Snake moves with the times, Lara doesn't

[Administrator]

Lara Croft and Solid (or Naked, or whatever) Snake: you can't rival these two rock stars of gaming for their iconic power. And though Snake's roots go back a little further, they both have a deep, emblematic connection with the fifth generation of game consoles, the so-called PlayStation generation - those heady days of the late 90s when gaming burst out of teen bedrooms, into 3D and into a cinematic world of high adventure and sexy intrigue.
This week at Gamescom, both these icons made significant strategic moves on the big-business battlefield of gaming platforms. Microsoft announced that the next instalment of Lara's famous series, Rise of the Tomb Raider, would be exclusive to Xbox - for a while, at least. A day later, Konami revealed that Metal Gear Solid 5 would be released on Steam, bringing Snake to Valve's platform (if not PC) for the first time.
The first of these announcements was met with a storm of headlines, controversy, comment and community anger; the second a collective response that you could summarise as "well, duh." But let's not be blinded by the drama. The Tomb Raider deal is an anomaly, a freak of circumstance. It's the Metal Gear announcement that's a true sign of the times.
Read more…


More...