We are now 9 months into 2026 and time to check on one of my biggest predictions. Will Jester's charts show a daily average concurrent user mark for 2026 of over 24,000. The reason is that during the lockdown year of 2020 the average was 24,015. A few years ago people would claim EVE was dying because the ACU harkened back to 2006. After 4 years of the return to the two expansions per year release schedule I'd like to move the year up to 2014.
The first thing I noticed is that while activity didn't go up much in September, at least we didn't see a decline.
Jester's 2026 ACU graph
The 7 day average went up at the beginning of the month and dipped at the end. But in the last week the trend seemed on the upswing. I'd say the Cradle of War major update didn't move the needle much on interest in the game. Hopefully the changes set the foundation for the upcoming winter expansion.
Jester's 4-year comparison graph
But the small increase in the 30-day ACU shows the number of accounts logged in is back over 2000 more than at the end of summer in both 2024 and 2025. The question is, can the upcoming Crimson Harvest event (October), winter expansion (November), and Winter Nexus event (December) maintain the margin?
Jester's Daily Average Concurrent User Chart Per Year
Right now my prediction is correct with an ACU of 24,407. But I'd really like to see the figure climb back up to an average of 25,000 accounts logged in at any one time, if only to see another prediction come true: a PCU (peak concurrent users) mark of 42,500. I know, a number not seen since 2017. But I'd like to get two predictions right.
The third quarter of 2026 is in the books and something rare just occurred for Cloud Imperium Games. For the first time since October to November 2024 the company's cash shop experienced consecutive months with year-over-year revenue declines. According to the CCU Game dashboard CIG earned $8.1 million in sales, a 12.8% drop from September 2025's $9.3 million. The drop was enough to make Q3 2026 also be the first quarter since Q4 2024 to register a year-over-year quarterly decline in sales. But the sales over the last 3 months of $24.7 million was only a 1.3%, or $300,000, YoY decline compared to the same quarter in 2025.
The $1049.0 million ($1.05 billion) displayed on the Roberts Space Industries funding page at the end of May was not a comprehensive accounting for all of CIG's revenue since the project's Kickstarter in October 2012. Overall, the company has recorded $1,204.1 million ($1.2 billion) in confirmed revenue (the funding page & the 2024 financial report).
Sales/Pledges: $1049.0 million ($1.05 billion) (through 30 September 2026)
Other cash shop revenue: $2.7 million (through 31 December 2024)
Subscriptions: $46.8 million (through 31 December 2024)
All other sources: $105.6 million (through 31 December 2024)
In addition, the company has received a total of $68.25 million in outside investment. According to the 2023 financial report, $4.8 million of the amount was returned to investors in 2020 and another $3.1 million in 2023-2024. Including the outside investment money, the total amount raised by CIG to create Squadron 42 and Star Citizen is $1,272.3 million ($1.27 billion), or $1.264.5 million ($1.26 billion) when excluding the returned funds. An additional $12.6 million in loans issued in March 2025 and due for repayment on 31 December 2027 are not included in the total.
Year-over-year new account creation fell in September from 65,449 in 2025 to 38,480 last month. Unlike in the second quarter I am not attributing the 41.2% fall solely to 2025's changes to the recruitment program. A bigger reason is CIG's failure to launch patch Alpha 4.11 in September. The lack of a new content draw affected both potential customers trying the game and sales of new ships to existing customers.
What's coming up for Cloud Imperium in October? The month is almost all about Squadron 42. The big hands on event is the weekend of 9-11 October and a lot of answers should come out on the 14th anniversary of the announcement of the Star Citizen project at GDC on 10 October 2012.
But I do have one financial item of interest I'm looking for. Will Cloud Imperium file its financial accounts with UK Companies House on time? Besides wondering if the company can file the necessary paperwork on time two years in a row, the filing would also show if a dividend was paid out after the company collected a record setting $155.1 million from the cash shop in 2025. A dividend payout would go some way to show the company was in a much better financial position at the end of 2025 than it was at the beginning of last year.
