Lara Croft Wii: Interview
IGN: Yeah, we know. We’re always concerned about that, too. But let’s talk about today’s news. You’ve just announced that Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Anniversary is coming to Wii.
Bill Gardner: It is. You know, we put Tomb Raider on GameCube, DS, and GBA. I have many, many, many years in the business and I’ve had a great relationship with Nintendo. I think the world of the people and the company – they do a wonderful job. Eidos in the past kind of avoided Nintendo.
IGN: Uh-huh. We were getting to that.
Bill Gardner: Well, I was with Capcom [laughs]. I mean, I had a great relationship with them at Capcom. It’s a business, as you know, and you have to go out with the idea in mind that you could get killed by Pokemon or a Mario title, but at the same time there are a lot of Nintendo consumers out there who like to play other types of games.
IGN: This is true, but we are noticing a trend where people do seem to be buying more third party Wii games than they did on GameCube, so we hope that’s an encouraging sign.
Bill Gardner: They bought a ton of our Lego Star Wars on GameCube. I mean, we did really, really well with Lego Star Wars. At the end of the day, we also did fine with Lara Croft on GameCube. It did very well. And I honestly believe we will continue to do fine.
I’ve seen the proposal on the Wii version of Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Anniversary and I believe there is enough differentiation between what we’re doing now and what we’re planning on with the Wii version. There is enough unique gameplay with the controls that this is going to be a really fun experience for people. And I think we’re going out of our way to make a unique version for the Wii. It’s not a port. It’s a unique version.
IGN: So it’s going to play differently?
Bill Gardner: My understanding is that it will because of the way the Wii remote is handled.
