Frontier Developments debuted on London’s AIM stock exchange for smaller companies yesterday, with shares closing up 21 percent.
David Braben, the co-creator of the Elite sci-fi game series, founded Frontier in 1994. The company’s Cobra technology enables the creation of games that run across platforms including PCs, tablets, smartphones, and game consoles. Expanding Cobra is the main reason the company raised £4 million, or $6 million, by issuing 3.17 million new ordinary shares. The company hopes that the technology will prove to be disruptive in an era where some expect cross-platform games to rule. Cobra is expected to be licensed to third parties in 2014, shortly after the launch of the Elite: Dangerous game [above].
Frontier’s games include RollerCoaster Tycoon 3, LostWinds, Kinectimals, Kinect Disneyland Adventures, and Coaster Crazy games. Frontier’s market value is £39 million, or $59 million. The Cambridge, England company has $10.8 million in cash.
Frontier has been working on Cobra tools and technology since 1988. It allows code developed on the PC to be compiled and run on consoles and other platforms. The current engine is the fourth generation of the technology. The latest version includes cloud-based analytics for data-driven games.