Core Design

Core Design is a video game developer best known for creating the popular Tomb Raider series.

The studio is based in Derby, a city in the United Kingdom. It is owned by Eidos Interactive, having been part of distribution company CentreGold when it was acquired by Eidos in 1996. Eidos subsequently sold most of CentreGold, but retained Core Design.

On May 11, 2006 it was announced that Core's assets and staff were sold to indie development group Rebellion. Eidos still owns the Core brand but it's unlikley there will be anymore new games under the Core Design banner, however an 'Atari'-like regeneration of the name and rebranding of existing games is not unexpected (see Infogrames)

Games

Core Design had developed numerous games, including the following titles:

Tomb Raider

The company is most widely known for the Tomb Raider series, created by Toby Gard and Paul Howard Douglas, which was released in 1996 and followed by several sequels. The success of Tomb Raider and its subsequent sequels played a huge part in keeping Eidos Interactive financially solvent. In 2003, however, parent company Eidos took the Tomb Raider franchise away from Core Design after the sixth installment, Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness, which was not as big a commercial success as expected. The franchise was given to Crystal Dynamics, another Eidos-owned studio. This prompted three key members of the Core Design team to leave the company and establish a game development team of their own, Circle Studio one has subsequently returned to Core.

Core Design have continued developing games such as the PSP title Smart Bomb, which turned out to be a mass market title thus receiving criticism from reviewers. This game was later tweaked and rereleased in Asia where it garnered a much better reception.

On May 11, 2006, Core Design was sold to indie development studio Rebellion, taking ownership of all Core Design staff, material assets, but not the 'Core Design' name. Core staff are working with the Rebellion studio, starting work on a sequel to Shellshock and are rumoured to have another title in development. Eidos have kept the rights to Tomb Raider.

Tomb Raider film royalties

When Paramount Pictures wanted to adapt Lara Croft's story for the big screen, it entered into negotiations with Core Design and Eidos; Paramount's contract with these two companies must rank as some of the shrewdest negotiating ever achieved. Among other provisions, the contract is believed to have awarded to Eidos only a few million dollars as a licensing fee, but no share of the film's takings ^*.

For some reason, Core Design felt it was more important to secure merchandising rights over any share of box office takings. Perhaps Jeremy Heath-Smith of Core Design was considering George Lucas' lucrative mid-'70s merchandising deals with Fox over Star Wars. However, there were some fatal errors to this train of thought: not only was Lara Croft already an established brand (rather than an original IP), but the merchandise had no clear target market; Lara Croft fans saw no need to purchase Tomb Raider toys when they already had all the Tomb Raider games.

Paramount Pictures invested $80m in making the film, which grossed over $130m in US box office alone (international box office grosses were between $250-300m). It is unknown how many toys and other crossover merchandise were manufactured, nor how many were sold.

At the time the movie was released, there was some criticism that no tie-in game was planned for simultaneous release. This choice was perhaps understandable, as Core Design believed the mere appearance of a major motion picture based on a video game character would help sell further copies of the existing Tomb Raider titles—as indeed it did.

Siding with Sony

Despite a brief history of producing impressive work on SEGA consoles (Thunderhawk for Sega CD was arguably the only game that took advantage of the platform), Core would later become easily influenced by the persuasive tactics of Sony Computer Entertainment. The first occasion was after the release of the original Tomb Raider, which had debuted on the SEGA Saturn platform ahead of the PlayStation version (although both had been in simultaneous development).

Recognising the game's huge popularity and the potential mass appeal of future Tomb Raider titles, Sony Computer Entertainment offered Core Design and Eidos an exclusivity agreement, to ensure that the first sequel would not be developed for either the Saturn or the N64. The full terms of this offer have never been revealed, but it is likely to have included either a lump sum cash offer, a reduction in the third-party royalty rate or a contractual cross-promotional agreement (perhaps even all three).

By making Tomb Raider II available only on the PlayStation console, SCE was able to benefit by attracting new Playstation owners. Core Design also had the advantage of developing only for a single target platform, rather than several at once. This exclusivity agreement was further extended to cover the third, fourth and fifth games in the series, though a desperate SEGA was able to secure a Dreamcast port of the latter. However, this port arrived four months behind the PlayStation game's debut and well after the crucial pre-Christmas season. This port was also seemingly a port of the PC version, and thus offered nothing more than higher-resolution graphics and an improved frame rate. SEGA still went the extra mile to secure this hand-me-down, even going so far as to pay for nearly all the TV campaign Dreamcast release. Despite this large investment, and UK expectations of selling 30,000 copies in the first week, the Dreamcast version debuted with only meager sales of 4,626 copies. [http://www.computerandvideogames.com/news/news_story.php?id=11044" target="_blank" >^*

External links

British video game companies | Computer and video game companies

Core Design | Core Design | Core Design

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Games

Tomb Raider

Tomb Raider film royalties

Siding with Sony

External links