Braben: The Outsider probably ‘gone for good’

The games industry has a long memory. Announce a game or show a prototype and people will be constantly asking where it is until it’s released.

Well, that’s unlikely to happen for missing political thriller The Outsider, a PS3/Xbox 360 game from David Braben’s studio Frontier Developments.

For those who don’t remember, The Outsider was set in Washington D.C. and would have seen players taking on the role of an ex-CIA agent framed for murdering the President.

Development stopped back in 2011/2012 as Frontier prioritised its partnership with Microsoft, developing first-party titles such as Kinectimals, Kinect Disneyland and Zoo Tycoon, as well as the crowd-funded and hotly-anticipated Elite: Dangerous.

Eurogamer now reports that work is unlikely to resume on The Outsider.

"It was stopped. It probably is gone for good," Braben told the site.

So that’s that, then.

In the meantime, Braben’s attention will no doubt be on the final stages of Elite: Dangerous and Frontier’s newly-announced Screamride IP, which will be exclusive to Xbox One. The veteran developer also teased that more new games are on the way.

"Which we’re not talking about yet," he says. "They’re new things [not games Frontier has done before]."