Microsoft's Rise of the Tomb Raider exclusivity deal may run deeper than we initially thought as it has been confirmed that the company will be publishing the title- providing marketing, funds for the project and distribution support.
Unfortunately, the messaging from both companies is still a little unclear, so it is no longer certain that we will see the game on Sony consoles. However, we will likely still see a PC release, much like we did with Dead Rising 3, which Microsoft also had a hand in.
In an email sent to Game Informer, Square Enix confirmed that Microsoft would be publishing the Tomb Raider sequel: “Yes, Microsoft will be publishing ‘Rise of the Tomb Raider’ on Xbox. Microsoft has always seen huge potential in ‘Tomb Raider’ and they will get behind this game with more support across development, marketing and retail than ever before, which we believe will be a step in continuing to build the ‘Tomb Raider’ franchise as one of the biggest in gaming.”
Phil Spencer previously confirmed that he hasn't outright bought the Tomb Raider IP for Microsoft but it is still unclear as to what platforms Rise of the Tomb Raider will appear on in 2016, following the exclusivity duration.
Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.
KitGuru Says: Rise of the Tomb Raider is still a year away from launch but it would be nice if Microsoft and Square Enix could be more upfront about their plans for the game. There has been some confusion surrounding the deal ever since its announcement.
They just want their own Uncharted. ugh this makes me SO SO SO upset. Looks like I’ll be upgrading my PC then
Microsoft if need your games to go bad (so far minecraft is still safe)
Hey, it’s not bad for us PC users, we’ll still get a release. I don’t really like exclusives on principle, but I care more about exclusives when they’re single-console only (i.e. designed purely to force you to buy an inferior machine) than when they’re multi-plat.
I’m gonna agree with you that there’s just something about games that are exclusive to one console, but it annoys the hell out of me that a Sony classic is going Xbox/Microsoft exclusive :/
I guess. Nothing should be exclusive in the first place to become an ‘x’ classic though.
If microsoft is the publisher, they effectively have the rights to publish them to the platform they want, which is not playstation 4. Don’t expect the timed exclusive to end so quickly I guess. Most likely this will stay on X1 for at least a year before appearing on PC, and then god knows how long to PS4.
Yeah, you just know I would have sent MS all kind of hate mail if they took this away from PC. But I was super excited to play this on PS4 and just the whole principle of stealing a 20 year old game makes by upset. Maybe I’ll be over it once I have my Collectors Edition in my hands 🙂
But the thing is that some developers make games exclusives for a reason. E.g. Market research means most people will buy the game for console x and it wouldn’t be economical to change. Or because it’s just simpler to program it for one game. Or because of the controller (KB/Mouse, wiimote, console controler).
You can use all of the controllers on PC. And the PC demographic is by far the largest and all are extremely varied, so that just wouldn’t make sense. As for programming, both consoles are architecturally basically just low end PCs in software (DX) and hardware (the only exception being the shared and ES RAM). Nope, it’s either bad market research or by far the most likely of the options, money. MS and Sony have everyone in their pockets.