EVE Frontier has come a long way since I first picked up alpha access in Cycle 2. The development of the game has evolved from a reskinned version of EVE Online to something uniquely new as the old placeholder content was replaced with new systems and graphics.
I know that the blockchain technology used basically overshadows all of the gameplay features incorporated since the beginning of closed public-facing testing began in May 2024. Now seems a good time to revisit the alpha and see how the game has progressed. And by progressing, I mean changed from the original.
As I'm wont to do with EVE Frontier posts I will turn to the Unofficial Official AI Sponsor of Fenris Creations, Google DeepMind. These posts (yes, I intend on going further) are created by using Gemini. As such Gemini would like me to add the following
I'll begin with the TL;DR table and then follow with the words from Gemini.
1. Active "Memories" vs. Passive Time Queues
In EVE Online, you set a 30-day queue for a Level V skill and log off. In EVE Frontier, progression is tied to active execution:
You generate experience/memories by physically interacting with space—mining asteroid fields, cracking wrecks, surviving microrifts, and landing manual shots on Feral Drones.
Rather than waiting weeks to fly or fit an item, pilot efficiency grows organically from repetition.
2. The Separation of Pilot and "Shell"
Cycle 7 explicitly formalizes the division between Character skills and Shell skills:
Character Progression: Governs pilot-level abilities, cerebral synchronization, and survival efficiencies that stick with your persona.
Shell (Chassis) Progression: Pertains to the physical craft you occupy. Because hulls in Frontier function more like modular survival vessels than permanent garage assets, shell proficiency reflects how well systems integrate with that specific frame.
3. Modular Crowns vs. Static Character Sheets
In EVE Online, your character sheet is an ever-expanding, permanent record of SP.
In EVE Frontier, your accrued proficiencies plug into Crowns (bankable neural arrays). Because Crowns level through active use and can be configured or swapped, progression behaves more like specialized equipment loadouts rather than an immutable, 15-year-old character sheet.
4. Progression Gated by Infrastructure, Not Skills
In New Eden, if you have the ISK and the SP, you can dock in Jita 4-4, buy a fitted hull, and undock. In Frontier:
There are no highsec hubs or instant NPC seed markets.
Progression is tied to the physical tech tree: anchoring automated fabricators, retrieving mummified clone schemas, refining raw hydrocarbon fuels, and managing the extreme heat/cooling cycle of the Creche or deep space.
The "can I fly this?" question is answered by "Can you harvest the resources, refine the fuel, and physically assemble the hull on grid?" rather than whether you trained Spaceship Command to V.
5. Player Twitch/Positional Mastery vs. Dice Rolls
With Cycle 7’s implementation of full 6DOF flight (strafe, roll, manual Aim Flight) and line-of-sight projectile occlusion, progression in combat relies heavily on player execution:
In EVE Online, a pilot with Max Gunnery/Missile skills will mathematically outperform an un-skilled pilot at target lock.
In EVE Frontier, weapon fire requires manual lead, line of sight, and spatial awareness behind asteroids or debris rings. Even with optimized Crown levels, missing your manual shots or failing heat management results in a dead hull.
The beginning of EVE Frontier'sCycle 7 begins on Tuesday. Just because I had difficulty with the movement controls in Cycle 6 doesn't mean I want to give up entirely on covering Frontier's development. I understand that Cycle 7 is changing the controls again so I still have hope playing the game won't bring me pain afterwards.
But I don't have a lot of time to actually do a proper review of each week's Frontier Friday stream. Instead I am going to turn to the Unofficial Official AI Sponsor of Fenris Creations: Google DeepMind. I've discovered that when Gemini gives a summary of a YouTube video the AI also provides links to the original spot in the video where something was said. Given the concern with AI hallucinations a very good feature!
