Eidos Life President Ian Livingstone talks sequels, Square and the current state of games

At the recent Edinburgh Interactive Festival we caught up with games industry legend Ian Livingstone to talk about life as a Life President…

Eidos is currently focus testing with new ideas for Lara.

You are now Life President of Eidos. That sounds like both an honour and life sentence. What does your role involve?
I've certainly put my time in, that's for sure. I was chairman for seven years then I stepped down from the boardroom when we were acquired by SCi. Now we've been bought by Square I've reached that age where I don't get involved in the day-to-day stuff so I'm more of an ambassador for the company. Within Eidos I give creative input into what we're doing but I sit on our green light committee, which is the approvals committee for games in development and games which might come into development. I also do public speaking at conferences like Edinburgh and government lobbying. I am the ultimate games geek and I hope I speak with passion about games.

How has the company changed since Square Enix acquired Eidos?
It hasn't changed much at all. We have new owners and Eidos is a Square Enix company – it means we are a label now rather than a publishing entity. For Square it's business as usual. They are not looking to take our IP into Japan and then make a Japanese Lara Croft. Indeed, the opposite is true. They've always been Japan facing and now they are looking to be a global publishing company. So they are looking at the expertise and the ability of Eidos to create original content in our own studios. So they have Western content for Western markets plus global content for global markets.

There still seems to be confusion over Eidos’s role following the takeover – could you clarify?
Eidos is going to be the label for Eidos studios, for internal and external studios. The publishing is going to be within Square Enix.

Eidos is preparing to launch one of its biggest titles yet.

Square is clearly forging ground in the MMO space. Is this something Eidos is looking at alongside Square?
I can't tell you what we are doing in the future. Clearly I'm well aware of MMOs given my history in role-playing myself. It's an attractive proposition. But no comment at this point.

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