Bad news for anyone looking forward to playing the new Tomb Raider game Catalyst next year: It’s not going to be out until the year after that.
Word of the delay came from Amazon Gaming chief Jeffrey Gattis during an interview with The Game Business. Talking about Amazon’s game investment strategy, Gattis said the company is into pretty much everything, “from what we call game night games, which are those phone-as-a-controller games, which I think of as single-A games that are in the single millions of dollars to develop, all the way up to triple-A.”
Then, to provide an example of how Amazon remains committed to big-time, he dropped the news: “We’ve announced the two Tomb Raider titles—Atlantis comes February 12th of next year and then we’ll follow on in 2028 with the next one.”
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Tomb Raider: Catalyst hadn’t locked in a hard release date, but when it was announced at The Game Awards in 2025 it was set for launch in 2027.
It’s possible that Gattis merely got his years or games mixed up: I still occasionally do the ‘what year is it?’ Jumanji meme in real life when my wandering mind is suddenly snapped back to reality by someone asking if I’ve finished filling out the form.
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But this strikes me as unlikely, for two reasons. One, saying “2028” specifically is very different from rolling with “next year” when you’re not completely sure what year it is right now.
Two, and more to the point, Tomb Raider: Catalyst developer Crystal Dynamics appears to be in a bit of disarray. In March, the studio conducted its fourth round of layoffs in 12 months, and studio leadership—not just at CD, but anywhere that’s taken a big hit—may say that cutting to the bone isn’t going to impact ongoing projects, but at some point that’s probably just not so, as presumably those laid off people served a function that they’re not around to handle anymore. Even if you’re only talking about the psychological toll that constant layoffs take on those who remain, that’s going to have an impact.
To be sure, I’ve reached out to Amazon to ask if the 2028 target as expressed by Gattis is correct, and will update if I receive a reply. Until then, though, I’d suggest making other plans to occupy your gaming time in ’27.
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