Sept 28, 2007
"So," we asked David Braben, founder of Frontier Developments, during a recent dev interview, "what are the chances - Elite, Xbox Live,a marriage made in heaven?".
"Absolutely," he chuckled, "Some day...". Cue the eruption of excited chatter in GamesRadar towers, as memories of the cult retro space trading game flashed earnestly to mind.
In case you don't know, Braben is a gaming legend. Now the head of FrontierDevelopments, working on Thrillville: Off the Rails andnext-gen conspiracy actioner The Outsider,David Brabenis best known as the co-writer of 1984's Elite, an epic, hugely ambitious space adventure casting you as an intergalactic pilot with the whole universe at your spacesuited fingertips.
Of course, while Braben seems more than happy about the idea, that doesn't mean it'll actually happen. Which is a shame, because Xbox Live or PlayStation Network would be ideal platforms for Elite (or its sequel, Frontier: Elite) to stage a comeback.
Fortunately, Braben could offer a few words of assurance on a new Elite: "I've said many a time," he told us, "it's what we will do after The Outsider. And that's because there are a lot of things we'd want to put in there".
Braben continued: "There have been a lot of games that have followed on from Elite in their own way, like Privateer and Eve Online. They're nice games, but the point is they're following on from where Elite was, instead of moving it somewhere new, and that's very hard.
"It's doing it well. I think [the fans] would be the first to scream foul if it wasn't exactly what they wanted, which is a very dangerous thing. It's all on this hugely high pedestal. But I'm confident that we will do a very good game."
