Redundancies At Frontier, The Outsider 'Not Cancelled' Says Braben

20 Jan 2011 at 19:25:19 by Peter Parrish

Following initial reports that Frontier Developments' political action title The Outsider had been cancelled, company head David Braben has stated that this is not the case.

RockPaperShotgun broke the news, saying they had been contacted by a source who informed them that a publishing deal with EA for the game had recently fallen through - leaving the title essentially canned. Contacting David Braben for confirmation, they were told "We have had to change priorities because of requirements on other unannounced projects. Some people have been moved, and we are very sad to have made some people redundant."

Later, Develop confirmed that 17 people had unfortunately been made redundant at Frontier. However, Braben had also been in touch with them and said "There is still publisher interest in the project, and we haven’t cancelled it. The priority has been reduced, but we’re still working on it."

The Outsider was announced back in 2005, promising the tantalising prospect of narrative freedom in a third-person political action game. Since then, very little has been heard or seen about it, leading to multiple rumours of its cancellation. This news suggests that the project is still alive, at least in some form.

Frontier Developments were most recently responsible for Kinectimals, the fuzzy Kinect launch title. Something of a departure for the studio known for the classic space trading game, Elite.

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