What's happening to Eidos? While I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for them because of warm feelings towards Ion Storm, they've been stumbling of late. Their failure to turn the strong IP Tomb Raider into the genuinely mind-blowing hit it deserved to be left them grasping. Deus Ex 2 has not performed well. Thief 3's post-release media blitz (May 26th is the release date) will have to carry on without the lead designer.
And now, rumors of a takeover amidst precipitously falling stock prices.
Maybe it would be all right for Eidos to enfold itself into EA or Ubisoft. Better than releasing such excreable titles as 25 to Life. Let's all consolidate! Hey, it worked so well for the music industry.
And all we'll be playing in the future will be endless iterations of sports games and FPS war games. Whoo-hoo.
Seriously, I just read through the latest EGM and I didn't see one thing I was excited about. The only games I can even name that I'm looking forward to are old ones I plan on finally buying, Dreamfall (if they don't screw that up), and a few others (some of which I can't buy because I don't have an Xbox, boohoo). If I see just one more tough city streets game or Final Fantasy I'm gonna start breakin' heads...probably my own.
Posted by: Phincus | 05/24/2004 at 03:11 PM
I know they did Tomb Raider, but come on...this is the company that thought Ion Storm was a good idea? If it weren't for the ex-Looking Glass folk getting folded in, they were DOOMED with that move. Now, Eidos is looking more and more like Acclaim every day...one lucky hit and no way to repeat.
Posted by: Flynn | 05/24/2004 at 05:20 PM
If all this consolidation keeps happening, it might spell the death of interesting games on consoles. Even the music industry has some hope, since the costs of producing an album aren't very prohibitive, but creating a well-designed game on a proprietary system has a pretty significant investment of time and money.
I suppose this sort of thing is inevitable as gaming becomes more and more mainstream.
Posted by: Avenging Dentist | 05/24/2004 at 09:18 PM
Actually, if you look around right now, the pendulum is starting to swing back in favor of startup formation. Investor money is starting to unfreeze, and so everybody that got consolidated, but prefers the small studio lifestyle is moving back. Double-Fine, Castaway, Flagship, and a few other ones I know about but am not permitted to speak of (because they haven't announced their existance yet) have been sucking many talented folks out of EA (where I work as a game designer) for the last few months.
This happens about every 4 or 5 years... usually around the same schedule as the new console platform releases. All these startups appear, and most of them will ultimately get bought out, or die. The investor money will start to freeze up again, and everybody will wind up working for one of the big kids for a few years, spawning dozens of "there's no more creativity in videogames" articles. It's the game industry circle of life.
Big companies seem to take a lot of flak for showing no "creativity" or "innovation." For what it's worth, I have only had my creative input encouraged while working at EA. I don't love everything about the company, to be sure, but I'd never say they didn't understand creativity or innovation.
Posted by: ClockworkGrue | 05/25/2004 at 08:05 AM
Jane,
Why the soft spot for Ion Storm?
Posted by: BlackAttic | 05/25/2004 at 10:26 AM
oh yeah, eidos the kings of inovation. they are just as sequel happy as the other devs, and to be honest, they never did shit other than put tits on a mediocore puzzle/adventure game. wow. groundbreaking. consolidation is a terrible curse that will seriously hinder the evolution of gaming, but there is a far more dangerous consolidation at hand, and that is the sammy/sega consolidation. you want to talk about inovation? one of the bravest hardware/software developers is running the risk of being bought out by the cultivators of 2-d fighting games (yes great 2d fighting games, but seriously). gone will be the days of rez. gone will be the days of space channel 5. gone will be the days of one of the greatest console mmorpgs ever (phantasy star, you everquest playin fruits). if the ds fails, imagine nintendo being purchased by EA. up with mods and grass roots developers, cause in the not so distant future, that will be where the real innovation will come from.
Posted by: eric | 05/25/2004 at 11:54 AM
Agreement with Flynn & others. If Eidos vanishes, it won't even leave a hole.
