Elite: Dangerous Dev Announces Layoffs, New Tycoon Game

Elite: Dangerous studio Frontier Developments had a pair of announcements to make Monday: 1) The UK-based studio is laying off a number of employees and 2) they are working on a new Tycoon game.

The new game is called Coaster Park Tycoon, and Eurogamer reports that it's expected to live as a second major franchise alongside PC space sim Elite: Dangerous, which launched in the middle of December 2014 and remains in ongoing development.

The announcement "marks the next stage in Frontier's transition towards increasing its proportion of self-published revenue," Frontier said. The new game is due out in 2016 for PC.

As for the layoffs, Frontier confirmed that it had cut 15 "content creation" jobs, lowering the studio's total headcount from 281 to 266. The cuts were needed to "match the needs of these two projects," Frontier said, referring to Elite: Dangerous and Coaster Park Tycoon.

As part of the move, Frontier's Canada-based studio, which was formed in August 2012, will effectively close.

In addition to Elite: Dangerous and Coaster Park Tycoon, Frontier is working on Xbox 360 and Xbox One rollercoaster game ScreamRide, which is due to launch for both platforms in March 2015.