Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light will not have online co-op until Sept. 28

by Ludwig Kietzmann on Aug 6th 2010 4:02PM

We hope you've got space for Lara Croft and one guardian of light on your couch, because that's where the heroic pair will find themselves on August 18th. Developer Crystal Dynamics has confirmed that when Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light launches on Xbox Live Arcade, concluding Microsoft's Summer of Arcade promotion, it will only support offline co-op.

Online co-op, as well as Xbox Live standards like full leaderboard support and voice chat functionality, will be introduced via a free update on September 28. On the same day, Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light will arrive on PlayStation Network and Steam.

The baffling omission of the online component appears to have been made at the last minute, with Crystal Dynamics global brand director Karl Stewart telling Joystiq, "We made a decision recently because we were focusing on how we can deliver the best possible experience to the players. If we had launched with online co-op, we wouldn't feel comfortable that it was the best possible experience for the player." Though online co-op had been promoted and promised since the game's announcement, Stewart claims that "nothing underhanded" influenced the decision. "This is our first digital title and we want to make sure we deliver the best possible experience to players."

It's a tough decision: delay the game on Xbox Live Arcade and miss out on Summer of Arcade promotion, or get an imperfect version in front of players first. Either way, it's a disappointing scenario for all parties involved, including Microsoft. You can play Lara Croft on Xbox Live Arcade first -- but not on Xbox Live at first.

Tags: co-op, crystal-dynamics, karl-stewart, lara-croft-and-the-guardian-of-light, microsoft, summer-of-arcade, xbla, xbox

Reader Comments (59)

I bet microsoft is pissed.

I would be, they paid for nothing. I would probably have been pressurized to buy this to go through the game with someone, that ain't happening.

And by the time they get the co-op down, it'll be too late (You thought Red Dead was bad - try selling something within weeks of a major Halo release).

@Acosta02

I pissed more than Microsoft is. My friend and I have been dying to get this day one and have something to play online co-op with.

What a bunch a bastards at CD, making us wait probably to "be fair."

Well they can blow it out their ass.

@Acosta02

Thanks for being our beta testers again, 360 fans!

@Wiizer

...uh, is it really beta testing if the online launches at the same time on both platforms?

@Wiizer

360 owners can't beta test PSN for you, so your screwed there.

Um, who's the guy in the loin cloth and why would I or any of my friends want to play as him?

"This is our first digital title and we want to make sure we deliver half of a game to players so we can meet our deadlines."

Fixed.

Hmm.

I almost want to say that it looks like they don't like having to delay the PSN version, so they're waiting to release the 'full' version on XBLA as the same time as the PSN version.

But.. that doesn't make sense, considering all the extra promotion and attention they get from being on Summer of Arcade. I'm sure they made the decision happily.

It's an odd situation, at any rate.

Let's see if it's worth the price. Then I'll think about buying it.

The game might be good -- although I'm hoping it's like a really good Diablo clone until Diablo III is out (with Torchlight & DeathSpank, any Diablo clone is good). No online co-op is almost a gamebreaker though.

W. T. F.

I was looking forward to a good and new online co-op game for the end of the summer, and GoL looked like a lot of fun. Forget it now; you lost me. I will not be waiting a whole month to play online co-op because I will be playing Reach with my friends at that time.

Don't tell people so early that you will have online co-op and then change your mind so soon before launch date. Someone needs to be fired.

Reach can't come soon enough....sigh....

@FlashJS

Well there's Castlevania and Monday Night Combat...

"If we had launched with online co-op, we wouldn't feel comfortable that it was the best possible experience for the player."

So that means that the PC and PSN versions have to wait six weeks for it too, right?

@Churchbus

Why do we have to suffer because MS forgot to check if the game was ready to go online before they added it to the Summer line-up?

You need to talk to MS, and ask why they try to buy exclusivity to games that are half-done!

@Wiizer

Newsflash buddy, when companies announce exclusivity for their games, they are way less than half done. MS can't see the future any better than anyone else.

@Wiizer

First of all Microsoft doesn't buy exclusives. Secondly you have no idea how development and submission works. It is not Microsoft's responsibility to make sure the developer gets their job done, they are there to check and ensure the game complies with their own standards and it is ready for users to play.

Xbox LIVE is the cheapest service right now to host content on. PSN being the most expensive by far. The LIVE service is a premium for a reason children, why? Because if the consumer doesn't pay for it no one will. The LIVE subscription keeps the infrastructure stable, updated and subsidizes bandwidth. Plus a service that so many users pay for is obviously a lesser risk for a publisher than one that offers it for free (to consumers).

@Anticrawl

MS doesn't buy exclusives?... You just blew my mind!

I don't feel as bad now while I wait for this to hit the PSN...

Bah, who am I kidding. I wasn't going to buy it till it was on sale anyways.

So we get this close to finally having another Tomb Raider/Laura Croft game and they pull this.

How is releasing the game without a vital and much promoted feature going to make the experience better?

I was wonderng which game to get this month Monday night Combat or this, thanks for making that decision easier. GoL can wait until they "update" the game and make it complete. At which point i'll probably just buy it on PS3 instead.

@Juelz345

"How is releasing the game without a vital and much promoted feature going to make the experience better?"

