BBC News | BUSINESS | Lara suffers withering blow

Most famous for its Tomb Raider game starring Lara Croft - the original cyberbabe - Eidos blamed the sales slump on the transition to a new generation of gaming platforms.

It said the market was in the process of adapting to the introduction of Sega's Dreamcast, Sony's Playstation 2, Microsoft's X-Box and Ninetendo's Dolphin.

The company - which had already shocked the markets with a profits warning in January - said its full-year results to the end of March would be well down on the previous year.

Eidos's share price has nosedived from a recent high of 987p (it had been trading at much higher figures before it did a share split earlier this year).

Fear Effect

The Wimbledon-based company has released eight new titles since 18 February, including Fear Effect, Dream Warrior Monsters, Soul Reaver and Urban Chaos - and had high hopes for their success.

But it now says the new platforms have reduced demand, and that it is therfore delaying the release of other titles until early 2001.

These include Nomad Soul (Dreamcast), F1 World Grand Prix (PC), Tomb Raider (Game Boy Colour) and Daikatana (PC).

Eidos says it still believes the new platforms will boost demand eventually.

The company also announced it would be selling much of its majority holding in Norwegian computer company Opticom. It says this one-off boost to revenues will produce a pre-tax profit of about Ł84m.


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