Eidos comments on Tomb Raider progress

Staying with yesterday's Eidos conference call, CEO Mike McGarvey also addressed the current state of Crystal Dynamics' first steps in charge of the Tomb Raider franchise. Although McGarvey didn't comment on bizarre reports that Warren Spector could be parachuted in to try and reinvigorate the series creatively (something we'd dearly love to see, incidentally), he did have some encouraging words about Ms. Croft's latest rebirth in a San Jose development studio.

Claiming to have seen a new version of Tomb Raider for the first time only last week, McGarvey said Eidos had been "extremely impressed" with the Soul Reaver developer's progress so far. "We're still doing a lot of market research, in terms of direction of the content and the character, but the fundamental technology is already complete and the character is up and running in the environment with new moves and new control systems."

However, he continued: "We're not in a position right now to articulate the creative direction of the franchise. It's still a little early. But we're certainly very excited about what we've seen so far." Given Lara's spectacular fall from grace in 2003 - game takes ages to come out, turns out to be very poor, series reallocated to Crystal Dynamics, movie savaged by critics - you can understand the publisher's guarded position. Still, rumours of Spector's involvement and a fresh perspective on the series mean we're a lot more excited than we would have been if Core had been left to try and resurrect their fallen angel for her planned sixth instalment...