Crystal Dynamics announced in April that it was working on a new Tomb Raider game (opens in new tab) using Unreal Engine 5. While not the most unexpected news to date for a new addition to the highly successful game franchise, today's announcement was somewhat of a surprise. [Amazon Games is committed to providing players with the highest quality games from the best developers across all platforms and genres," said Christoph Hartmann, Vice President of Amazon Games. Our team is thrilled to be working with the talented and visionary team at Crystal Dynamics to bring the next chapter of the Lara Croft Saga to players around the world."

The announcement doesn't go into details about the new game, describing it as "a single-player, story-driven adventure that continues the story of Lara Croft" with "all the elements that made Tomb Raider one of gaming's most respected franchises." Players control the confident, multidimensional hero Lara Croft, who solves mind-boggling puzzles and faces and overcomes a wide variety of enemies in an environment that rewards exploration and creative pathfinding." While that sounds like a good thing, it could also apply to most of the Tomb Raider games to date.

Somewhat surprisingly, Crystal Dynamics is owned by the Embracer Group (opens in new tab). When the new Tomb Raider was announced, Crystal Dynamics was still owned by Square Enix, and Embracer began the acquisition process for the studio a month later. Something similar happened with the new "Tales from the Borderlands" (open in new tab) released this year: when Embracer acquired Gearbox, the publishing agreement with 2K Games was already in place, and it remained so despite the change in ownership.

"Following the acquisition by Embracer, Crystal Dynamics had a special opportunity to redefine the publishing relationship for Tomb Raider. We are looking for something transformational, and with Amazon Games, we have found a team that shares our creative vision, ambition, and values for the world of Lara Croft across all possibilities." They are in a unique position to rewrite what publishing and development collaboration can be, and we are eager to blaze this new trail together, starting with making the biggest and best 'Tomb Raider' game ever!"

.

The new "Tomb Raider" is a big pickup for Amazon Games, but not the only one: at last week's Game Awards, Amazon announced that it will also be publishing Namco Bandai's "Blue Protocol" in late 2023. As a publisher, we hope to have better luck than as a developer. Fantasy MMO "New World" (opens in new tab) is perfectly fine, but it's hardly world-burning, and third-person hero shooter "Crucible" (opens in new tab) was canceled before it finished closed beta testing.