The Future of Warframe Lies in the Past

At Digital Extremes' TennoCon 2024 community convention, held live in London (Canada) and online, the company revealed a host of news about its Warframe and Soulframe games.

Warframe, which has over 80 million players worldwide, will get its next narrative chapter, Warframe: 1999, Winter 2024 across all current platforms. The 1999 prologue quest - The Lotus Eaters - will debut on all platforms this August, providing a bite-sized introduction to Warframe: 1999 and continue the narrative stakes.

"I feel so blessed that this incredible community trusts us with this strange new adventure we are setting off on with Warframe: 1999," said Rebecca Ford, Creative Director on Warframe. "We've collaborated with our community collectively over the past 11 years and promise to continue to do so in an era full of space boy bands, Warframes and Protoframes meeting, and working to figure out: Where is Albrecht Entrati? We will be hitting the road on a worldwide tour to express our gratitude to players in person at gamescom, Tokyo Game Show, and more!"

Warframe: 1999 is an alternate world, not another open world area. "Narratively team up with a cast of six different iconic Protoframes in order to track down Dr. Entrati before the clock strikes midnight on New Year's Eve." The story-focused update features an infested 90's boy band with an original song, a romance system with a retro instant messenger, and notable new voices including Amelia Tyler (Baldur's Gate 3), Kevin Afghani (Super Mario Bros. Wonder), Melissa Medina (Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail), Trieve Blackwood-Cambridge (Forza Horizon 5), Alpha Takahashi (Cyberpunk 2077), and Ben Starr (Final Fantasy XVI).

Digital Extremes are currently developing their new IP - Soulframe. During TennoCon, they showed a live demo that gave a more in-depth look at the world, characters and mechanics. "Spinning the first narrative threads of Soulframe comes Warsongs Prologue, a Fable introducing the world, its characters, and beasts. Players got a sneak peek at an experimental approach to choices and character design. As an Envoy, heal the Ode curse to restore the forgotten culture and memories to the beings of Alca."

"The closed testing we've been doing with our community has been so impactful; we've learned a ton, and we continue to listen and learn each day," said Soulframe Creative Director, Geoff Crookes. "We're hoping to open this up to a lot more players this fall. Everything is still rough around the edges, but that's part of our style - the feedback is important to us, and we really do iterate on it regularly."

"The community we've formed around Soulframe has been really inspiring for the team and they are the backbone of everything we do," said Sarah Asselin, Soulframe Community Manager. "We're welcoming more new players than ever and we can't wait to share our progress through regular Devstreams with the team as we continue to peel back Soulframe's layers of intrigue."

The next TennoCon is scheduled for 18-19 July 2025, again in London, Ontario. This will be the tenth anniversary of the event.

Warframe was released in 2013 to a lukewarm reception. Over the next few years, however, it became a hugely successful live service title, with numerous story updates, open-world gameplay and more, ultimately saving Digital Extremes, even though their two attempts to act as a publisher of indie games both failed. Speaking at TennoCon, Digital Extremes CEO Steve Sinclair told VGC that many big studios that try their hand at live service games quickly lose faith in their products. "It comes out, it doesn't work and they throw it away," Sinclair said. "Isn't that a shame when you put so many years of your life into iterating on these systems or building the technology or building the beginning of a community, and because the operational costs are high, you get scared when you see the numbers dropping and you walk away. We've seen that with amazing releases that I think have massive potential, and I think they get kicked out too early."