SCi (soon to be Eidos PLC) announced that Aaron Brown has stepped down as non-executive director of the company, just about four months after joining. Brown worked for investor Robert Tchenguiz and no reason was given for the resignation, nor does the company have any plans to replace him.
We weren't sure what this meant, so we picked up the bat phone and asked Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter what the dealio is. He told us it's "impossible to read anything into this." Explaining that Brown was Tchenguiz's rep on the board. Tchenguiz could have wanted him to do something else or perhaps Brown got another job. SCi has gone through several shake-ups lately after losing $177 million last year.
EA announced today that it will create mobile versions of financially beleaguered Eidos Interactive's franchises. EA now holds the licenses to "all existing mobile channels and devices" for Tomb Raider Underworld, Just Cause 2, California Games X and Minesweeper. EA has the option of doing mobile versions of most Eidos games for the next three years.
The Tomb Raider and Just Cause titles will be based off the upcoming sequels, while California Games X will be a "brand new version" of the '87 Commodore 64 game (hacky sack, y'all!). Of course, Minesweeper is the game which has been packaged with Windows since 1992.
We knew SCi Entertainment, parent company of Eidos, had financial issues, but we didn't realize those "issues" totaled a $177 million loss for the company in its fiscal year, ending June 30. The company has been in the midst of a major restructuring ever since it received a bailout investment of $107 million from Warner Bros earlier this year. The company also announced it plans to change its name to Eidos PLC.
The company states it will focus on higher quality games by giving more attention to key franchises: Hitman; Deus Ex; Championship Manager (?); and Lady Croft's series. Tomb Raider: Underworld will release this November, with Deus Ex 3 rumored to be fully unveiled soon.
MCV reports that Warner Bros. Home Entertainment president Kevin Tsujihara has joined the board of SCi, parent company of Eidos, as non-executive director. Tsujihara's position is part of the agreement the two companies made when WBHE dropped £60 million on SCi to save it from further financial issues devastation.
Also joining the SCi board, in the same role as Tsujihara, is Aaron Brown, an associate of investor Robert Tchenguiz, who also made a similar (but considerably further under the radar) deal as Warner Bros. There's a lot of money and power in that boardroom, now let's see if anything half-decent comes of it.
Our hearts were warmed to hear of SCi's seeming salvation as Warner Bros. Home Entertainment acquired 171 million shares in the floundering company (for nearly £60 million) -- an investment that would "benefit of all [their] major franchises" and put the once-great publisher Eidos back on the map. However, according to 1UP, a number of insiders have reported that this act of gaming industry cartography could have some far less publicized consequences.
Much like the pushy girlfriend who doesn't allow you to bring your autographed Erasure poster into your new apartment, Eidos may have recently kicked their entire marketing, public relations, and sales departments to the curb following their Warner Bros. bailout, according to the 1UP tipsters. Whether this was a stipulation of the WB deal, or a continuation of SCi's systematic operating cost reduction (or if the information is even legit), we're not sure. We just hope they don't fire the one guy who wants to make a Mister Mosquito sequel.
SCi Entertainment, video game publisher Eidos' troubled parent company, has been on the ropes as of late. After rumors of a takeover earlier this month and turning down an outright acquisition offer earlier this week, it's gotten a £60 million investment from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment with the sale of 171 million shares.
SCi also announced a strategic relationship with the entertainment giant – which also has a presence in gaming with Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment – giving the UK-based company "increased scale" in the North American market. Warner apparently has great faith in SCi's "new management team" and "their track record of rich franchises" like Tomb Raider(Underworld remains "encouraging" they say), Hitman, Deus Ex, and Thief.
While talk of a takeover of British publisher SCi continues to be tossed around, this doesn't mean that Lara Croft's troubled parent is open to shacking up with just anyone.
This week the company confirmed that it has received an offer from an unspecified suitor at a "significant premium" to SCi's current share price. However, the company stayed strong, turning away what we imagine to be bags of money emblazoned with dollar signs, claiming the offer was "not be in the best interests of the company or its shareholders." Still, with 14 projects in the vertical file and key management on the run, it might be time for SCi to lower its standards.
SCi Entertainment Group CEO Phil Rogers, whose company owns Eidos, said the publishing company needs to lose its ruth, so to speak. Speaking to MCV, Rogers said, "In today's environment of lengthening development cycles and increasing costs, we need to be more ruthless and focus on our quality titles."
Rogers also said that, on a whole, Eidos has released "too many average games which are tying up resources." We think Rogers is either really pushing for a new company direction or he's using tough words to drive up stock prices further for an oft-speculated takeover. In either sense, if he keeps to his word (that's a big "if"), it bodes well for secret project T.
Now, Guardian blogger Nick Fletcher reports the company's "shares are up again on renewed takeover speculation." He says, "Talk is of an 80p a share offer" – a 32% premium over their closing price of 60.50p today – and that potential bidders include Time Warner (who already own 10% of the publisher), Infogrames (who already have a problem child to deal with), and Ubisoft (who has said it has no intention of making an offer). Let the speculation commence!
