tomb-raider-underworld posts

As promised last month, the OnLive streaming PC game service has started shipping pre-orders of its MicroConsole which lets folks who have a TV and a nearby wired internet connection play OnLive's selection of games on their TV set with an included wireless controller.

In addition to today's shipment announcement, OnLive revealed more details on its upcoming monthly flat rate pricing plan. The PlayPack option will actually start with people who get the MicroConsole. They will be able to play the games included in the PlayPack option for free in a beta test. The PlayPack option officially goes live for everyone on January 15 and will cost $9.99 a month. OnLive says over 40 games will be included in the PlayPack option when it goes live and will include the following titles:

Prince of Persia
NBA 2K10
Tomb Raider: Underworld
F.E.A.R. 2
Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X.
Unreal Tournament 3
Vin Diesel Wheelman
LEGO Batman
Defense Grid Gold
Saw
World of Goo

In case you are wondering, OnLive will still have the option to let folks pay for individual games, including titles not included in the PlayPack option, in 3 and 5 day trials as well as full PlayPass versions

This summer's planned release of Lara Croft and The Guardian of Light will represent the first game in the long running Tomb Raider action-adventure game series that will not only dump the "Tomb Raider" name from the game's title but be released exclusively as a digital download. Now Computer and Video Games has confirmed that the PC version will use Steam as its DRM platform, at least in the US.

Global brand manager Karl Stewart stated that while publisher Square Enix is possibly looking at "different distribution channels" for the $15 game, he adds, "I think for now, because it's online and it's got leader boards, Steam offers us the best opportunity to hit a broad audience with that type of game." Piracy is another reason for the Steam DRM decision with Stewart saying that for previous Tomb Raider games. "I go on some BitTorrent sites and within the first 48 hours there's like four hundred thousand downloads, it's crazy."

Gallery: Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light Screenshots

A few days ago we reported that the next game to feature Tomb Raider lead Lara Croft would be a downloadable co-op themed title with a top down isometric viewpoint. Today our sister site Joystiq, who got to see the game during GDC 2010, reports back that Lara Croft and The Guardian of Light will indeed be released for the PC (among other platforms) sometime this summer.

Don't expect a full game experience, however. Joystiq states that the game will have about six hours of total gameplay and will be priced accordingly at $15. We suspect this is something like a side project for developer Crystal Dynamics before they make a full fledged Tomb Raider game at some point in the future.

One of the big reasons that Square Enix bought Eidos a year ago was the Tomb Raider game franchise. Today Square Enix announced their plans for their first game in the series since buying Eidos and it's already looks to be a bit different. The game is titled Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light (yep, there is no "Tomb Raider" in the title) and will be released as a digital download game rather than a retail product.

The game is being developed by Crystal Dynamics, who have created the last few retail Tomb Raider games. There's no word yet on what the game will be all about with the press release only promising that it will be "completely new and very different." It will be shown behind closed doors to the media next week at the Game Developers Conference.

One of the co-creators of Eidos' Tomb Raider franchise, Toby Gard, has left the company's development team at Crystal Dynamics. According to Develop, Gard would not comment on why he has left the company, saying only that " I've started up my own consultancy business."

Gard was one of the main designers behind the original Tomb Raider at developer Core Design in 1995. He left Core after Tomb Raider's release to form Cofounding Factor, a development team that spent seven years creating a game, Galleon, that was finally released for the original Xbox in 2004 to poor reviews and sales. Eidos later brought Gard in as a consultant on Tomb Raider Legend and Gard ended up as the co-writer of the game's storyline along with other duties on the game. He also co-wrote and performed other duties on the next game in the series Tomb Raider Underworld. He was supposedly leading a group at Crystal Dynamics on a new project which most people believed would be the next Tomb Raider game.