I do want to make one point clear. I only plan to use this technology on official developer streams and YouTube videos. That means no reviews of videos from Frontier content creators like Daemonxel. He is my favorite YouTuber for Frontier content and his weekly news show is a great watch or listen. However, I do reserve the right to link his channel Echoes from the Front so everyone knows where to go for news on Friday nights.
Below the line is the summary from Gemini.
The video is "EVE Frontier | Frontier Friday - 2026 End of Year Roadmap Update!" from the official EVE Frontier channel [00:00:03], hosted by FC O, FC Bowman, FC Overload, FC Goodfella, and FC Yikes [00:00:12].
The stream covers development updates, design philosophy, and release milestones leading up to December 2026.
Key Takeaways & Discussion Points
1. Cycle 5 EVE Points Error
The team addressed community reports regarding an issue with Cycle 5 EVE Points calculations, confirming that an error occurred on their end [00:05:06].
An internal investigation is underway, with a formal statement and corrective remedy planned once the root cause is determined [00:05:12].
2. Core Pillars & "Closing the Gap" on the Vision Trailer
The team reaffirmed the core design pillars: hard sci-fi grounding, digital physics, digital chemistry, cruel survival MMO mechanics, and rebuilding a broken world [00:09:32].
Rather than adding raw features on top of legacy EVE mechanics, the focus has shifted toward building tactile, intimate moment-to-moment interactions directly into the 3D scene [00:18:08] (e.g., physical docking collars instead of menu-based warping/teleporting into stations [00:25:32]).
The HUD is seeing a major decluttering pass ("the war on brackets") to replace dense window overlays with direct world context and in-world interaction widgets [00:28:01], [00:34:19].
3. Flight Controls & Mining Rework
Flight Physics: Ship handling is shifting from abstract controls to direct, mass-and-thruster physics [00:48:36]. This includes strafing (up/down/left/right), roll controls, and drift maneuvers [00:48:49]. While loop-the-loops still hit a barrier, barrel rolls and 5.5-DOF flight maneuvers are now functional [00:49:10].
Selective / Cavity Mining: Asteroid mining is moving toward targeted resource extraction (drilling directly into specific mineral pockets inside asteroids) paired with contextual scanning menus [00:31:14], setting the foundation for the future Digital Chemistry system [00:33:27].
Core Experience Refinement: Physics-based flight controls [00:48:27], HUD/bracket decluttering [00:37:30], starter region expansion [00:37:43], initial contextual mining changes [00:50:02], and introductory Fog of War [00:50:18].
Small Group Play: Group objective sharing, shared communications, resource pooling [00:43:03], community challenges [00:43:18], and modularity groundwork [00:43:22].
Full Modularity & Social Systems: Full ship, structure, and social modularity [00:43:56]; player-defined social primitives replacing legacy corp structures (no rigid "tribes") [00:45:11]; collaborative base building [00:50:32]; data and digital item trading [00:51:03].
Upcoming Schedule
Next Stream: Deep dive into Cycle 7 features and mechanics [00:52:06].
Following Week: Founders Q&A session post-Cycle 7 launch [00:52:14].
— Coverage Note: The summary and timestamp links above were compiled using Gemini to parse the raw broadcast transcript from the official EVE Frontier stream. The Nosy Gamer utilizes AI tools to index and structure long-form developer videos for quick community reference.
Tuesday the release of EVE Online'sCradle of War's Major Update. I know that the most important items, at least in the developers' minds, were the changes to the Ansiblex jump bridges. But before I jump into some of the other changes introduced this week, I want to speculate a little bit about what is coming up over the next two months: Crimson Harvest and the winter expansion.
Introduced in 2015, Crimson Harvest is the first and perhaps most popular seasonal event in EVE. Since the return of the two expansions per year release schedule, New Eden's Halloween event increased to four weeks in duration.
