About a couple of weeks ago, Lara Croft fans were treated to the first full trailer for the forthcoming action-adventure title Shadow of the Tomb Raider, with the footage showing various indications of a Mayan landscape and a masked villain, who might be the game's main antagonist. As many gamers will likely agree, the video's production quality was incredibly high, which lends support to Eidos Montreal boss David Anfossi's recent revelation that the sequel's budget is huge.
According to a recent interview held between GamesIndustry.biz and Anfossi, the Eidos Montreal head mentioned that Shadow of the Tomb Raider is expected to cost somewhere in between $75 million and $100 million to develop, and will potentially have an extra $35 million in the mix used for the purposes of marketing. These figures aren't specific, however, as Anfossi was using the Lara Croft-starring title as an example of how certain and industry trends and expectations for single-player games often cause many AAA releases to have massive budgets.
Such gigantic sums would understandably intimidate many from attempting to develop games at the AAA level, and Anfossi acknowledges the stress involved with having to ensure a project with such a massive budget succeeds. As the Eidos Montreal boss put it, "There's definitely a pressure. We cannot avoid it. But, at the same time, for us to have these incubation projects and to try small things... that gives us the opportunity to test, prepare and secure some stuff, and remove some risk."
Taking all of this into consideration, it's understandable as to why a game such as Shadow of the Tomb Raider requires a lot of capital to boost its quality, for not only are most major video game budgets higher than they've ever been, but also the Lara Croft-centric franchise is one of the most storied properties in gaming history. With this being the case, it would be odd to learn of subsequent entries in the series having their development quotas slashed.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider is currently scheduled to launch on September 14, 2018 for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.
Source: GamesIndustry.biz