Eidos Kixx off the New Year with eight titles

Eidos will bolster its revamped budget Kixx label with eight fresh titles in January to follow up the last quarter sales of its original 12 repackaged titles.

The line-up includes Chronomaster, Shellshock, Tekwar, Buried in Time, and three add-ons for the company's Links 386 title which offers two golf courses per disk. The PC CD-ROM titles cost u9.99 each.

The mainstay of the Kixx range is the original Championship Manager II which was released in September at u12.99 and has stayed in the charts since. The January releases will include the 95/96 season French, German, and Italian Championship Manager squads disk.

Kixx sales manager Paul Hislop said: "It just seems sensible to give people value for money."

The Kixx range was relaunched in September to match the success of EA's Classics and Virgin's White label. In August, Eidos' marketing director Larry Sparks said there was scope to develop Kixx but thought its marketing hadn't been particularly good.

Terminal velocity will be withdrawn from Kixx before Christmas. The revamped range, which will be 19 titles strong in January, is being promoted through specialist press advertising, and POS material, as well as catalogues distributed through Eidos' top title Tomb raider.

Hislop promises that there will be a regular injection of new titles into the range. "It is a mistake to develop a brand unless you've got continuity of good product. You can damage the brand with just one bad release," he said.