Be Excellent To Each Other

But the event was in Germany. Phil Harrison should have announced it in German.

It sounds horrible though.

"Some time holiday next year".

At least try, "Some time around the holidays next year"

Though I do always want to ask which holiday.

To me, using the term holiday to describe a date makes as much sense as not adopting the metric system but I'm not American so what would I know?

Geography, history, culture...

Seems far more likely it'll be a timed exclusivity with MS, and part of the deal (as it always does with MS) requires remaining silent on other platforms until an agreed later date.

Maybe they were scared of going toe to toe with Uncharted 4, which is due out in the same timeframe.

I suppose this way the PS4 install base will be huge by the time a PS4 version comes around.

I don't care about Tomb Raider, but i hate exclusivity deals. Specially for the Xbone, since it's the worst excuse for a console ever. And i'm serious about that.

Timed exclusive confirmed.

While it's good to have that confirmed it really grates that there has to be this extended dialogue around their weaselly worded announcement. Obviously it's the first thing people are going to ask so why make it so difficult? Are they hoping that people will just run out in droves and buy Xboxes before the inevitable clarification comes in?

It's wearying how the entire industry just feels so insulting and consumer unfriendly at times. "Here is a new game, it'll be coming out at roughly this time" so easily turns into this kind of bullshit over timed exclusives and retailer-specific pre-order DLC and all the other shite. Christ, even the fact that we've had to invent and all understand a lexicon that includes phrases like 'timed exclusive' and 'retailer-specific pre-order DLC' is just soul destroying.

I agree, totally. Well put.

Yep. Worse still that the contract between MS & SE seemingly prevented SE or Crystal Dynamics giving out clear information (lying by omission), but an MS exec just let it slip in an interview. Why couldn't everyone involved just be upfront about it from the start?

Something else I forgot to moan about: that article points out that the game's being released on the 360 as well as the Xbone, which I genuinely didn't realise until now. So two years after the current gen hardware hit the shops and brand new AAA games are still being targetted at a hardware set which, by that time, will be fully ten years old. Surely that's way past the point it's time to move on and properly commit to the (by the time now very) new generation?

Not if people still own the 360, you would be missing out on a lot of sales..

The sneakier way to do it would have been to pull a Titanfall and not mention the 360 release until people were already sold on the Xbox One release.

But yes, it's disappointing. The Crew just got announced for Xbox 360 too.

Not many publishers are pumping a lot of money into a current gen only game unless Microsoft or Sony are bankrolling them.

This is mostly fine by me, I like a lot of the smaller games, and Sony's first party output is usually pretty good, but it's weird that I can't really think of many games that aren't being put out for the old consoles outside of AssCreed Unity, The Witcher 3 and Arkham Knight.

Well, yeah. but I'm not convinced there'll be a lot of people left who would buy a new game and haven't yet upgraded two years down the line. And it's not like those sales on the 360 are pure profit or anything; they need to be balanced against the dev and test time you spend on that specific version which isn't going to be a trivial cost.

ETA: also at some point it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy; if you never stop releasing games for the last generation then people don't have a reason to upgrade. You need to just cut the cord at some point.

Sure, but the Xbox 360 is still selling in good numbers today. There are people buying an Xbox 360 today, maybe buying Tomb Raider, and they won't even think about buying another console for at least five years. Plenty of other people who game on an Xbox 360 with no plans to upgrade any time soon. These groups are actually the majority.

SE will absolutely get more sales by releasing it on 360 too, even if it's a bit disappointing for those of us with the new consoles.

This console generation we are in at the moment is going to be very drawn out. It really is early days at the moment. There's going to be a bigger overlap than with any previous generation, most likely.

Don't forget that publishers will lose out on millions of potential customers if they only release them on the Xbone and PS4. They only have combined sales of less than 15 million, whereas the PS3 and X360 has combined sales of 160 million. While they can do games for only the new consoles, they won't until it's properly worth it.

Looking here, there are a good few games that were released in 2006 and 2007, two whole years after the new console came out.

MS killed off the original Xbox quite quickly anyway (the original Xbox was expensive to manufacture, and they had a bad deal with their chip manufactures, making cost-cutting really hard), if you look at the PS2, there was loads of stuff released on PS2 that also came to the 360 or PS3.

Architecture-wise, it's a bit easier to port up these days too. The PC market is really robust, so you want to be doing a PC version. Cross platform just makes most sense from a publisher's perspective.

My brother's family just got an Xbox 360 this Christmas with some sort of Xbox Live Gold offer. Not sure why, but yeah, it's still selling.

The last game released for the PS2 was Pro Evo Soccer 2014.

Have they stopped making them yet? I remember a few years ago (2 or 3) they were actually still selling the PS2 in some countries.

My nephew is getting a PS3 or a 360 for Christmas (he rang me for advice on which to get, and I eventually sided with the 360 because of the nicer controllers and the slightly more attractive price).

