New Tomb Raider – Embracer CEO: “You have amazing plans that I believe in”

At the beginning of May 2022 it became known that the Swedish media group Embracer Group the Japanese publisher and game developer Square Enix the rights to the marks deus ex, Tomb Raider and Thief for $300 million will buy off. The development studios Crystal Dynamics, Eidos Montréal and Square Enix Montreal with a total of around 1,1000 employees spread over eight locations around the world are also part of the deal.

In the course of the year (between July and September) the final sale should take place. That works the shopping tour of the Embracer Tour so keep going.

As a little overview: As the largest gaming company in Europe, the Embracer Group owns nine independently operating business units: THQ Nordic, Coffee Stain, Koch Media/Deep Silver, Amplifier Game Invest, Saber Interactive, DECA Games, Gearbox Entertainment, Easybrain and Dark Horse Comics.

Tomb Raider with Unreal Engein 5

As part of the State of Unreal 22 show on April 5th, developer Crystal Dynamics announced that not only was it working on a new Tomb Raider spin-off, but this one as well based on Unreal Engine 5 created by Epic Games. So far, however, almost no information about the new project has been announced.

Embracer CEO spoke in an interview Lars Wingefors but now, among other things, about the acquisition of Crystal Dynamics and the Mark Tomb Raider and how this will affect the development studio. Above all, he emphasizes that the autonomy of the individual companies will remain. The CEO continues to have great confidence in the management of each of the three studios.

“With that in mind, if we have a more diversified business, we can take on more business risk — including developing AAA games,” he adds.

“We anticipate not having anything that will account for more than 5 percent of our revenue for the coming year, including a AAA release like Saints Row. And that’s why we’re more confident going through this transaction because we believe in making a reasonable deal out of it. For Tomb Raider, that’s the only thing they’ve announced, they have some amazing plans that I believe in.”

In addition, he is aware that this is “very traditional IPs” acts. After all, Tomb Raider, Thief, and Legacy of Kain all started in the 1990s, followed by Deus Ex in 2000.

Therefore, the financial return should also be corresponding. Wingefors sees great potential, for example, in the back catalogs of the series, which open up the possibility of ports, remakes and remasters. There are even opportunities for collaboration within the group.

“We will take good care of the people who do IPs and if we set reasonable expectations I think we will be pleased with the financial performance as well.”

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