Rise of the Tomb Raider Microsoft deal "does have a duration", Square Enix reiterates

Rise of the Tomb Raider won't be an Xbox exclusive forever, of course.

When Rise of the Tomb Raider was first announced as an Xbox exclusive, it was only a short time before Square Enix and Microsoft clarified that the deal was likely to for a limited time only.

We had hoped that time would be quite short, but when Microsoft put its hand up to say it was in fact publishing the game recently, lots of gamers got the wind up.

Square Enix has now reiterated the fact that the deal won't last forever.

“Our partnership with Microsoft on Rise of the Tomb Raider does have a duration, but we aren’t discussing those details at this time and are focused on collaborating to deliver a great game on Xbox One and Xbox 360,” a representative told GameInformer.

It's usual in cases like these for both companies to refuse to talk about the details of the exclusivity arrangement, because from the platform holder's perspective it does them no good to have ponied up if everyone knows for sure there's another version coming.

Still, it's frustrating to have such confused messaging wafting about. We're now back exactly where we were in August, when Xbox also admitted the deal has "a duration". Nothing has changed.