Ian Livingstone, a decade of Lara, and the next Gen

In a lengthy interview over at Gamespot, Eidos’ product acquisition director, Ian Livingstone gave several details on Tomb Raider: Anniversary, the future of Lara Croft, and his opinion regarding the next-generation console wars.

What? Who’s Ian Livingstone and why should you guys care? Well, if in case you’re too lazy to wiki him up, his game cred starts with Games Workshop and Steve Jackson, moves on to D&D, gets big during the 90s with Eidos, and reaches a high point when he got awarded an Order of the British Empire last year for “Services to the Computer Games Industry.” So snotty fellow, can you top that?

Here be the pertinent details from the interview:

So how’s Lara?
Livingstone says that the brand and franchise will continue. According to him she’s now much like James Bond now. Hence, there are no plans to kill of the character any time soon. She’s recognized everywhere and according to Livingstone there was a Time Magazine survey a few years back that ranks her as more recognizable than the pope.

In Livingstone’s words:

There are other great characters, but they’re all aimed at a younger audience–Zelda, Sonic, Mario–there have been none that have been aimed at the more mature consumer. If you think of other successful games, you don’t always remember the characters.

Women don’t object to Lara because she’s strong, independent, intelligent, athletic, sexy, and essentially she doesn’t need men. And of course, men wouldn’t object to [her] for the same reasons… And, as she’s virtual, she can be anything to anyone.

He adds that he isn’t really allowed to say much about Tomb Raider: Anniversary, but he does hint that we should all be thinking about that first time Lara met the T. Rex.

Get the rest of the article after the Jump!

In a lengthy interview over at Gamespot, Eidos’ product acquisition director, Ian Livingstone gave several details on Tomb Raider: Anniversary, the future of Lara Croft, and his opinion regarding the next-generation console wars.

What? Who’s Ian Livingstone and why should you guys care? Well, if in case you’re too lazy to wiki him up, his game cred starts with Games Workshop and Steve Jackson, moves on to D&D, gets big during the 90s with Eidos, and reaches a high point when he got awarded an Order of the British Empire last year for “Services to the Computer Games Industry.” So snotty fellow, can you top that?

Here be the pertinent details from the interview:

So how’s Lara?
Livingstone says that the brand and franchise will continue. According to him she’s now much like James Bond now. Hence, there are no plans to kill of the character any time soon. She’s recognized everywhere and according to Livingstone there was a Time Magazine survey a few years back that ranks her as more recognizable than the pope.

In Livingstone’s words:

There are other great characters, but they’re all aimed at a younger audience–Zelda, Sonic, Mario–there have been none that have been aimed at the more mature consumer. If you think of other successful games, you don’t always remember the characters.

Women don’t object to Lara because she’s strong, independent, intelligent, athletic, sexy, and essentially she doesn’t need men. And of course, men wouldn’t object to [her] for the same reasons… And, as she’s virtual, she can be anything to anyone.

He adds that he isn’t really allowed to say much about Tomb Raider: Anniversary, but he does hint that we should all be thinking about that first time Lara met the T. Rex.

What about the Movies?
He says that there may be a third movie, and they’re already at the stage where a scriptwriter has been brought in. Of course as with all movies, the project is still far from getting the green light.

Interesting Lara merchandise that he turned down
Lick A Lara Lolly… gee we wonder why?

His take on MMOs (he’s a veteran RPG player after all)
To him it’s just another experience that’s to be welcomed. According to him back then, it just used to be PCs, then the platforms expanded. He thinks that nothing is going to dominate, as people like to play what they prefer. He says:

I don’t think other types of games are going to go away, I think just the whole market is getting bigger as more and more people in society play games in whatever form they enjoy the most.

What about the Next-Gen?
He says it’s cliché but it’s just “too close to call.” He thinks that the Wii will definitely win in Japan, and that the Xbox 360 will probably win in the US, but he adds that you should never write off Sony. “You do so at your own peril.”

Tomb Raider, according to him, drove the sales for the first PlayStation, and GTA drove the sales of the PS2. He says that there’s no doubt that Sony will have some wonderful intellectual property or new game that will drive the sales of the PS3. In his words:

There’s a sort of historical inevitability that you can’t discount Sony–at the end of the day they are the best consumer electronics brand in the world, so they will make it happen. Whether they’ll win though, is not so clear this time.

Via Gamespot