In May 2022, Embracer Group purchased three Square Enix studios for just $300 million (USD). This amount included the studios, employees, and numerous IPs that belonged to these studios. One of those IPs was Tomb Raider.
It is now being reported by Fellowship of Fans that Embracer has leased just the Tomb Raider IP to Amazon for $600 million. Their original story said that the rights were sold outright to Amazon, but they have since changed the wording to say "leased" to Amazon. Meaning that Amazon may not own the rights to the franchise but that they are permitted to do most anything with the IP that may include new games, other media like television, and even merchandise. In all likelihood, this seems to indicate that Crystal Dynamics will continue to develop the main Tomb Raider games while Amazon perhaps makes a new Amazon TV show based on the IP.
Whatever the case is, Embracer Group was able to make double their investment back just back on one of the IPs they acquired. If you weren't already saying that Square Enix vastly undersold their properties in that initial sale to Embracer, you're probably saying it now.
The only thing Amazon spent more money on was for the television rights to The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Fellowship of Fans is where this story broke, and they do seem to have a solid track record for accuracy when it comes to Amazon and Amazon TV information. It is Fellowship of Fans that accurately revealed key plot points of Rings of Power well ahead of release.
In December 2022, Amazon Games was already revealed to be the publisher for the next Tomb Raider game. The next game does not yet have any official name. It may still be quite some time before we see what the future holds for Lara Croft and her tomb raiding adventures.