2023: October 5 – November 6, 2023
2024: October 3 – November 5, 2024
2025: October 6 – November 4, 2025
A funny thing about the Crimson Harvest. The end dates of the event fall in the first full week of November. In 2023 the event ended at downtime on a Monday while the past two years Crimson Harvest has ended on a Tuesday. If the pattern holds we should see the event run from October 6th to November 3rd this year. Correlation does not equal causation, but did Blizzard delay the launch of WoW Forever to November 4th to avoid conflicting with EVE's Crimson Harvest event?
What about the winter expansion? Is Fenris going to delay the launch until December to avoid the launches of both WoW Forever and GTA 6? I think the Major Update dev blog put to rest that question.
The AIR Career Program (ACP) migrates to Paragon Services achievements in November. Anyone with unfinished ACP tasks should complete them and claim the rewards before the move. Once those tasks become achievements, they can be completed again through the new system, so there's a second run at them waiting on the other side.
In addition to the new achievements system the first military campaigns will also end with CoW. So trying to figure out when the winter expansion will launch actually has a useful component to it. Here are the launch dates of the last four winter expansions.
Uprising: November 8, 2022
Havoc: November 14, 2023
Revenant: November 12, 2024
Catalyst: November 18, 2025
Except for last year the winter expansion has fallen on the second Tuesday of the month of November. Last year I think was delayed one week to avoid falling on a day with so many holidays.
UK - Remembrance Day
US - Veterans Day
France & Belgium - Armistice Day
Germany - The first day of the Carnival season for Catholic and Rhineland areas of Germany.
So I'm fully expecting Fenris to return to the schedule of the previous three years and launch the 2026 winter expansion on November 10th, right between the launches of WoW Forever and GTA 6. Because let's face it, EVE is 23 years old. The purpose of expansions is to maintain player interest. With these two huge games releasing in November, the expansion is coming just in time to keep the player loss to the new games to a minimum.
Today is the release date for EVE Online'sCradle of War Major Update. Unlike some companies that engage in making games involving internet spaceships, Fenris Creations puts out press releases aimed at major media companies. Don't get me wrong, patch notes and dev blogs are great, but perhaps not for video game journalists doing drive-by write-ups of new content.
What am I talking about? The CoW update rated its own press release for the wider world. So if I say the major feature in today's content patch concerns force projection, I can point to the press release. Of course, history may show players chose otherwise, But we haven't reached that point of time yet.
To avoid the necessity of having to follow a trail of hyperlinks I'll copy the press release to the blog. I'm pretty sure the PR team won't mind.
Fenris Creations’ EVE Online: Cradle of War Update Makes It Harder for Alliances to Rush Fleets Across Space, Shaking Up War Strategies
Launching September 22, Ansiblex jump bridges now run on a distance-scaled charge, alongside Pirate Insurgency changes, wormhole combat site overhaul, Pochven updates, and more
REYKJAVÍK, Iceland – September 22, 2026 – Today, Fenris Creations launched the next major update for EVE Online: Cradle of War, the latest expansion for the iconic sci-fi MMO EVE Online. Centered on a revamp of Ansiblex jump bridges, the player-built gates that let nullsec alliances project force across huge stretches of space at short notice, the update also iterates on Pirate Insurgencies, improves low-class wormhole combat sites, and rebalances ships across New Eden. It represents the most impactful step in Fenris Creations’ ongoing work on force projection and nullsec sovereignty since the Equinox expansion, and addresses a long-standing community call for changes to force projection.
“Ansiblex jump bridges – player-built stargates – have worked the same way for years, and players got very good at using them to be everywhere at once,” said Bergur Finnbogason, Creative Director for EVE Online. “Adding a cost to project force over vast distances changes the paradigm and makes moving a large fleet more deliberate and predictable. Changing how groups travel leads to interesting knock-on effects; for example, a smaller alliance might be able to hold ground without a fleet from the other side of the map landing on top of it. No matter the outcome, every group will have to rethink how it moves and solve a new set of problems. This is where EVE players are at their best.”
Against a backdrop of strange shifts affecting the fabric of New Eden and wormhole space, even established technologies are being forced to adapt, with Upwell’s Ansiblex network among those feeling the effects.
