Elite: Dangerous Alpha testing commences

12 December 2013

Frontier Developments plc 

Elite: Dangerous Alpha testing process commences

Frontier Developments plc (AIM: FDEV, "Frontier," the "Company"), a leading developer of video games with studios in Cambridge, UK and Halifax, Canada, announces the commencement on schedule of the Elite: Dangerous Alpha phase for eligible backers today.

This follows Frontier's announcement on 18 October 2013 that the Alpha phase would launch in December 2013.

At the end of 2012, Frontier raised £1.6 million via Kickstarter, the crowd funding service, and via its own website. The funds were raised specifically to develop Elite: Dangerous - the latest sequel to the Elite game that CEO David Braben originally co-authored published in 1984. Backers eligible to access the Alpha test phase in December 2013 are those who contributed £200 or more to develop Elite: Dangerous.

Alpha Phase One - Single Player Combat is a series of single player combat scenarios designed to test the combat systems in a close-to-final form. The Alpha Phase One process will give eligible backers an opportunity to test these aspects of the game and comment on the user experience.

David Braben, CEO of Frontier Developments, said:

"Starting the Elite: Dangerous Alpha process on schedule is a significant milestone for Frontier. Involving our backers from this stage of the development will give us access to valuable feedback that we will use to ensure the released game is as polished as possible."

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About Frontier Developments

Frontier Developments plc is a leading independent game developer founded in 1994 by David Braben, co-author of the seminal 'Elite' game. Based in Cambridge, UK and Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, Frontier uses its proprietary 'Cobra' game development technology to create innovative games across videogame consoles, computers, smartphones and tablets.

Previous titles Frontier has created on include RollerCoaster Tycoon 3, Thrillville, LostWinds, Kinectimals, Kinect Disneyland Adventures. On 4 January 2013 Frontier raised £1.7 million via Kickstarter, the crowd funding website, and its own site to develop Elite: Dangerous. The studio is also working on a number of other titles, including Zoo Tycoon as a launch title for Microsoft's new Xbox One console.

 www.frontier.co.uk

About Cobra

Frontier's Cobra software technology has been developed and evolved since 1988. Initially conceived as a solution for the problem of easily porting the same game across different target hardware devices, Cobra today supports multi-core CPU and GPU architectures of PC, console, tablet and smartphone with a modular, high performance system offering of state of the art efficiency and visual fidelity that is applicable across a wide range of game genres.

Cobra incorporates a framework which enables rapid development of powerful game creation tools, which offer the ability to view, tweak and review changes to content (e.g. animations, audio, 3D models etc.) on target platforms in a live game session running on that platform, without the intervention of a programmer.