[dan da man]

News from Dave Perry's website...

www.gamesanimal.com

(Obviously Eidos agreed that Angel of Darkness was shyte also)

News breaking this morning sees Eidos, the UK’s leading publisher, ditch Core Design in favour of shifting development work on Tomb Raider games to an American studio.
“Eidos will now be evaluating Core's on-going direction and contribution as part of the group's overall development capabilities,” said the firm in a statement.

“Tomb Raider work has shifted to Crystal Dynamics an outfit that has a proven successful track record of being able to work cohesively with Eidos, a trick that Sports Interactive, Free Radical Design and Core haven’t fully mastered.

“As to what this means for the franchise remains to be seen. Lara failed to make the essential evolutionary leap with Angel of Darkness, and this has to be rectified for the brand to retain its super-AAA status. The mechanic that underpinned the game is simply obsolete. The third-person action game is now a subtly balanced, and highly tuned genre, with certain control and interactivity procedures now expected by players. The fact that Lara still revolves on the spot, still will try and walk into walls is just not acceptable any more. The fact that players must endlessly search environments pressing the action button in order to progress has no place in the modern videogame.

“Despite entering at Number one in the UK, albeit for a short time, it’s unlikely that Eidos will ever recover the development spend invested into AOD. Although the franchise is clearly in the black, tough times loom with franchise-driven consolidation poised to sweep the industry, purging/robbing it of smaller games.

“A key franchise such as Tomb Raider cannot afford to gamble its future on a development process that in this hardware generation, was simply not up to the task.

“As to whether this news is related to the recent departure of Core and Eidos director Jeremy Heath-Smith was not clarified. “