Until now, Ansiblex networks have let alliances move large fleets without this kind of constraint. Each gate now holds a limited pool of energy that drains with every ship that passes through and refills slowly afterwards. Once it’s empty, the gate is unusable until it recovers. Jump cost depends on the destination, distance from an alliance’s capital system, and the ship itself, with different ship types carrying different costs. Journeys that carry a fleet far from its home territory drain the gate far more than trips heading back toward it. Only subcapital ship classes can use the network, and each gate is now restricted to members of the alliance that owns it rather than its wider network of allies.
Alliances can still reach anywhere in New Eden, but the cost climbs with distance, giving every group a practical operating range for its Ansiblex network. The benefit is greatest for smaller groups. Where a much larger fleet could previously arrive from the far side of the map with little warning, players will now have a much clearer sense of what may reach them, from where, and in what numbers. Ansiblexes remain only one of several ways fleets can project across space.
Other key features of the Cradle of War major update include:
Pirate Insurgency Changes: Pirate Insurgencies in low-security space are now shorter and spread faster, giving players greater control over how and where corruption spreads. A new battlecruiser-sized “Moderate” combat site, the Insurgency counterpart to Cradle of War’s battlecruiser Factional Warfare site, joins reinforcement-cycle changes that reward winning an Insurgency outright over farming the sites around it.
Wormhole Combat Site Overhaul: Encounters across Class 1 to Class 3 wormhole combat sites have been modernized with smarter enemies, clearer objectives, and a refreshed visual pass.
Pochven Updates: More roaming enemy fleets with smarter behavior, adjusted wormhole connections in and out of the region, and revised fleet-size caps, with Vigilance Point increasing from 10 to 12 ships and Observatory Flashpoint dropping from 15 to 12.
Ship Balance: Marauders and Black Ops battleships are now lighter for easier wormhole travel. Underperforming heavy assault cruisers, assault frigates, and railgun ships have been buffed, lancer dreadnoughts are more durable, and a cheaper Zero-Point Field Manipulator is expected to lower Tech II Triglavian production costs.
Rampant Drone Fabricator Rewards: The challenging Rampant Drone Fabricator – a new piece of wormhole content introduced this summer featuring a ‘horde mode’ mechanic – becomes more rewarding, yielding additional Fabricator Data that can be exchanged in the Pochven LP Store for powerful new drone upgrades. These include four new mutaplasmids for customizing drone support modules and an exclusive Hybrid Drone skill book that increases hybrid drone damage by 3% per level. Quality-of-life changes also make it easier to bring interdictors into Fabricator fleets.
Much of today’s update was shaped directly by feedback from the Council of Stellar Management and player groups, including Wormhole UN and FW Parliament, and shares a common thread: revisiting systems players have optimized over the years to create room for new strategies. Pirate Insurgencies now move faster and place greater emphasis on winning the conflict. Pochven’s fleet-size and reward changes create new challenges, while Class 1 to Class 3 wormhole combat sites modernize some of EVE’s oldest PvE content with smarter enemies, clearer objectives and refreshed environments, bringing them more closely in line with the rest of EVE’s PvE experience. Ansiblex jump bridge changes cut deepest into that established order, reshaping how alliances move and forcing groups across nullsec to reconsider how they project power, hold territory and respond to threats.
On Wednesday Cloud Imperium's confirmation statement was posted by UK Companies House. For the first time since 2022 the company was able to file the form without updates. From my perspective, not needing to update any information is a good thing.
Registered office address and single alternative inspection location (SAIL), if applicable.
Officers: Names, dates of birth, service addresses, and residential details of directors and company secretaries.
Persons with Significant Control (PSC): Individuals or legal entities holding more than 25% of shares or voting rights, or who otherwise exercise control.
Principal business activities: Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) codes describing what the business does.
Share capital and shareholder information: Total number of shares issued, aggregate nominal value, currency, and a list of shareholders (including changes in shareholdings since the last statement).
