The new owners of Crystal Dynamics and Eidos-Montréal are hinting at reviving lost franchises, potentially including Deus Ex and Thief.
There’s no getting away from it, Square Enix’s $300 million sale of Tomb Raider, their two Western developers, and a bunch of other franchises is just plain odd. The amount of money involved seems absurdly small for such valuable properties and yet there is an upside: new owner Embracer Group could end up making a new Legacy Of Kain game… maybe.
The Swedish media giant has so far been relatively quiet about the acquisition, but in a new investor meeting they began to outline their plans, including taking over as publisher of Avengers and Guardians Of The Galaxy.
Developer Crystal Dynamics is already working on a new Tomb Raider, but Embracer has stated that they and Guardians Of The Galaxy developer Eidos-Montréal are planning ‘a number of very sizable AAA experiences’ that are ‘both based on beloved franchises that we will own as well as original IPs.’
There’s no official clue as to what these ‘beloved franchises’ might be but the most prominent are Deus Ex, Thief, and Legacy Of Kain, none of which have seen sequels in recent years.
Eidos-Montréal worked on the last two Deus Ex games and the 2014 reboot of Thief, so they’re the obvious ones to try again with those.
Legacy Of Kain: Soul Reaver, the most popular entry in the series, was by Crystal Dynamics, so presumably if that was to get a new entry, they’d work on that.
What’s most likely to happen first is remasters or remakes of some of these older games, which is something Embracer has already done with a number of other properties it’s bought. It’s also something that could be announced fairly quickly.
Although these are the most likely candidates for a revival they’re far from the only options, since Embracer now owns the rights for everything from Championship Manager to Gex. Although the ownership of some other franchises, such as Sleeping Dogs and Daikatana, is not yet clear.
A sequel to Guardians Of The Galaxy is also a possibility, as Embracer has implied they’ve already been in discussions with Disney over taking over publishing of Square Enix’s existing games.
Anything more than a remaster is going to take years to happen though, with CEO Lars Wingefors stating that, ‘the pipeline is generally broader beyond these two years. So there will be a few years now where there will not be as many big new games coming out, and there will be some amazing things coming through these studios looking further ahead.’
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