September 15^th, 2004 (12:00am) - In a financial statement issued today, Eidos Interactive revealed that the company is disappointed with the preliminary financial results from the year to June 2004, in which they reported a loss of UKP $2 million, compared to last year’s profit of UKP $17.4 million. The company blames this loss on the less than stellar performance of game’s including Legacy of Kain: Defiance, Commandos 3, Whiplash, and Hitman Contracts. Although, one has to admit that 1.7 million copies of Hitman Contracts sold isn’t a depressing number at all. In fact, Eidos and developer IO Interactive plan on pursuing the popularity of the franchise with a fourth installment in the series.

In this statement issued, it was revealed that one of the nine Eidos games to be released within the second half of the fiscal year includes yet another Hitman game, as well as the latest Tomb Raider game being developed by Legacy of Kain developer Crystal Dynamics. Not only this, but IO Interactive is scheduled to develop a new Intellectual Property for the next year as well as headline Eidos’ transition in the next generation of game consoles on the PlayStation 2 and Xbox 2.

As for Crystal Dynamics, they’re concentrating their efforts on redeeming the Tomb Raider franchise with help of the franchise’s creator, Toby Guard. However, the developer is also in pre-production for new titles on both home platforms and the PlayStation Portable.

Despite the company’s promising future outlook, rumors are still going around that Eidos Interactive is still in negotiations with a number of companies concerning a possible buyout. Fellow European publishers Codemasters and UbiSoft are the supposed candidates.