Registered email address: A valid contact email for Companies House correspondence (introduced under the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act).
Lawful purpose statement: A formal confirmation that the company's intended future activities are lawful.
In 2023 Cloud Imperium needed to provide an update to the shareholder information. In October 2022 the company conducted a 10:1 share split which was recorded the following year. In July 2023 the company allocated 30,120 shares to the founders of Turbulent in association of the Turbulent acquisition.
In 2024 the retirement of CIG co-founder Ortwin Freyermuth resulted in wholesale changes to ownership. The Calders' ownership stake in CIG rose to 23.1%, with Keith Calder's Indus Management holding 20.7% of the company's shares.
In 2025 Indus Management purchased 247,520 shares of CIG for $5 million, pushing the Calder's combined ownership of the company up to 23% and Keith Calder's shares accounting for 22.4%. According to the UK Companies House information on confirmation statements, Keith Calder's name will have to appear if Indus Management reaches 25% of the shares. The additional £10 million loan presumably also from Indus does not need to be disclosed in confirmation statements.
But as of last week the Calders combined and individual stakes don't reach the level of requiring such disclosure to the UK government. Of course, we do have the example of 2022's stock split that was performed a month into the next year's disclosure window. But as of now everything looks relatively stable financially.
I did find one fascinating thing about the new World of Warcraft Forever infrastructure I wanted to post about. No realms. But that doesn't mean the game is played on a single giant realm like a fantasy EVE Online. According to the presentation I watched, a player just picks a ruleset and starts playing. An associated article indicates the same thing. I'm not exactly sure, but other sources indicate players are placed into shards in their own geographic regions.
Looking at the article, the devs place a large amount of the reason for the change from Retail WoW as social interaction.
World of Warcraft: Forever is also taking a new approach to how players choose where they play. For many players, that first realm choice has always carried a lot of weight: pick the right one and you can adventure with your friends, join the right community, and find groups more easily; pick a different one and you might discover too late that the people you wanted to play with are somewhere else entirely.
Instead of asking players to make that decision before creating a character, World of Warcraft: Forever is going realmless, making it easier to connect with friends while still preserving the community feel that has always made realms memorable.
I should mention that throwing all players together by region and playstyle also helps prevent the need for the dreaded server merge.
Each ruleset functions more like its own large ecosystem than a single traditional realm. This is not one giant realm for everyone, and cross-ruleset grouping is not supported. Factions remain separate, so Horde and Alliance players still cannot group together. Players can group, run dungeons, and raid with others who have chosen the same ruleset. Hardcore will remain a fully enclosed ecosystem, but if a Hardcore character dies, that character can transfer to another ruleset, including PvP.
Also, the devs are introducing something I never really thought about in my 17 years of playing EVE and 7 years of playing Final Fantasy XIV, selecting two names.
As part of the server updates, characters will also use two-part names, similar to having a “first name” and “last name.” Because names will be unique per region, this gives players more room to create original character names, such as “Ana Forever,” while keeping those identities recognizable across the larger connected environment.
Above were just the impressions I had after thinking about the situation for a couple of days. Below are Gemini's highlights on how the system will work.
Rulesets are strict silos: Realmless does not mean universal cross-play. You cannot group, run dungeons, or raid across ruleset boundaries (e.g., a Normal player cannot group with a PvP player). Faction walls (Horde vs. Alliance) also remain firmly in place.
Shared economy: Each ruleset ecosystem maintains its own regional Auction House and mailing network. A single macro-economy handles materials and consumables per ruleset rather than fractured local realm economies.
Social clustering & sharding: Because everyone on the same ruleset shares one macro-population, the backend sorts who you see in the open world. Priority clustering groups you with guildmates, friends, and players you recently interacted with to recreate the feeling of a local community without server caps.
Two-part character names: Without realm suffixes to distinguish identical names (e.g., Shadow-Illidan), Forever requires first and last names (such as "Ana Forever") that are unique across your entire region.
