The Latest Tomb Raider Delay Will Have Major Consequences

Tomb Raider: Catalyst has finally been affected by Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis’ delay. It seemed more or less inevitable that it would be, as Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis and Tomb Raider: Catalyst were originally scheduled to launch in 2026 and 2027, respectively. As Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis is now coming out on February 12, 2027, Tomb Raider: Catalyst getting pushed to 2028 to avoid conflicting release is a natural consequence.

Thus, Tomb Raider’s 30th anniversary this year has been a little less celebratory, even if the future of the franchise is still incredibly bright, and it’s great that both of these upcoming Tomb Raider games will have more time in the oven. While it’s too bad that we’ll have to wait a whole other year for Tomb Raider: Catalyst, in general, the worst consequence of its delay has yet to fully sink in.

Say Goodbye To A Disc For Tomb Raider: Catalyst

In an interview with The Game Business, Amazon games boss Jeffrey Gattis mentioned a 2028 release date for Tomb Raider: Catalyst, suggesting that the game has been quietly delayed. And, as we all know and have been dreading since the beginning of July, PlayStation will no longer be producing discs for games by January 2028.

Devastatingly, with PlayStation’s goal to abandon physical media and usher in an all-digital era by the time that the PlayStation 6 arrives, Tomb Raider: Catalyst will not launch with a disc on PlayStation now that it’s slated to launch in 2028. It presumably would have, if not for Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis’ delay, and there’s no way Crystal Dynamics and Amazon Game Studios would cram two of its biggest Tomb Raider games ever into 2027 just so that we’d have disc releases for both of them.

Even more so than Legacy of Atlantis, Catalyst is exciting because it’s the first new modern mainline game in the series since Tomb Raider: Underworld in 2008. For the last 13 years, Lara Croft’s tomb-raiding origins and backstory were explored in Tomb Raider’s prequel Survivor trilogy, and Legacy of Atlantis can now be a remake of Tomb Raider 1, as well as a sequel to Shadow of the Tomb Raider.

Tomb Raider: Catalyst is a game many fans have looked forward to for 18 years, though, and it seems as if they’ll be waiting two full decades to see Lara’s story continue forth into the future, rather than indulging in the past. To not have a disc release for it, then, is the rotten cherry on top of a stale cake.

2027 Is Still An Exciting Year For Tomb Raider

tomb raider legacy of atlantis dinosaur combat — *Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis* dinosaur combat.

Letting Tomb Raider: Catalyst have all this time for development and polish will hopefully result in the best final product imaginable. It’s just disappointing to acknowledge that every new game being released in 2028 onward will not have physical media associated with it, and that we’re beginning to see a clear portrait being painted of which PlayStation games will be the last ones to ever include a disc in a case that players can go to a store to buy.

The tiny glimmer of a silver lining, if there is one, is that fans should at least be able to secure a disc for Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis, assuming it doesn’t get delayed further. Legacy of Atlantis is essentially going to give us a template that the rest of this new Tomb Raider era can use as a foundation, and so 2027 will be no less thrilling for fans of the franchise.

Of course, it’s tremendously poignant that Tomb Raider’s storied history on PlayStation and its tradition of physical releases is ending where it began. 31 years later, Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis will officially be the last physical Tomb Raider release on PlayStation, when the original Tomb Raider that it’s remaking released with a disc for the PlayStation 1 in 1996.

Tomb Raider: Catalyst is scheduled to be released for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S in 2028.