

In an announcement printed on Monday, Japanese online game writer Square Enix introduced that it will be divesting its common Tomb Raider franchise for $300 million and investing the proceeds into blockchain, synthetic intelligence (AI) and cloud computing applied sciences.
The principal developer of Tomb Raider is Square Enix’s subsidiary Crystal Dynamics, which generated $92 million in income in its fiscal 12 months ending March 2021. Aside from Tomb Raider, Crystal Dynamics and Eidos Interactive, one other subsidiary to be divested, maintain mental properties for titles reminiscent of Deus Ex, Thief and Legacy of Kain.
Shares of each firms, in addition to Square Enix Montreal, will probably be transferred to Sweden-based Embracer Group AB. The settlement is anticipated to conclude between July and September of this 12 months.
Since its inception in 1996, the Tomb Raider franchise has offered greater than 88 million models. About 40% of the gross sales got here from the franchise’s rebooted trilogy consisting of Tomb Raider, Rise of the Tomb Raider and Shadows of the Tomb Raider, whereas the remaining got here from gross sales of the unique recreation. Additionally, the franchise noticed over 53 million paid cellular downloads from video games reminiscent of Lara Croft: Relic Run.
Related: Blockchain video games tackle the mainstream: Here’s how they’ll win
Cointelegraph beforehand reported that Yosuke Matsuda, CEO of Square Enix, revealed plans for blockchain, metaverse and nonfungible tokens integration firstly of the 12 months. Specifically, the CEO sees the event of play-to-earn blockchain video games as a key pillar of development for the business and expects 2022 to be a 12 months with rising hype for the metaverse.