SCi pulls out of buyout talks, stock plunges following Tomb Raider delay

by Jason Dobson { Jan 11th 2008 at 10:15AM }

Eidos owner SCi has been on the hunt for a potential suitor for some time, reportedly having batted its eyelashes at everyone from Midway and Vivendi to Time Warner and even some mysterious outfit in China, with none showing enough interest to sign their name across the dotted line. However, after having been given the cold shoulder by Ubisoft last October, the British firm has finally gotten the hint and moved on, stating that it had not received any formal offers within the requested timeframe.

What this means to you and I is that it may be some time before we see another major release branded with the Eidos logo, as SCi confirmed that it has pushed out the recently revealed Tomb Raider: Underworld until the fourth quarter of 2008, along with three other unspecified titles. The company also announced plans to bring Lara Croft's latest escapade to the DS, Wii and PS2, in addition to the previously known versions for the PC, PS3, and Xbox 360.

Way to be strong, SCi, but you might not want to look at your stock this morning. Following the firm's decision to go it alone, SCi's stock hit "rock bottom," and according to a new Bloomberg report, suffered its biggest plummet in more than 18 years, falling some 61 percent after SCi admitted that the aforementioned delays will likely result in an operating loss for 2008 and that the company may need to look to outside parties for the money to stay afloat. Of course, with SCi's share price now swimming with the fishes, we wouldn't be too surprised if another company now swooped in and bought up SCi and its properties at bargain basement prices. You hear that EA? Someone is singing your song.

Tags: acquisition, crystal dynamics, crystal-dynamics, CrystalDynamics, eidos, lara croft, lara-croft, LaraCroft, sci, stock, tomb raider, tomb-raider, TombRaider

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Joe @ Jan 11th 2008 10:27AM

I hope it would not be EA may be Sony. That I think would be cool. Having Lara back with Sony. Plus now she could may be have a parter Nathan. Maybe this would allow both to be in each others game even if it was just a small part.

baby sea tuna @ Jan 11th 2008 11:09AM

Considering Eidos's current tendency to port Tomb Raider games to every piece of tech out there short of a microwave oven (not to mention the fact that the TR name doesn't hold nearly as much weight as it used to), I don't think they'd be dumb enough to go back to being a Sony exclusive title.