Tomb Raider (1996 video game)
Tomb Raider is an action-adventure video game developed by Core Design and published by Eidos Interactive. It was released in 1996 for Sega Saturn, PlayStation and MS-DOS. "Tomb Raider" was released for N-Gage devices in 2003, and for the PlayStation Network in North America in August 2009, and in Europe in August 2010. "Tomb Raider" follows the exploits of Lara Croft, an English archaeologist in search of ancient treasures.
Rise of the Tomb Raider
On 1 August 2013, Square Enix Europe executive Phil Rogers announced that a new "Tomb Raider" game was in development for the eighth generation of video game consoles. Microsoft announced the game during an E3 2014 press conference, with a scheduled late-2015 release. At Gamescom 2014, the company said that "Rise of the Tomb Raider" would be an exclusive for its Xbox series of video-game platforms, including Xbox 360 and Xbox One; according to Microsoft Studios executive Phil Spencer, it would be a timed exclusive similar to Microsoft's deal with Capcom and Crytek on "Dead Rising 3" and "" (in which both were released for Microsoft Windows). This sparked player outrage from players (since "Tomb Raider" had a longer history with PlayStation), who blamed franchise owner Square Enix for the decision. Microsoft's calling the game "exclusive on Xbox for holiday 2015" caused confusion among the gaming press and players. Rogers explained in 2015 that the Microsoft timed exclusivity was primarily due to the company's strong support for the 2013 reboot. Crystal Dynamics head Darrell Gallagher said that the partnership could help the team "deliver the best game that [they] can". Rogers called the arrangement a "natural" evolution and a "tough" decision.