Is it true Eidos has sunk a whole pile of money into this new engine? Talk on 1Up Yours seemed to indicate that this was to be pitched as an all-out top-shelf engine, with TR:U being the first big game released on it.
If so, I can't wait to see your handiwork. There's nothing quite like that "whoa" feeling from seeing a beautiful game for the first time.
Well the part about the CDC engine being an all-out complete re-working to go "all-next-gen" and completely rip out anything from the previous-gen era is certainly true, though I don't know how much you can say that the bill for that is
totally on the invoice sheet for TR:U (although it is the first title on it, big or small). The engine's condition for Legend was sort of a transitional state towards this sort of an end-goal that we're plodding closer to at this point (dropping legacy stuff off the map) and Anniversary was branched off that Legend codebase a little over 2 and a half years ago and done on the cheap, but that meant TR:A was going on while we were busy bringing this engine and its tools up to snuff for the sake of TR:U.
Still, there's another unannounced project going on here at Crystal which is also running on this engine, and in terms of schedule, it's staggered in its position less than a year behind TR. And then there's Deus Ex over at Montreal, which is only just getting started. We're not exactly far off from being in a position where this engine will be supporting 5 games all
simultaneously in some stage of production/preproduction including TR:U and DX3.
Another big thing is that we've been restructuring a lot of things within this studio. The idea of a core "shared tech/engine/tools" team within the studio is something that's relatively new, as are
shared design, and our "creative services" team... and all these teams provide services and in effect, product, for our "clients" who happen to be the actual game teams. While it's all "officially" still testing the waters, it's all paid off so far, and we've been pretty efficient as a result of it.
BTW, there are some other previews and interviews that go a little more into some details, albeit still marketing-oriented.
http://www.videogamer.com/xbox360/tomb_raider_underworld/preview-745.html
http://ps3.ign.com/articles/849/849347p1.html (IGN podcast).