Eidos woes confirmed

Eidos profits have suffered

Troubled UK computer game maker Eidos has confirmed its dismal year.

The maker of Tomb Raider reported full-year operating losses of £26.8m, compared with operating profits of £39.2m the previous year.

The creator of Lara Croft had issued two profit warnings during the year, with investors well prepared for the bad news.

The company blames the losses on increasing competition in the video games market.

It said sales were down by 14%.

Pre-tax profits were helped by a one-off profit of £80mn from the sale of investments, and came in at £49.3m, up from £37.9m last time.

Longer term hopes

Eidos added that it saw no reason to expect circumstances to improve materially before the next generation of game platforms were properly established in the market.

The firm said that although profitability would be affected in the short term, the industry was expected to grow over the medium and longer term.

Over the last year, the group launched 24 new titles, and said it was satisfied with the performance of many of the nine titles released in the last quarter.

Titles including Resident Evil 3 and Resident Evil: Survivor and Final Fantasy VIII saw success in the retail charts, it said.

Eidos said it had ten PlayStation 2 titles in development and was working with Microsoft and Nintendo to support their new consoles, expected to be released in late 2001.