Stories about: Eidos

Read on for five of our top five choices of anime-based games that received an unusually timed release outside of Japan.

Popular British video game developer and publisher Eidos Interactive has just celebrated its twentieth anniversary. So for you, our loyal readers and part-time Eidos combatants, we commemorate the 20-year milestone by taking you through the history of Eidos Interactive via some of its greatest highs and lows.

Pretty much everything is accused of being racist these days. From Creole chocolate cookies to old reruns of Speedy Gonzalez -- the cry of "ZOMG, That’s Racist!" is never far away. Even our humble video game consoles have come under increasing rates of fire. Most gamers vehemently deny the charges of cultural intolerance directed at their video games -- after all, it's just social watchdogs making a fuss about nothing... Right?

In 2008, Square-Enix was creating Final Fantasy games. In 2009, they released Final Fantasy games. In 2010, they'll release more Final Fantasy games. Those three facts are the main reasons Square-Enix reported a 50-percent increase in revenue for the last nine months of 2009 over 2008, and why the company forecasts a successful first quarter for this year.

Seconds after Ezio deals the killing blow to one of his despicable and deserving targets in Ubisoft's highly anticipated sequel, the action stops, the surroundings are peeled away, and the focus shifts entirely to a scene of the hunter and his prey.

As more Epic Mickey details surface, developer Warren Spector has openly discussed his plans for a sequel and his hopes that Disney will back development on the pair of titles Junction Point was working on before they were acquired in 2007.

Steve Perlman, CEO of a company called OnLive that's readying an on-demand video game service, cringes whenever Google's gmail or other high profile Web services conk out. After all, his company's bold plan is to offer streamed access to a slew of brand name video games via the cloud in such a way that users at their PCs and TVs get performance they're used to experiencing on consoles.

One helping of downloadable Batman: Arkham Asylum content wasn't going to cut it, so how about two? The first, dubbed "Insane Night," we'd already heard about. It ships next week Thursday, September 17th. The second? Rumor is, it's called "Prey in the Darkness" and that it'll ship the week following, also a Thursday, September 24th. If true, happy September, Bat-buffs.

Eidos life president Ian Livingstone has declared it's "all or nothing for new releases in 2009," painting either a blithely Machiavellian or cynically gloomy picture of the video games industry this year, depending on your vantage. Think, in other words, of the games industry in 2009 as a giant cattle pen -- standing room for mega-hits only, electric prods in the employ of marketing monoliths. Publishers are pouring everything into a handful of lucrative franchises (you know their names) driving less well-known titles off the shelves, or into dark, forgettable little corners -- out of sight and mind entirely.

The fourth video game in Eidos' popular stealth series, Thief 4, has just been announced.