Look back at the release of Castle Crashers, an awesome game with badly broken online play that left a lot of players very bitter for months and months until a fix was released. CC would have been better off cutting online play, disappoint fans, and then patching it back in later.

@Courtney

While that is true, unless i missed something, they're not saying that they're holding it back to get it right. They can already tell you when they're putting it in (which "just happens" to be the day it releases on PS3).

With CC they kept telling us it was coming as soon as they could get the patch ready and passed.

I highly doubt that the two cases are similar.

@Juelz345

We're missing a lot of information here too. That promised date could be them hoping they'll have bugs in online play worked out by the time the PSN/Steam versions launch.

A lot of things can go wrong with online play, even in big budget titles that should have known better.

I think it's just as likely that this is a technical problem as any kind of decision to gimp one version until the other two launch.

@Courtney

Again, you might be right.

But if they were holding it back because they didn;t think the online was up to snuff, then say that.

That seems a lot less damaging than creating a situiation where people are obviously going speculate that there is something a lil shady going on.

The big draw to this game was that it was a co-op laura croft game. Me and a buddy of mine were planing on buying it to play online together. Now, i'll up buying it and my boy will come over and well play it couch co-op, beat it before the patch comes out and he wont have a reson to purchase it. Thats the loss of a sale right there.

But like you said, we don't have a lot of info to go on, so here's to me thinking the worst and you hoping for the best.

I was quite looking forward to this, but now they've pretty much announced that it's unfinished but they're releasing it anyway...I think I'll pass.

It's a bold move Cotton... Let's see if it pays off!

maybe they should wait until the damn game is done to release it, instead of half-assing it. Some Dead Rising 2 Case Zero would have been the perfect way to end this less than stellar "summer-of-arcade" lineup.

Heh, the only reason I was even partially interested in the game was the online co-op. I guess I have no reason to even demo it until late September. Wait, there's another online co-op/multiplayer game coming out around then? What was it again? Oh yeah, Halo: Reach says "hai."

This is the worst Summer of Arcade lineup ever.

Limbo says "hai."

@SurlyDuff

that's 14 days after halo reach. who will take that long to play the co-op in that game? sure it will be epic but not 2 weeks long

But in retrospect, I bought all of last years SoA titles.
Compared to this year where It'll be a stretch if I buy more than one.

@BlackedOut That was kind of my point. 2008 & 2009 Summer of Arcade ruled. Multiple titles worth a purchase. Maybe only one dog in the bunch.

This year was Limbo... and then? No and then.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7luMp6lb9M

@SurlyDuff
Limbo's good, Hydro Thunder makes me remember how much fun it was on the 64, but Castevania isn't fun, Monday Night Combat looks very clunky and slow, and now this crap.

For titles I thought were good, 2008 had Geometry Wars 2, Braid, Bionic Commando, and Castle Crashers. 2009 had Trials HD and Shadow Complex. 2010 has Limbo and Hydro Thunder, but MNC could still be fun, and maybe LC will have enough content to justify single player for most of us.

Sounds like the pc version of the Ghostbusters game,

"We dropped multiplayer for the pc version so we could concentrate on the console version."

Well, I'll check back in in September then. Won't be buying it at release.

Ooof. This raises all sorts of red flags regarding the overall quality of the game. I'll take the "wait and see" approach, but I am skeptical.

Well, this is bullshit. Here I am, waiting on a good ass co-op game, and can't even play the co-op portion for another month. Yeah, I'll save my money now.

And in other news, sales of the new game are almost nothing until September. Watch, bet that happens.

"We decided to wait to make it a better game", how about delaying the game a month and putting it out when it's finished?

@Drakkenfyre

They can't because Microsoft has been promoting the shit out of these games like they always do.

This will be bash on 360 podcasts around the net for sure

So they want to reap the benefits of the Summer of Arcade promotion, while releasing a incomplete game. GRRR. This makes me angry. I was going to get it during the summer, but now I'm definitely going to wait until it's half-priced and finished.

@subatomicL

I don't think that they purposefully wanted to release an incomplete game. More likely, the online component is taking longer than expected for whatever reason, and it's not good enough to release yet. Backing out entirely isn't really an option, because it's already been promoted as one of the summer games, and there isn't a way to fill the gap.

I understand if you're angry, but it looks to me like no one had any control over the decision. :(

@LockeDaemonfire That makes sense. I think my anger is mostly due to the fact that the new Castlevania game isn't what I was hoping for it to me. This news just adds to this Summer of Arcade shaping to be a ho-hum one. It's very sad because I was really looking forward to these two games in particular. But I still want this one, good thing for couch co-op for the very least. :)

Another bright side, is that Hydro Thunder feels like a fresh blast of water in this hot California weather.

Outright bullshit, I wanted to buy it but yeah with no offline co-op in it on it's release day I'll pass on it.

@MLWW

But it does still have offline coop.

@Acosta02

Great, only I have no friends that live close that have an xbox that actually live near me except for like 2 and I only play with them on xbox live

@MLWW

Uh, okay, but you were complaining about a perceived lack of offline co-op?

@Acosta02

Yeah that was a typo I saw it right as I entered my last message :\

I meant the online co-op, not sure why I said the offline

Maybe they should have focused more on the online co-op instead of getting DLC ready to suck us dry of Microsoft points. :S

@WPstart TOMBA!!! I like you.

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