engineers' in our 2 March 2016 trading update, and the game has benefited significantly from the additional development time, and progress is encouraging," said Chief Executive David Braben in a statement.

"Planet Coaster is progressing to schedule, and we have been highly encouraged by the feedback to date. The full release in the final quarter of 2016 will complete our transition to fully self-publishing our own output," Braben added.

Shares in Frontier Development were untraded Wednesday morning. They last closed at 215.26 pence.

By Hana Stewart-Smith; hanassmith@alliancenews.com; @HanaSSAllNews

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