According to Christoph Hartmann, head of Amazon Games, development of the new episode is progressing well, despite the chaos that has taken place at Crystal Dynamics’ new owners, the Embracer Group.
In December 2022, Amazon announced that it would publish the new Lara Croft adventure developed by Crystal Dynamics, (one of) the studios behind the reboot trilogy. They, too, were not spared from layoffs last year, after their owner Embracer Group’s restructuring program forced them to downsize their team. (But at least they weren’t shut down completely… like Saints Row studio Volition). In an interview with IGN, Hartmann talked about how the new Tomb Raider is shaping up despite the turmoil surrounding Embracer.
“The studio, as far as I can tell, is pretty insulated from everything that is going on with Embracer. I mean, it has to be, because Embracer was never a company. It was just a collection of an incredibly large number of independent companies; and it’s not just game development, it’s like books and games and this and that. And they were always very protected. People obviously look at what the parent company is doing, but it’s never impacted resources, it’s never led to any changes in management for them, so they’re fine.
I mean, making a new Tomb Raider, the bar is so high. The longer you go, the higher the expectation, so it’s a huge, huge task, but things are progressing. I mean there are some really great ideas. Obviously we’re not going to share any of them with you, even though we’d love to, but things are going well, things are moving forward. And from what I could tell, Crystal was pretty sheltered… the studio’s been through a couple of ownership changes before anyway, it’s not brand new to them. They were kind of playing games with moving around anyway. And like, okay, new sheriff… you know what I mean, new owner in town. Let’s just keep doing what we’re doing and make games,” Hartmann said.
At least he’s optimistic.
Leave a Reply