Frontier Development, notable for its Elite Series and various tycoon games, has acquired an exclusive license with Games Workshop to develop and publish an RTS based on Warhammer Age of Sigmar, the latest iteration of Games Workshop’s Warhammer 40k universe. The new RTS has to be released by May 31 2023 under the current license terms.
Revelations of the license acquisition came from an investor relations note. The new RTS can be developed for both PC and consoles, although RTS games are not often made for consoles, Halo Wars and Stellaris are the only popular games in that genre that is also on console. The next generation of consoles will be out by 2023 with a couple of years to solidify themselves and Stellaris has proven that large scale 4x games are possible on console, so a Warhammer Age of Sigmar RTS is possible for consoles as well.
“We are delighted to announce this license with Games Workshop. I personally think it’s great news that two such well-established and world-class creative UK companies with global reach are collaborating on a new project. We look forward to working closely with the team at Games Workshop to bring the rich world of Warhammer Age of Sigmar to a wide audience through an immersive and accessible real-time strategy game on both PC and console.” Frontier Development’s CEO David Braben commented.
The investor note did outline Frontier Development’s roadmap with May 31, 2021, having two major internal releases from the company. Planet Coaster will be expanding onto PlayStation and Xbox. Frontier Development’s live service Elite Dangerous will receive another paid expansion, that will not require the current expansion Elite Dangerous: Horizons. There are plans for further development with Elite Dangerous’s fleet carriers as well since their positive reception. Frontier Development also has two more games planned for 2021, three for 2022 along with being in the works for setting up games farther down the line.