Having played EVE and FFXIV for so long I've forgotten some of the pain points I experienced when I played Vanilla WoW back in 2005-2006. EVE doesn't have server merges because the game runs on a single shard, two if you include the Serenity shard required by the Chinese Community Party and only runs in China. As for Square Enix' global servers, they haven't had to conduct a server merge since the relaunch of A Realm Reborn back in 2013. I'm interested to see how the new innovations for WoW Forever work out.
I have to say the biggest news out of BlizzCon over the weekend was the news of World of Warcraft Forever. No, Fenris Creations' CEO Hilmar Veigar Pétursson has not conducted a hostile takeover of Blizzard Entertainment. If I understand the concept, the player cap will forever be set to 60 and all further progression is horizontal. Kind of what I remember from Elder Scrolls Online. Also, players will remain within the lands of Vanilla WoW exploring all the mysteries the developers had planned but never got to use.
I'm not really qualified to opine on the new version of WoW right now since I stopped playing the game back in 2006. But I think I am qualified to anticipate what WoW Forever will do to the video game release calendar.
Any company that bailed on releasing a game in the final three months of 2026 is breathing a sign of relief they made the right choice. On top of the release of Forever on 4 November comes the much anticipated release of Grand Theft Auto VI on 18 November. Between the release of new entries from two classic franchises I'd say little attention will be available for other games in the releasing in the fourth quarter.
My favorite games hopefully shouldn't have an issue. Final Fantasy XIV's Evercold expansion is scheduled to launch sometime in January 2027. EVE Online's winter expansion hopefully will not launch in November. I think Fenris could get away with releasing the expansion on 8 December, giving curious people a month to play the new game before the series business of internet spaceships. And Cloud Imperium? They had already delayed the launch of Squadron 42 to the second quarter of 2027. But I wonder the effect on the biggest sales event, the Intergalactic Aerospace Expo. Something to watch out for in 8 weeks.
The news coming out of BlizzCon in Anaheim this year has me posting on a Sunday. While I am not the target audience for American triple-A games, I have to appreciate the longevity of one of Blizzard Entertainment's classic game franchises, Diablo.
Probably the biggest Diablo news was the announcement of Diablo V coming out sometime in 2029. I've never played a Diablo game but have seen enough clips over the years to kind of understand what is going on in the trailer.
But the following trailer hyping up 30 years of Diablo really got me to thinking. I never played but the game is an all-time classic. So I decided to take a look at what was going on 30 years ago with the franchises I cover.
First up is EVE Online. I know, I know, EVE did not launch until 2003. But Fenris Creations will also celebrate its 30th year of operations in 2027. According to official Icelandic business records, FC was originally incorporated on 16 July 1997.
Next comes my current main game, Final Fantasy XIV. The game dates back to its original start in 2010, but the Final Fantasy franchise dates back to 1987. I do have to say that Diablo's launch month was a very good month for video games. Four weeks after Diablo launched on 3 January 1997, Square released Final Fantasy VII in Japan. For those wondering, Final Fantasy VII release in the U.S. in September and Europe in November. An interesting fact is that FFVII was the first Final Fantasy game to release in Europe.
Finally, I have to mention Star Citizen because of Chris Roberts. If Star Citizen and Squadron 42 are the spiritual successors to the Wing Commander series, then I'd be remiss in not pointing out that the last Wing Commander game Roberts released, Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom, released on 8 February 1996, almost a full year ahead of Diablo's launch.
I do want to point out something about the cost of developing video games back in the mid-1990s. When Wing Commander IV launched, Origin bragged that the $12 million development cost, the record at the time, was "the price of freedom." Of course, Wing Commander IV was a bit unusual as 90% of the development cost was shooting the cutscenes.
That record only lasted a year as 1997's Final Fantasy VII took $40-$45 million to develop with another $40 million spent in marketing the game. Meanwhile, Diablo only needed to sell 20,000 copies to break even.
