Next Tomb Raider game will be published by retail titan Amazon's games division

In an interesting twist, the next Tomb Raider game will be published by Amazon Games.

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Earlier this year, the Embracer Group purchased Crystal Dynamics, Eidos Montreal, and a bunch of game franchises like Tomb Raider and Deus Ex from Square Enix for $300 million. The new owners confirmed that Crystal Dynamics would retain full creative leadership over the Tomb Raider franchise while also greenlighting a new Lara Croft adventure game.

Since then we haven't had very many updates about the new Tomb Raider project. We know that it's being made in Unreal Engine 5, and Embracer Group CEO teased that Crystal Dynamics was doing "very interesting" things with Tomb Raider.

Now Amazon Games has announced they will be publishing the next Tomb Raider game. This is surprising for two reasons: Amazon Games has only published a few games, but most of them have been successful. New World is a first-party MMO that exploded on the charts, the same thing happened with Smilegate's Lost Ark online game. Amazon is also publishing Blue Protocol, an interesting-looking new MMO experience from Bandai Namco.

Tomb Raider will be the first singleplayer game that Amazon publishes. The other titles have been online-driven monetized titles.

The second interesting point is that Embracer's labels aren't publishing the Tomb Raider game. This actually makes sense because Embracer is decentralized into various segments. It's not like EA, who has a publishing label for its first-party games; Embracer has multiple publishing labels including Deep Silver (Dead Island, Saints Row), Gearbox (Borderlands), and even Coffee Stain (Goat Simulator, Valheim).

"Crystal Dynamics has an extraordinary opportunity following our acquisition by Embracer to redefine what a publishing relationship is for Tomb Raider," said Scot Amos, head of studio at Crystal Dynamics.

"Transformative is what we're looking for, and with Amazon Games, we found a team that shares our creative vision, ambitions, and values for a Lara Croft universe across the spectrum of possibilities. They're uniquely positioned to rewrite what publishing and development collaborations are, and we're eager to forge this new path together, starting with building the biggest and best Tomb Raider game yet!"

Here's what we know about the next Tomb Raider game:

• It's a singleplayer, narrative-driven action game
• Action-adventure themes with exploration, puzzles, and combat
• Will use Unreal Engine 5
• Aims to be the "biggest and best" Tomb Raider