It’s an issue that Crystal Dynamics, Square Enix and Microsoft have been dancing around ever since the Xbox exclusivity deal for Rise of the Tomb Raider was announced at Gamescom last year, and it has even been admitted that there is a certain duration to this deal, but we now know when to expect to see the game appear on platforms other than the Xbox One and Xbox 360.
Out on November 10th for the two Microsoft consoles, Square have now revealed that the game will then appear on PC in early 2016 before making its way to the PlayStation 4 for holiday 2016, making it a one year exclusivity period on console.
It’s certainly odd timing for such an announcement to be made as, even though we knew it was coming eventually, Rise of the Tomb Raider was set to act as a spoiler to Uncharted 4 (before that game was delayed) and a big coup to try and draw more people to the Xbox One. That there’s now a rough release window for other platforms feels like it detracts from that effect.
via Gematsu
hazelam
i’ll wait, maybe we’ll get the dlc they’ll inevitably release for the game in the year before it hits PS4.
gernboes
Well, this whole exclusivity stuff is a little bit annoying…
But what concerns me more is that it comes out on the 360 as well? So we are getting a cross generation game again? I thought the time for those was over? (and we are talking about a late 2016 release on PS4!)
No way i’ll buy a Box for Tomb Raider, but this late im not sure i will be interested in buying it at all…
cam_manutd
From a marketing perspective, this will hurt Microsoft as it will hinder sales and console sales (minimal sure) because it was announced before release. If it was after, I’m sure it would have done more good for Xbox especially in the face of Uncharted. But, now its been announced I doubt it will make much difference and it will be Resident Evil 4.
It will sell far more on PS4 when it releases invariably.
Avenger
I think people overestimate what MS are doing with exclusivity. I don’t think its so much the case of grabbing PS4 players attention as it is building up an ensemble of games to entice new comers. Tomb raider is good, but its a drop in the ocean, a pixel towards a bigger picture of content that MS are delivering. I can’t see this announcement hurting sales much at all, unless there was a raft of PS4 players who were going to buy an XB1 for the one game.
stonyk
All a bit foolish really. I won’t be buying the game on PS4 for full retail price if its a year old. I’ll wait another year for it to drop to £10 and by then I’ll have lost interest and probably not bother.
Seems so crazy to make a game for the PS4 and take money to not release it. Fair enough its in an attempt to maximize income, but just feels strange.
The exclusive DLC sounds a bit more plausable – “here, take some money and use it to make some extra content we can give to our user base” sounds a bit more idealistic than “here, take some money to not release that code you’ve developed until another year later. Just leave it in the filing cupboard for the time being”.
It should be the developers choice to say “no – we won’t do something as crazy as that, but if you give us that money we’ll make something awesome exclusively for you, seeing as though you are paying for its development”.