The new adventures of the famous Lara Croft are developed on consoles and PC by the Crystal Dynamics studio, which was sold this summer.
This is a big blow for Amazon. The American e-commerce giant will be the publisher of the next installment of the video game saga tomb Raider, which features the famous adventurer Lara Croft. Created in the late 1990s, this license sold 88 million copies worldwide continues to produce successful games for consoles and PC. The latest, Shadow of the Tomb Raider (2018), approached 10 million sales.
The next opus, whose release date has not been revealed, is still being developed by the Crystal Dynamics studio, which took over the brand in 2003. The studio promises “the biggest and most expansive of all Tomb Raider games», «in an environment that rewards exploration, with challenging puzzles and a wide variety of enemies to defeat.The game will run on Epic Games’ 3D engine, Unreal Engine 5.
Games tomb Raider were published since 2009 by the Japanese video game giant Square-Enix. The latter had bought several European and Canadian studios, including Crystal Dynamics, in order to extend its catalog. But Square-Enix this summer sold all of its Western studios to the Swedish group Embracer, which operates as an investment fund leaving great freedom to entertainment companies that it acquires like a “greedy hippo”.
Long disappointed ambitions
This change in ownership allowed Crystal Dynamics to seek new partners to co-finance and support its new projects. Amazon will take care of marketing, distribution and communication campaigns around the next tomb Raiderbut will also bring a “creative support“. “It’s a great moment for us”told the New York Times Christoph Hartmann, vice president of Amazon Games.
Amazon’s ambitions in video games have long gone hand in hand with failure. It took until 2021 for one of its in-house games, the online role-playing game New World, to experience some success. In 2022, Amazon Games also had the flair to translate and edit the Korean online game for the West Lost Ark. The arrival of tomb Raider to its catalog could well strengthen the credibility of the American group in the video game industry.
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