Why Elite 4 “has considerable potential”, even 10 years later

At the Develop conference earlier this week, David Braben confirmed that work was still in progress on Elite 4. So it’s a perfect time to post up an IP profile of the original IP.

The latest in our series of features looking at Great British Games, the profile argues that "Elite was a truly seminal property that featured some concepts that have still not been emulated to this day".

Elite’s curious development backstory, rights dispute, and its commercial potential when the series is revisited are all examined.

"The value of the Elite IP rights in today’s market is difficult to ascertain as it has been well overa decade since the last release," says author Nick Gibson.

"However, the popularity of Elite’s core gameplay concepts in many of today’s best-selling offline and online titles and the failure, in critics’ eyes, of the market to produce a comparable Elite-style game that lives up to the original release would suggest that it still has considerable potential."

Read the full piece here.