This man made Elite. Respect him

Frontier’s David Braben – the industry veteran behind the classic space trading game Elite, as well as many others – has given an insightful and interesting interview regarding his new game and the state of WiiWare development as he sees it.

LostWinds will debut when the WiiWare service goes live in the US in May, and Braben is optimistic that the game will find the audience it deserves.

We are extremely proud of the game, and we expect it to do well - it is clearly a fantastic opportunity for us and we're doing our best to grab it with both hands. There are enough Wiis in the world that LostWinds has the potential to make us as much profit/royalty income as a disc-based game. Given that we only work on two or three of those at any one time, that's a potentially significant positive impact on our business.

We're fortunate to be financially robust enough and have ongoing contracted projects with publishing partners that LostWinds isn't a make or break venture for us in monetary terms. I think the really significant impact LostWinds will have is to gain the experience from developing and promoting a game on a download channel like this. The lessons we will learn on the way will be invaluable as digital downloads increase in significance as a distribution medium.

You can read the entire interview, which is part of Develop’s WiiWare Week, here.