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Tomb Raider Delays Worry Eidos
Thanks to several readers for pointing to a Yahoo/Reuters report discussing the continued delays to Lara Croft: The Angel Of Darkness, the latest in Eidos Interactive's Tomb Raider series. As the article mentions, "Already delayed twice, 'Lara Croft: The Angel of Darkness' is slotted for a release on June 20th. But that's looking less likely.. the game has to be in stores by June 30th in order for the company to recognize sales [estimated to be 1.5 to 2.5 million units] for its current financial year." With rumors of a delay into July for another long-awaited title, Republic: The Revolution, Eidos definitely has cause for financial concern. But of course, gamers will probably forgive and forget if both of these titles turn out well, even after so many delays.
that one day, these idiots pushing games out the door start to understand htat we want finished games, not "sort of, but not really, but only because we said its not a beta" software.
Yes, you hype a game before it comes out, if you hype too early, then people will lose interest, thats the risk you take when you start guessing at completion dates. Push out an early product, you may get more sales because more people are still interested, but they will not be happy with purchasing an unfinished product, and will tell their friends, post ot the net, etc...
Yes, all choices with release dates are a gamble, unless you actually choose a realistic date with padding for safety. Then either hold release once finished until the chosen date, or just release early, giving the people who preordered a nice surprise.
I'll wait for a good, finished game, and I think most others would too. But don't sell me unfinished junk, and expect me to wait for the patch, because I'll have already returned it, and will never look back.
Yet another illustration of why you shouldn't advertise products that aren't finished.
I honestly don't think that the existance of Eidos depends on these two titles. And I get the feeling that delayed games are common nowadays (and I won't mention that tall, blonde dude that lets god sort them out...).
It may even be better for Eidos: the longer the wait, the more people pre-order a title. And those will get the game before they can read any review. If the game is decent, well, no problem. If not, it is too late for the buyer and the company cashes in.
Loss of reputation? Come on... you buy a game, not a game from a company. If a reputation could really be damaged from a bad game, Sierra would have died after "Outpost" (the only game that made me write a letter to the publisher).
My cats ate my karma. They also wrote this comment.
Has anyone really cared about Tomb Raider since the first one? I mean the first one was somewhat original (and even kind of cool if you played the funky Saturn version). Tomb Raider 2 wasn't bad, but it was already going downhill at that point. By the time The Last Revelation came out, most people had a serious hatred or Lara Croft.
Then again, those are more avid gamers, not the casual ones, who seem to enjoy Lara's adventits... I mean adventures. When I heard about Angel of Darkness, I wasn't even mildly interested. Has there been some kind of groundbreaking graphical and gameplay developments that have lifted the series out of the mire?
As to whether it's vital for Eidos, I dunno. Like I said, the casual gamer clearly knows who Lara Croft is, and maybe it's just an easy way to maintain market mindshare. Those who aren't really into games more than fleetingly haven't really heard of things like "Deus Ex".
"But of course, gamers will probably forgive and forget if both of these titles turn out well, even after so many delays."
It'd be nice if that was true, but it's not. The moment you miss a target on an 18 month game development cycle, and don't address the issue, you've set yourself up for failure. Look at Daikatana. They slipped, and ended up having to get a new gaming engine (Quake 2). The results? They had to redo all the maps, QA testing, entity models, etc, just as if they'd started from scratch. The only difference was that they still had wasted all that money on the previous version.
Duke Nukem Forever is in the same situation. Because they were unwilling to release the versions based on the Unreal engine and the Quake engines, they've effectively flushed all the money they spent on those development branches down the toilet.
When you look at it this way, you realize that unless people will pay a couple hundred dollars a copy (or whatever it takes to make up for late shipping), you will be losing money in the long run compared to shipping on time. No game is that good.
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The Tomb Raider games were great, with the exception of Tomb Raider 3. Give the "originality" thing a rest. There haven't been really original games coming out anyways (gee, Wolfenstein 3D, real original). I will agree with you that Eidos has a nasty habit of releasing games -- especially Tomb Raider ones -- before they're really ready, and then never cleaning up their mess. However, the games are still fun, and some of the bugs are actually useful (like the jump-bug).
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