Eidos' Japanese Releases Spiked
Why publish a game in a foreign country when you can have someone else do it for you?
Published: August 25, 2006
Being an international publisher is more than just setting up an office in another country and calling it a day. Entire departments familiar with that territory need to be in place too, from PR to marketing to localization, and then there's building relationships with local retailers and cross-branding upcoming games with local companies. For this reason, even bigger publishers like EA will form partnerships with local publishers in countries like Japan (though that partnership, Square Electronic Arts LLC, is long gone now).
This is exactly what Eidos has done, opting to use the expertise and familiarity with Japan that Spike Co. Ltd. brings to the table. Spike is a smaller-time publisher/developer (they worked on Crimson Tears for Capcom, Samurai Western for Atlus, and two Dragon Ball Z Budokai: Tenkaichi games for Atari), but they've clearly been around for a while and Eidos is entrusting them with some of this year's bigger releases.
“Eidos is pleased to have partnered with the talented group of people at Spike Co. in Japan,” mused Eidos President Bill Gardner. “This partnership marks a new, strategic approach to publishing in the highly important Japanese market.”
“It is an honor to publish world-renowned Eidos titles like Tomb Raider and Commandos,” returned Mitsutoshi Sakurai, C.E.O of Spike. “We think that this will be a start of a strong and mutually beneficial relationship between our companies.”
Sakurai was speaking specifically about the awesome Tomb Raider: Legend and the decidedly less awesome Commandos Strike Force, but Spike will also publish the in-between awesome Urban Chaos: Riot Response. All three games will hit on all available platforms -- including PC, though the actual release dates haven't been set in stone, apparently. We've made adjustments to our respective game pages, and we'll continue to update you if something changes.
This is exactly what Eidos has done, opting to use the expertise and familiarity with Japan that Spike Co. Ltd. brings to the table. Spike is a smaller-time publisher/developer (they worked on Crimson Tears for Capcom, Samurai Western for Atlus, and two Dragon Ball Z Budokai: Tenkaichi games for Atari), but they've clearly been around for a while and Eidos is entrusting them with some of this year's bigger releases.
“Eidos is pleased to have partnered with the talented group of people at Spike Co. in Japan,” mused Eidos President Bill Gardner. “This partnership marks a new, strategic approach to publishing in the highly important Japanese market.”
“It is an honor to publish world-renowned Eidos titles like Tomb Raider and Commandos,” returned Mitsutoshi Sakurai, C.E.O of Spike. “We think that this will be a start of a strong and mutually beneficial relationship between our companies.”
Sakurai was speaking specifically about the awesome Tomb Raider: Legend and the decidedly less awesome Commandos Strike Force, but Spike will also publish the in-between awesome Urban Chaos: Riot Response. All three games will hit on all available platforms -- including PC, though the actual release dates haven't been set in stone, apparently. We've made adjustments to our respective game pages, and we'll continue to update you if something changes.