There are not many developers who can boast having given rise to both a vampiric anti-hero and an anthropomorphic lizard, but over the last three years San Francisco-based developer Crystal Dynamics has become more well known as the studio that single-handedly breathed new life into the dying franchise that was Tomb Raider and its top-heavy icon Lara Croft.
2006's Tomb Raider: Legend took the series that Core Design had unceremoniously driven into the ground and reminded us all why we fell in love with the franchise a decade prior. And for those still left unconvinced, Crystal Dynamics revisited the 1996 original a year later with Tomb Raider: Anniversary, demonstrating that anything Core could do, they could do better.
Now the studio is at it again, this time taking Lara Croft on a new adventure in Tomb Raider: Underworld. Currently in development for multiple platforms, the game marks the eighth outing for the series, and while the game was recently pushed out from its previously expected third quarter 2008 release until the following quarter, creative director Eric Lindstrom told us that when it comes to this project -- "quality" is the team's ultimate deadline. We recently spoke with Lindstrom on the game, and he opened up to us about the project, how he feels it measures up to Naughty Dog's Uncharted, and why he finds next-gen development troubling.
As the smoke clears following this morning's massive restructuring efforts by Eidos parent SCi, we now know at least one franchise that has not been counted among those projects tossed into the circular file. Eidos has announced that development is underway on a follow up to last year's Battlestations: Midway, unsurprising given the company's known affection for sequels.
The new game, Battlestations: Pacific, is being created for both the Xbox 360 and PC. According to Eidos, the sequel will mark a return to the original's "unique blend" of action and strategy with 28 story missions across both U.S. and Japanese single player campaigns. In addition, players can expect a "slew of new air, sea, and land units" as well, including kamikazes and other WWII-era jets, as well as five new multiplayer modes. A final release date for the game has not yet been announced, but as soon as we know we'll pass the word along for those itching to gun down friends and family over the Pacific.
GamesIndustry.biz is reporting that Eidos parent company SCi plans to radically restructure its business, canceling 14 active projects, as well as laying off 25% of its work force.
The restructuring is the result of a six-week business review, following the company's stock plummet and subsequent resignation of several key board members. The 14 projects were canceled after the board evaluated them as being of a low quality, or being unable to generate a satisfactory return on investment. After the restructuring, SCi will operate with a maximum of 800 employees, and will focus on publishing core franchises like Tomb Raider, Deux Ex, and Hitman.
With these sizable shifts in business strategy, along with staff relocation, SCi hopes to cut £14 million GBP in annual operating costs by April 2008.
With an investor coup and plummeting stock to worry about, investing in sequels to already average properties would seem to be one of the last things on the mind of Eidos parent SCi Entertainment. The game world, however, seldom subscribes to our own brand of logic, as Eidos has announced plans to revisit one of its non-entities in Avalanche Studios' Just Cause, a decidedly tepid – and altogether brief – stunt-focused action game that managed to parachute below most players' collective radar in 2006.
Set for release later this year for the Xbox 360, PS3, and PC, the game will once again cast players in the role of vigilante Rico Rodriguez, this time taking him out of the Caribbean and into the fictional island country of Panau in South East Asia. Of course, more over-the-top action and stunts are promised, though if Eidos was unable to make players care about the franchise the first time around, we doubt that "the same but more of it" is enough of a tag line to make anyone but the most ardent action fans blink in the game's general direction.
SCi shareholders must be celebrating like the Munchkins of OZ after Dorothy dropped a house on the Wicked Witch of the East over the resignations of the company's executive board -- shares rose 44% on the news. The company's stock plummeted last week over the news that SCi had taken itself off the market for a buyout, causing investors to call for the heads of the executive board.
The board officially saw the resignation of CEO Jane Cavanagh, Managing Director of Publishing Bill Ennis and Managing Director of Studios Rob Murphy; all resignations were effective immediately and former Corporate Development Director of EA Phil Rogers is now the chief executive. SCi Chairman Tim Ryan says the company needs to restore faith and trust in investors by "under-promising and over-delivering." Meanwhile, SCi will strap on the stilettos and start walking the streets again in search of a potential suitor -- maybe it'll fight for territory with Codemasters on the corner.
SCi Entertainment, parent company of Eidos, is under assault as investors demand the resignation of top executives. The Times reports things crumbled like a booby-trapped tomb after the company's stock plummeted last week following the announcement that management was pulling out of buyout talks; making matters worse was the discovery that SCi borrowed £30 million ($59 million) just to stay afloat until the end of the year.
Despite SCi having a recent hit with Kane & Lynch: Dead Men, the announcement that several major titles -- including the latest Tomb Raider -- are not releasing until holiday '08 is causing concerns about the company's financial situation. We'd make fun of how SCi managed to screw things up this badly during a time of record industry growth, but Atari is still light-years ahead of them in that department.
