During a long interview with Examiner, Phil Rogers, CEO for Square Enix in Europe and the Americas, has revealed new details regarding the time exclusivity for Rise of the Tomb Raider, the new adventure with a young Lara Croft developed by Crystal Dynamics.
As Rogers admitted, Square Enix already knew that this exclusivity choice would disappoint fans, but he hopes "fans know that it wasn't an easy decision. I think any sort of partnership at this level is a decision that took a longtime for us to get to. The decision at a studio level, we took very, very seriously. We knew it would, in the short-term, disappoint fans".
But the company kept on going with Microsoft, because, as Rogers revealed, Redmond's company appeared very passionate about this project:
"What we saw in Microsoft, which is probably not as well known, is that Microsoft's passion for Tomb Raider is amazing."
"Having been working with us on previous games in a lesser sense, they've been supportive. [However], for Rise of the Tomb Raider, they've just brought this passion and belief that has really enabled us to blow people away. People should feel that about Microsoft. Their commitment to Tomb Raider is just amazing for us", Rogers said.
Rise of the Tomb Raider was announced at last year's E3 and revealed as an exclusive for the Xbox consoles at Gamescom one year ago; last week Square Enix announced that the game will arrive on PC in early 2016 and finally later next year on the PlayStation 4.