The GameShadow Blog

Chart-topping Batman: Arkham Asylum will be getting a free instalment of downloadable content during September.

Eidos has confirmed that the PC, XBOX 360 and PS3 editions will each be receiving it.

No confirmation on the exact quantity of the DLC, yet.

In a revolutionary move, Eidos Interactive has announced it will offer a downloadable edition of Championship Manager 2010 on a Pay What You Want price model.

This means that until the 10th of September 2009, all players will need to pay is a £2.50 transaction fee, plus any additional amount of their choice, starting from just a single penny.

Accompanying this announcement is a special Championship Manager 2010 Press Conference Video.

Eidos Interactive has announced that two of its biggest titles this year will be getting demos before their respective full releases.

The Batman: Arkham Asylum demo will be released this Friday morning.

Championship Manager 2010 will follow a week later on Friday August 14th.

Both demos will be available on GameShadow.

Eidos Interactive has trademarked the next Kane and Lynch title.

Kane and Lynch 2: Dog Days is scheduled for release towards the end of the year.

Eidos has the likes of Batman: Arkham Asylum and Mini Ninjas due this year too.

Kane and Lynch 2: Dog Days is the follow up to Kane and Lynch: Dead Men.

Eidos has released the Battlestations Pacific Demo.

A mission from the US campaign, plus two multiplayer modes are available to sample.

The sequel to the 2007 World War Two strategy title is fully released in mid-May on PC and XBOX 360.

It’s top of the GameShadow Newsletter as well, along with the latest content.

If you play it let us know and even Digg it too.

Warner Bros. has announced it is planning to re-launch Lara Craft in a new Tomb Raider movie.

Early details suggest the movie will re-ignite the character’s origins, as well as her love and enemy interests, and move away from the style of the two previous titles starring Angelina Jolie.

No names of the director and main actress have been announced yet.

Tomb Raider Underworld is the latest game in the series from Eidos Interactive, released in November 2008.

Eidos Interactive has re-vamped the website for Tomb Raider Underworld.

With the game due for release next week, an Experience Website has been unveiled that allows players to sample a special game set in the Mediterranean.

The demo was also recently released, as Lara gets further press and exposure.

I’ll be frank. There’s one reason I’m posting this. Honestly, we could simultaneously post huge news on Elite IV, WoW 2 and Half-Life 3, and a scantily clad receptionist from Croydon would still get the best clicks.

In other news, find out why Tomb Raider Underworld will suck right here.

This is slightly old news, but we’ve got a big Hitman community here, and it came up in another post, so I thought I’d make it official.

Hitman 5 is definitely in production at IO Interactive, the developer of the first four (increasingly brilliant) games.

The news came about via page 17 of an Eidos report, published last year. Hitman is one of Eidos’ biggest brands, so the continuation of the series felt like a given, but it’s nice to have the official tip all the same.

Three of the key founders of IO split off from the developer in recent weeks, so let’s hope that the creative and independent spirit of the company can live on, and that Hitman continues to grow, rather than succumbing to the stagnant annual release format adopted by many other popular series.

All the latest Hitman 5 content will appear on the Hitman 5 Gamepedia page.

It’s been a busy old week for Eidos, and one partially in keeping with the company’s changeable successes in the last year or so. Long story short, a much needed cash injection has arrived, courtesy of stock purchase by Warner Bros.

SCi, Eidos’ parent company, first announced that it was taking purchase offers, in order to raise the cash required to keep it afloat. The company then openly announced that it had turned down at least one bid, from an anonymous source.

The source was tipped to be Time Warner, who ended up taking a £15 million chunk of SCi stock instead, meaning a full sale is now unlikely.

Shares were issued at 35p each, and the announcement caused the company’s public stock to drop 17% to just 46p - under 10% of where it was a year ago.

Part of the agreement seemingly involves Warner Bros taking over all Eidos publishing duties in the US and Canada, resulting in speculation that the entirety of Eidos’ PR staff in those regions are due to be laid off, effective immediately.

Still, looks like Lara’s safe for the time being.

Following financial difficulties at SCi, the parent company behind British publisher Eidos, the company’s senior management team have quit under pressure from shareholders.

Jane Cavanagh, Bill Ennis and Rob Murphy were tasked with finding a buyer for the struggling publisher of Tomb Raider - a situation made no easier by the recent furore over Kane & Lynch. After talks were brought to an unsuccessful close, shareholders turned on the management team, leading to their resignation today.

The temporary replacements for the trio seem optimistic due to funding proposals from potential partners, but the future for big brands like Hitman and Tomb Raider are certainly looking a little shakier today.

Over at the Official Championship Manager group on the social network, our friend Keir at Eidos has been generous enough to put up an exclusive competition where football fans can win twenty copies of CM2008 Mobile - the perfect pick up and play football management game for all those long trips to work.

All you have to do to be in with a chance of winning is sign up to the group (sign up to the social network here if you haven’t already) and post the model name of your phone on the group’s scrawler.

Enter now!

IO’s most recent - and ill-received - game, Kane & Lynch, perfectly indicates gaming’s obsession with cinematic values. Time and time again we ask why games seek to compete with and copy another, entirely distinct medium. Gaming has enough of its own to offer, it need not rely on over-familiarity with its linear peer.

And someone outside the industry has realised this far more succinctly than I.

“Hitman is a mediocre movie inspired by a pretty good game. The elements which grant the videogame its quality are clearly impossible to transpose to the screen.”

Dot on, Daniel Etherington of Channel 4 Film. The things that make games good don’t make good films. The things that make films good don’t necessarily stand out in games.

Seems obvious, really.

Montreal seems to be the vogue place to open studios these days.

With the opening of the Eidos Montreal development studio comes the official announcement of Deus Ex 3. Details are understandably scarce, but the studio is looking to take on up to 100 staff by the end of the year.

There’s a teaser trailer with frankly the worst voice over imaginable. Seriously, watch it, and try not to giggle. Then remember that Deus Ex is one of those few series famed - rightly or wrongly - for its intelligence, and weep bitter tears of resentment.