Last year, Amazon scaled back its ambitious video game development plans and laid off thousands of people. While the retail giant canceled many projects, including a Lord of the Rings MMO, it is still committed to publishing two upcoming Tomb Raider games. But although those plans haven’t changed, Amazon’s retreat from gaming has indeed had an impact on both titles.
In a new interview with The Game Business, Embracer CEO Phil Rogers confirmed that Amazon’s backing out of games in 2025 had indeed had a direct impact on this year’s Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis and next year’s Tomb Raider: Catalyst. Embracer is the company that owns the Tomb Raider IP, but in 2022, it struck a deal with Amazon to produce a TV show and multiple games with the help of longtime Tomb Raider developer Crystal Dynamics. That’s all still happening, but things have changed behind the scenes, explained the CEO, though he clarified it’s not all been negative.
“It’s had a massive change in terms of who we’re connecting with,” said Rogers. “But in some ways, it’s just shortened some cycles.”
“[Amazon’s game streaming platform] Luna is interesting. I do think about how the gaming industry is going to expand, and streaming could really offer something. So, the fact [Amazon Games Studios and Amazon Luna] were quite separate before, but now it’s run as one group, means we’re closer to the Luna leadership, which has been helpful.”
Rogers thinks that there will always be “dedicated” hardware to play games on, but admits that a lot of people are fine with just turning a TV on and playing a game via streaming, and even suggests that some devs might start to develop games that are optimized for streaming. Or maybe you watch the upcoming Amazon Tomb Raider show starring Sophie Turner and then hit a button at the end to start playing the latest game via streaming.
“For a lot of people, coming home, turning on a TV, and then seeing an option between watch this or play that…isn’t that really cool? And then if you want to play, you just pick up your controller of choice.”
Embracer is open to reviving its other IP via license deals
As for other Embracer-owned IP, like Deus Ex, Red Faction, and yes, TimeSplitters, Rogers says that the company is open to licensing its vast library of IP to different studios and even to Hollywood to make new games, movies, or even remasters and remakes.
“We can’t work on everything ourselves,” Rogers said. “We don’t believe we have to make it all ourselves. We don’t just need to only do things that we can make.”
“I feel intuitively that licensing for this next 10-year chapter could be interesting. We could find other teams who say, ‘I’ve got this idea,’ ‘I’ve got a treatment.’ This happens in other entertainment forms, right? You get treatments, and you work on that basis. Whether it’s remakes, remasters, a new treatment, or an adaptation in some way.”
There you go, folks! Pitch your TimeSplitters reboot to Rogers, and who knows, maybe in a few years I’ll be blogging about it on Kotaku.
