Crystal Dynamics talks Lara

The character I know and love as Lara Croft is incredibly accomplished. She's studied. She speaks a lot of different languages. She's smart. She works hard. She is incredibly determined. Also, she's beautiful. That's a reflection of modernity and women. It's okay to be accomplished. It's okay to be smart. And it's okay to be feminine and beautiful at the same time. It's not mutually exclusive.

There was a time when it was mutually exclusive. If you're beautiful and appealing then you're dumb. And if you are smart then you're not beautiful. As woman professionals grow in the workforce, and as we evolve our understanding of women's rights and the various roles that women can have in society, we're moving away from that mutual exclusivity. It's about Lara being brave, accomplished, studied, and absolutely determined in everything she does. It's the whole person. It's not the one dimensionality.

I absolutely agree. My dream in my lifetime is to have more female characters that are not so one dimensional, that are multi-dimensional, like Lara Croft. I hear what you're saying. I agree we're not there yet. I hope we can get there in my lifetime.

We hope to have details in the next seven to 10 days. As with all arcade titles, irrespective of platform, you have to go through your submissions before they agree and approve a date. Unlike a disc-based title where we can pick our window, you have to go by what the first parties approve and give you a date, to make sure you're not coming out on the same day as five other titles. They like to manage the release window accordingly. We have requested a specific date and hopefully we'll get that and it's not too long after the 360 SKU.

No. The agreement with Microsoft is, in order to participate in their hugely successful Summer of Arcade promotion there is a window of exclusivity. That window of exclusivity is a set four weeks.

Well, for exactly four weeks, really.

Probably. Again, that's our ideal date. It'll be up to the first parties and the likes of Steam to agree that's the best date for us to come out on.

Awesome. Uncharted is a phenomenal game. Full credit to the development team for the time and energy they put into it. As with any game, irrespective of Uncharted 2, we're blown away and we're delighted with the fact that the bar is continually raised and we break new barriers in storytelling, physics and graphical fidelity. It's a credit.

It's not just Crystal Dynamics who have to look at that and think, we now know where we have to go. Every developer irrespective of what game they're building now has to look at the competition out there and realise in order to have somebody put down their hard-earned cash, you have to continually deliver something new and exciting and worth that $60.

We had already made the decision that we needed to revisit Tomb Raider in a different light after the trilogy finished. As time goes on we'll start to talk about that in more detail. It's not for now. Needless to say, we work in videogame development, and we, like every single developer, analyse and pull apart every single game.

Uncharted, of course, was a game that broke new ground. We will continue to look at that level of detail and that quality of game, irrespective of whether it's Uncharted or a game that's due to come out in six months. It won a number of tremendous awards and it broke new ground. Everybody, not just Crystal, would have to stand up and take note.

There is an aspect - which they own, that's theirs - that they will continue to pioneer. It's the same with us. We have our pillars, we have our heritage, and we have to be careful that we build on them. We just need to look at it carefully. We're not going to go into too much detail right now on the future of Tomb Raider, because that's for a later date. But I do appreciate the question.