Amazon to Publish the Next Tomb Raider Video Game

The new Tomb Raider game will be the first major, single-player game published by Amazon Games, which struggled for years to break into the challenging, insular world of game development before eventually finding a niche with enormous multiplayer online games. Placing a flagship, single-player game under its portfolio could be a significant step and a boost to Amazon’s credibility in the industry.

“It’s a huge moment for us,” Christoph Hartmann, the vice president of Amazon Games, said in an interview. “If someone told you four years ago Amazon is making games, you would have laughed.”

Under Mike Frazzini, a longtime Amazon executive who departed the company this year, Amazon’s decade-old video game unit floundered. In 2018, the company brought in Mr. Hartmann, an industry veteran who founded 2K Games, which produces popular titles like NBA 2K, to report to Mr. Frazzini.

In 2021, Google, which had also made a foray into video games, shut down the in-house game development arm of its gaming service, Stadia, before announcing this year that it would be ending the entire service. Some thought Amazon and its video game ambitions could meet a similar fate.

But Amazon finally released a popular multiplayer title, New World, last fall, and followed that up with another well-received game this spring, Lost Ark.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/15/technology/amazon-tomb-raider-video-game.html