What's Eidos's next big game?
There's been no news yet. I know with Eidos Montreal, most people suspect a Deus Ex sequel (again) and it was also responsible for making that iPad Deus Ex game that nobody cares about as well. "Common thinking" says that if the next Deus Ex doesn't sell eighty billion copies, Eidos Montreal will be shuttered.
Not much better for Eidos as a whole. Tomb Raider was a success but fell below expectations and probably broke even (or maybe made a modest profit) while Hitman didn't sell very well for "modern standards" either (though I think it was on par with previous games).
Basically, Square Enix is just kinda oblivious at this point. It funnels huge amounts of money into games with what seems like very poor management and no plan on how to effectively appeal to both original fans
and new audiences, it keeps shelling out for extremely expensive and time-consuming cutscenes to be made even though it's likely one of the company's biggest money sinks, and meanwhile it seems all of its developers have little to no oversight so end up making stupid decisions and then Square Enix only finds out after it's too late to save the projects.
Square Enix could actually learn a thing or two about EA and Activision. Shitty practices and evilness aside, those two companies generally don't bleed money and know how to manage projects efficiently.
FYI, Hitman's failure was largely a result of IO Interactive, not Square Enix. From what I have heard, IO got a lot of its art department guys to start doing game design on the team, and the result was a game where the focus was largely on pretty graphics, cool cutscenes and stylish, highly-scripted sequences and kills, rather than the open sandbox levels of past games. It only sold based on the reputation of the earlier games and most fans weren't happy with it, and since it's not a mainstream franchise that most people know about, it had no hope of bringing in too many new players either.
As others said, publishers need to realize where a game's appeal lies and to budget according to realistic projected sales, not "if we turn this kiddie platform game into a Call of Duty clone, but keep the kiddie graphics, art style, characters and themes, it'll sell as well of Call of Duty because kids all want Call of Duty but can't buy M-rated games, right?" I realize that publishers (especially shareholders) are afraid of new intellectual property because it's unproven, but generally speaking if you want to compete with Halo, Gears, Call of Duty, etc. then you need to show the public something new that looks
cooler and
better than what they already like, otherwise they will have no reason to care no matter how established the franchise they're diddling is.