Out of curiosity, why a last gen console rather than a current one? Is it just the price, or the game selection or something else?

Money, mainly.

It occurs to me that a lot of families bought Wiis for their kids, and now that the kids are a bit older they're upgrading to that Xbox 360 that they have been eyeing for years.

So its now confirmed that Rise of the Tomb Raider will come to PS4 and PC but for PS4 its quite a wait

http://kotaku.com/new-tomb-raider-will- ... 1719747550

Gah! Fuckers.

Funny because it looks like for SE the deal was attractive because they would get a bag of money from MS, and avoid going head to head with Uncharted 4, but Uncharted 4 got delayed and one they will be anyway.

I didn't really have a problem with MS getting a window of exclusivity on this game, I had a problem with the contractually agreed intentionally misleading language that SE and MS used to announce the window of exclusivity.

Fair enough take Microsoft's money to delay other versions of the game, but don't agree to intentionally mislead your customers by pretending it is a proper exclusive rather than a timed one. I don't have an issue with the concept of exclusivity, just the lack of transparency from SE in this instance.

It's a pretty disrespectful way to treat customers, and pretty much anyone in the know could see through it anyway.

I'm glad that now they have come clean, but they should have really been honest about it from the start. Granted MS probably would have paid less had the initial announcement clearly stated it would come to PS4/PC at a later date, but it would have still been the right thing to do.

I'd feel much the same way about Capcom if SF5 came to Xbox One at point down the line, but Sony are pretty damn good at using clear and precise language to describe the nature of any exclusive titles they have secured these days.

So reviews for this are dropping today and are all positive

IGN 9.3/10 http://ca.ign.com/articles/2015/11/09/rise-of-the-tomb-raider-review

Gamespot - 9/10 http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/rise-of-the-tomb-raider-review/1900-6416305/

Destructoid - 7.5/10 http://www.destructoid.com/review-rise-of-the-tomb-raider-319740.phtml

Game Informer - 9.5/10 http://www.gameinformer.com/games/rise_of_the_tomb_raider/b/xboxone/archive/2015/11/09/rise-of-the-tomb-raider-review-game-informer.aspx

Kotaku - Yes http://kotaku.com/rise-of-the-tomb-raider-the-kotaku-review-1741392788

Games Rader - 4.5/5 http://www.gamesradar.com/rise-tomb-raider-review/

Can't wait to play this next Christmas.

Interesting. I'd only actually read the Eurogamer review and found it to be a pretty lukewarm response.

Destructoid is very lukewarm as well (from the ones i've looked at) - however I'm with Myp - I'll pick this up for the PS4 when its released.

Yeah, I was about to say exactly that. I'll still buy it (next Christmas) and enjoy the shit out of it as I loved the last one but I was a bit disappointed by the EG review.

I'm looking forward to playing this THIS Christmas! Ha, in your face! Who's laughing now etc etc.

Feex.

Enjoy your Fallout 4 at 0fps

Yeah, you're probably right. I've got Halo 5 and Batman to do first so they'll take me well into 2016.

I think this just looks terrific. I played a level at EGX and it was very nice. Shame I've got to wait but I ain't buying a XB1 just to play it early. Mind you, Halo looks good too. And. Um. Er. Yeah, I'll wait.

The last one really took me by surprise I thought it was absolutely fantastic. First TR game I had ever played too. Really looking forward to the next one

APPARENTLY, this might be coming to PC on 29 January 2016.

http://m.uk.ign.com/articles/2015/12/14 ... in-january

I'll be picking it up if it does. PC + PS4 + WiiU pretty much covers all gaming angles these days.

Oh gosh yes please !

Turns out, if anyone really wanted to play Rise of The Tomb Raider but doesn't want to buy an xbone you could always pick up the Xbox 360 version which runs pretty darn well.

Mind you, Tomb Raider Reboot was bloody lovely on 360 anyway. I'll wait for the PC version but the option is there to those who might be upset they won't get to play it on PS4 for 12 months.

PC Release Date: 28 January 2016!

There also is quite a bit of speculation that its going to be part of some graphics card bundles which normally means that you should be able to pick up steam codes for it cheaply - cdkeys have it for £21 right now (and another £1.05 off for their facebook code)

http://www.cdkeys.com/pc/games/rise-of- ... -key-steam

There's also some junk out there that sez "PC iz betterer than the Xbone" for like graphics, resolution and FMAA12 and anti-scaling.

That's no great shock, the PS2 version would look better than the bone most likely.

That cuts me deep man...

Sorry dude, I'm sure 720/900p is fine and acceptable to most people. It just makes my eyes bleed these days. If I wanted 720p I'd turn on the PS3.

That's fair enough. I still think it looks great but then again, I played Killer Instinct on the Gameboy the other day and thought that looked great too.

I think I must appreciate them on different levels to you.