Has it been a long, hard work week for you? Do you also have a few dollars burning in your pocket just waiting to be spent. Well, let's see if we can't do something about that in our scan of the weekend sales deals for PC games:

• Gamersgate has Tomb Raider Underworld on sale for 50 percent off its normal price for one day only. They also have some weekend long deals that we mentioned previously.
• The Impulse service has a number of games on sale this week including Grand Ages: Rome for $29.99
• Direct2Drive has Warhammer 40,000 Dawn of War II on sale this weekend for just $24.95
• GoG.com has cut the price of all their PC chess games by 20 percent this weekend.
• As we mentioned yesterday, Steam currently has all of Relic's THQ games on sale for 50 percent off this weekend. They also have a new DLC release for Railworks (the BNSF Officially Licensed ES44AC & SD40-2 add-on) on sale for $8.99 and a newly released adventure game, Nikopol: Secrets of the Immortals, is on sale for 20 percent off its normal price until August 6.

This developer diary entitled "Beneath the Ashes" details what Tomb Raider: Underworld fans can expect from the game's upcoming downloadable content. Lara Croft will have to return to her destroyed mansion to dig up more secrets her father left behind. This uncovers a labyrinth of medieval dungeons hidden beneath the ruins of her home. Just goes to show you never know what you'll find when poking around your basement.

Download HD Tomb Raider: Underworld DLC Developer Diary (84 MB)
Check out all Tomb Raider: Underworld downloads

Writing in games is perhaps given short shrift but last year the Writers Guild of America decided to expand their normal film and TV writing categories to include video games. This year for their second annual video game writing award they have nominated five games, four of which were released on the PC (Star Wars: The Force Unleashed in the sole exception).

Three of the nominees are certainly well know titles; Fallout 3 (writing credited to a huge team including lead writer Emil Pagliarulo and quest writing by Erik J. Caponi, Brian Chapin, Jon Paul Duvall, Kurt Kuhlmann, Alan Nanes, Bruce Nesmith, Fred Zeleny, Nate Ellis, William Killeen, Mark Nelson, and Justin McSweeney); Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3 (credited to writer Haris Orkin and Story Producer Mical Pedriana) and Tomb Raider Underworld (Story by Eric Lindstrom and Toby Guard and screenplay Lindstrom)

The fourth PC game nominee is very unusual indeed; a downloadable PC-Mac title called Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble. This mix of RPG and stats set in the 1920s is from Mousechief and the Writers Guild have nominated it and its writers (Keith Nemitz. and Adrianne Ambrose) alongside the big mainstream PC productions. Could this game pull off an upset win against all of these high profile titles?

If you had a game that sold 1.5 million copies in a little over a month worldwide that would be considered by most to be a huge hit. Not so for Eidos who announced late last week that their latest Lara Croft-starring action game Tomb Raider Underworld reached that sales mark. Even so, those numbers were below the UK publisher's expectations. The lower numbers also caused 30 people to be laid off at Eidos' Crystal Dynamics development studio.

So what to do about that, you may ask? The UK based Times web site chatted with Eidos's CFO Robert Brent who stated, "We need to look at everything, as we develop the next game. Look at how Batman changed successfully, from the rather sad character of the Michael Keaton era to the noir style of The Dark Knight." The article speculates that the next Tomb Raider game could try to appeal to a more female audience rather than the male gamer that has influenced the series since its start. Does that also mean no more live action Lara Croft models that look like Allison Carroll?

On Friday Eidos announced that due to lower than expected sales of Tomb Raider Underworld their previous estimates for their full year revenues would fall short of expectations. Now Kotaku, citing unnamed sources, is reporting that 30 team members from the game's developer Crystal Dynamics have now been laid off.

The report did not say how many other team members remain at the developer which shares space with Eidos' US branch in Northern California. Eidos said early on Friday that while Tomb Raider Underworld sold well in Europe and worldwide sales have totaled 1.5 million units so far the game did not sell as expected in the US.

Update: Our sister site Joystiq has now confirmed the layoffs via a spokesperson from Eidos.