Is Lara Croft about to run out of lives?
SCi Interactive, which owns the Tomb Raider video game franchise, is in a bad situation: It has about $24 million in cash and about $200 million in debt. That won't keep the company running much longer: For the six months ending December 31, the company lost about $170 million on revenues of $150 million.
What could save Lara? A buyout from a deep-pocketed media conglomerate. Two likely buyers -- NBC Universal (GE) or Time Warner (TWX), which already bought a 10% stake in the company in 2006.
The big picture makes sense: Big media is trying to get into video games any way it can, and snapping up a pre-established franchise, at a fire-sale price, has some logic to it. But buying a money-losing company is tougher than it looks. SCi has been trying to sell itself for months, and was close to a deal in January. When the talks fell through, the company's shares fell 54% and management was ousted; new CEO Phil Rogers has already fired 25% of his employees.
To give you an idea of how far the company has fallen, Time Warner bought its stake in SCi for about $90 million in 2006. Now those shares are worth about $11 million. If these current buyout talks don't lead to anything, then this may be one tomb that even Lara Croft can't get out of.
New report from Skillsearch found that 22% of those surveyed had been laid off within the past 12 months.
It's a step forward for Stop Killing Games.
The Callisto Protocol director thinks the solution involves the right people, the right timing, and perhaps a little bit of AI
I don't agree with that. I WISH I could agree with that. But buying habits and customer opinions prove otherwise
We've seen developers in the AAA space try new things and ideas. More often than not, the customers aren't willing to give things a chance, or not enough people buy into the project for it to grow.
Creativity works better in the indie space because the budgets, pressures, and expectations aren't the same.
it's a nice idea and it worked during the PS2/PS3-era when AAA didn't cost hundreds of millions of dollars. smaller budgets and shorter development time left room for more creativity and more risk. a game didn't need to sell 4 million+ copies to break even. things are different now.
This is the guy who bragged about crunching his staff and having them work through the night. Crunch culture has lost more talent and done more damage to the industry than any other factor. Screw him.
Seriously, Tomb Raider is overrated and overdone...