Posted by: BrainFromArous | 05/25/2004 at 12:23 PM
I love Tomb Raider. I hated to see the direction Eidos took on my favorite series of all time. Tomb Raider 1 and 2 were brilliant, the others just lost their creativity and feel. Games from Eidos that has great creative potential like Whiplash was not created as well as needs to be. I've been very anti-Eidos as of late, and they haven't done anything to change my mind. Maybe it's best for their top titles that the company merges with someone else.
Posted by: Lily | 05/25/2004 at 11:14 PM
In Eidos's defense, I have to say that they do fill an important role in the industry right now. As the industry consolidates around the risk-averse publishing giants, Eidos remains a mid-size publisher, small enough that they can/do take a risk from time to time and successful enough that a flop won't kill them (though a few flops might...). They are also able to support some of those startups that ClockworkGrue mentioned.
With Thief 3, Hitman: Contracts, and Shellshock: Nam 67, Eidos is bringing three solid games into being. Shellshock has the potential to be the first Vietnam game to explore the real dark side of that war in a "Full Metal Jacket/Apocalyse Now" kind of way. If knives and guns aren't your thing, they're bringing Singles to the US (dating/sex sim), something that it's hard to imagine EA doing.
I won't argue that Eidos is a perfect company, but I do think they have an important place in the industry.
Posted by: Clubberjack | 05/28/2004 at 07:24 AM
In Eidos's defense, I have to say that they do fill an important role in the industry right now. As the industry consolidates around the risk-averse publishing giants, Eidos remains a mid-size publisher, small enough that they can/do take a risk from time to time and successful enough that a flop won't kill them (though a few flops might...). They are also able to support some of those startups that ClockworkGrue mentioned.
With Thief 3, Hitman: Contracts, and Shellshock: Nam 67, Eidos is bringing three solid games into being. Shellshock has the potential to be the first Vietnam game to explore the real dark side of that war in a "Full Metal Jacket/Apocalyse Now" kind of way. If knives and guns aren't your thing, they're bringing Singles to the US (dating/sex sim), something that it's hard to imagine EA doing.
I won't argue that Eidos is a perfect company, but I do think they have an important place in the industry.
Posted by: Clubberjack | 05/28/2004 at 07:27 AM
Looks like the Ion Storm you're fond of isn't there for the most part anymore:
http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/32037
Posted by: L | 05/28/2004 at 07:36 PM
Why the softspot for Ion Storm? Who doesn't like Ion Storm? Get over Romero's failed ambitions and turn your eyes away from Ion Storm - Dallas. Take a look at Ion Storm - Austin. They produced Deus Ex, quite ground breaking as far as recent games are concerned. They were also the developers for Thief III. While the original Dallas creation wasn't so great, its Austin spawn was great
Posted by: David | 06/17/2004 at 04:00 PM
Why the softspot for Ion Storm? Who doesn't like Ion Storm? Get over Romero's failed ambitions and turn your eyes away from Ion Storm - Dallas. Take a look at Ion Storm - Austin. They produced Deus Ex, quite ground breaking as far as recent games are concerned. They were also the developers for Thief III. While the original Dallas creation wasn't so great, its Austin spawn was great
Posted by: David | 06/17/2004 at 04:01 PM
Why the softspot for Ion Storm? Who doesn't like Ion Storm? Get over Romero's failed ambitions and turn your eyes away from Ion Storm - Dallas. Take a look at Ion Storm - Austin. They produced Deus Ex, quite ground breaking as far as recent games are concerned. They were also the developers for Thief III. While the original Dallas creation wasn't so great, its Austin spawn was great
Posted by: David | 06/17/2004 at 04:01 PM
jpb ppyt psycholog zdrowa ywno nieruchomoci projektowanie stron agencja reklamowa soczewki kontaktowe nauka angielskiego agroturystyka opony klimatyzacja domy opieki akupunktura hydraulik projektowanie wntrz soha jpk paa ki wypadki tfrd jh sw jft pp fdr
Posted by: outsider | 04/11/2006 at 09:20 AM