Tomb Raider Will Always Have a Place on Home Consoles

Despite the rise of other types of video games, the single-player AAA releases that have long dominated the market will never totally disappear, according to one leading publishing executive.

Ian Livingstone, who is the president of the Eidos division of Square Enix, has told MCV Pacific that, “I think people still want a single player experience. The games industry is diversifying and is making new ways of delivering, new ways of playing games.”

He added, “A game like Tomb Raider has historically been a graphically intensive single player experience, and that’s not simply going to disappear overnight.

“What we’re seeing is an emergence and a growth in the digital area and a new consumer which has come along (the casual gamer, which has almost reached ascendancy), but niche gamers are still going to be here and want content delivered specifically for them.”

Livingstone went on to say that playing AAA video games on a home console is the equivalent of watching movies in a fully equipped cinema.

The rise of YouTube and on-demand services might have led to a decrease in the number of viewers who go to cinemas, but these services can never completely replace them.

At the moment, the big project for Eidos is the reboot of Tomb Raider, handled by Crystal Dynamics, which is currently set to arrive on March 5 of 2013 after being pushed back from this year.

The game will try to cast the well-known Lara Croft in a new light, showing her on the first adventure she ever undertook.

The character is vulnerable and a bit naïve when she starts the game and the development team has shown sequences that show how trauma and the threat of violence will make Lara Croft a tougher character.

The E3 2012 demo for Tomb Raider was pretty impressive, but some were bothered by the implied threats of rape that followed the character.

Via: Tomb Raider Will Always Have a Place on Home Consoles