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.

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.

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.

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.

Jane,

Why the soft spot for Ion Storm?

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.

Agreement with Flynn & others. If Eidos vanishes, it won't even leave a hole.

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.

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.

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.

Looks like the Ion Storm you're fond of isn't there for the most part anymore:
http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/32037

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

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

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

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Posted by: outsider on April 11, 2006 09:20 AM