Amazon Games will publish the next Tomb Raider title

By Tomas Franzese December 15, 2022

Amazon Games today announced that it will publish the next Tomb Raider game from Crystal Dynamics.

Crystal Dynamics first teased this new Tomb Raider title during an Unreal Engine 5 showcase in March. Shortly thereafter, Square Enix sold Crystal Dynamics — as well as its sister studios Eidos Montreal and Square Enix Montreal — to Embracer Group for $300 million. This obviously left the new Tomb Raider without a publisher, and rather than self-publishin,g Crystal Dynamics has decided to partner with Amazon Games.

“With Amazon Games, we found a team that shares our creative vision, ambitions, and values for a Lara Croft universe across the spectrum of possibilities,” Crystal Dynamics head of studio Scot Amos said in a press release. “They’re uniquely positioned to rewrite what publishing and development collaborations are, and we’re eager to forge this new path together, starting with building the biggest and best Tomb Raider game yet.”

Details on this new Tomb Raider are still quite scarce, but Crystal Dynamics does tease in the aforementioned press release that it is a single-player, narrative-focused game “that rewards exploration and creative pathfinding, with mind-bending puzzles to solve, and a wide variety of enemies to face and overcome.” The next Tomb Raider game is in “early development,” so it has no release date, but we do know that it will be a multiplatform release.

Amazon Games has struggled to get a foothold in the gaming space despite setting up multiple game developers. It has found success in the MMO space with games like New World and Lost Ark though, and recently announced at The Game Awards its plans to publish anime-inspired MMO Blue Protocol in 2023. This Tomb Raider game will likely be Amazon Games’ next big chance to make a good impression in the single-player gaming space. An email from an Amazon Games public relations representative to Digital Trends also teased that “the Amazon Games internal studios in Montreal and San Diego are still hard at work on several unannounced projects.”

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Tomas Franzese is a Staff Writer at Digital Trends, where he reports on and reviews the latest releases and exciting…

Gaming

Minecraft Legends and Redfall headline the next batch of Xbox Game Pass titles

Four players stand together in the 4v4 PvP mode of Minecraft Legends.

Microsoft has revealed all of the games that will come to Xbox Game Pass between today and May 3. It includes a lot of day-one game releases, including two directly published by Xbox Game Studios.
Of course, the two games in question are Mojang Studios and Blackbird Interactive's Minecraft Legends, which launches today, and Arkane Studios' Redfall, which comes out on May 2. Xbox Game Pass subscribers can also expect four other day-one releases on the service, two of which are also Xbox exclusives. These new day-one titles include the "talking simulator" sequel Coffee Talk Episode 2: Hibiscus & Butterfly, console-exclusive magical farming game Homestead Arcana, the Pokémon-inspired RPG Cassette Beasts for PC, and console-exclusive horror platformer The Last Case of Benedict Fox.
Here's the full list of games coming to Xbox Game Pass, along with the date they will be added.

Minecraft Legends - April 18
Coffee Talk Episode 2: Hibiscus & Butterfly - April 20
Medieval Dynasty - April 20
Homestead Arcana - April 21
Cassette Beasts - April 26
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The Last Case of Benedict Fox - April 27
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Gaming

Dead Island 2’s Amazon Alexa voice commands are novel, but limited

Dani lights a cigarette as zombies attack her from behind in Dead Island 2 key art.

I’ve always found myself interested in new technologies that could possibly enhance how we play or experience games. Whether it’s a computing innovation like cloud gaming or new controller features like the DualSense’s Haptic Feedback and Adaptive Triggers, I love testing those things out. That’s why I jumped at the opportunity to try Alexa Game Control during my recent hands-on preview experience with Dead Island 2.
When Dambuster Studios and Deep Silver’s Dead Island 2 finally launches on April 21, it will be the first game to support Alexa Game Control. By connecting one’s Amazon account to the game, players can use the voice-recognition capabilities of Amazon’s virtual assistant Alexa to perform in-game actions like taunting zombies or equipping their best weapons. I was curious to see just how deep this went, but after some hands-on time, this first implementation of it proved to be little more than a novelty.

Hey, Alexa
Dead Island 2 players can toggle Alexa Game Control on when they first show up in Bel-Air after the game’s opening. It has a dedicated tab in the Options Menu where players can choose to enable or disable it, choose whether they want it to work automatically or with push to talk, set the voice capture threshold, and decide which microphone they wish to use.
After enabling Alexa Game Control, I immediately noticed a ring at the bottom-left corner of the screen. When I spoke, this lit up with blue and teal colors, like the top ring on an Alexa device, and text confirming whether it could do the action or not would appear. Not having to say “Hey, Alexa” also means it implemented itself into the game smoothly. At first, I tried to see if voice commands would work for basic things like walking, jumping, and dodging, to no avail. After this, I hopped to a save I had placed later in the game and opened its tutorial menu to see what Alexa Game Control could really do.
Reading its tutorials and lists of commands, the limits of Alexa Game Control became clear. It mainly provides quick shortcuts to save you a button press or two in the middle of playing. In Dead Island 2, Alexa Game Control has four main uses: setting waypoints, taunting enemies, triggering emotes, and switching weapons. The tutorial menus give a complete list of commands that work, although each wildly varies in its usefulness.
Oi, zombie!
The funniest use of this voice technology in Dead Island 2 is taunting zombies. Shouting something like “Hey, dude” or “Oi, zombie” to get the attention of enemies that hadn’t detected me always made me chuckle. It’s also occasionally useful; at one point, I got a bunch of zombies to walk into a large pool of acid and die after taunting them. While it takes the same amount of time as walking up to the zombie to get their attention, I see the potential in voice technology that lets you interact with the world like this.

Gaming

Amazon repeats its Lost Ark playbook to bring another international MMO to the West

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Amazon Games announced today that it will publish NCSoft's fantasy MMORPG Throne and Liberty in North America, South America, Europe, and Japan. This cements a unique niche that Amazon Games has found for itself as a publisher: bringing Asian MMOs to the west.
[NCing] THRONE AND LIBERTY - Official Trailer | Work in Progress | 엔씨소프트
Throne and Liberty is an ambitious MMO in development that includes fast-paced action combat, features large-scale PvE and PvP battles, and lets players transform into different creatures and control the environment during battles. The game has been in development for several years, but we didn't know if it'd get a Western release until now. With Amazon's backing, Throne and Liberty will now come out for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X in the West with full cross-play support.

While MMO fans will be happy at this announcement, this also demonstrates that Amazon Games has found a niche for itself as a game publisher by bringing Eastern MMOs to the West. For years, Amazon struggled to gain solid footing as a game developer and publisher, with multiple games canceled and titles like Crucible failing to gain traction. While MMOs aren't as popular as they used to be, Amazon has found a successful niche in trying to make the genre thrive again. It released New World to somewhat positive success, but really found a hit with the release of Lost Ark in February 2022.
Now, it's backing Bandai Namco's Blue Protocol and NCSoft's Throne and Liberty in hopes of repeating this success. Amazon Games Vice Preisident Christoph Hartmann explained what makes these kinds of games appealing in a press release.
"Publishing games that live and grow over time remains a critical piece of our strategy, and delivering games of the highest quality from the world’s most talented developers is one of the cornerstones of our business," Hartmann writes. "The last year has taught us a great deal about publishing and managing a successful live-service game on a global scale, and we’re ready to bring Throne and Liberty players an incredible experience at launch."
It remains to be seen if either of those games will reach Lost Ark's level of success and if Amazon Games plans to do this with even more Eastern MMOs. Outside of the MMO space, Amazon Games will also be publishing the next Tomb Raider game.