It could well turn out that Tomb Raider Underworld is the name Eidos will slap on Lara Croft’s next adventure.

Reports indicate that the publisher has filed for trademark of the phrase ‘Tomb Raider Underworld’ with the Patent and Trademark Office.

‘Underworld’ has led to speculation that the new Tomb Raider game may find Croft mixing it up with seedy criminal elements, but it could of course just be a reference to the core of the sequel involving underground antics. Either way, we’ll have to wait and see.

Tomb Raider took severe nose dive with Angel of Darkness, but the series has seen a return to form since being placed in the safe hands of Crystal Dynamics. Both Tomb Raider Legend and Tomb Raider Anniversary have been very well received.

Tomb Raider Anniversary hit the Xbox 360 not too long ago.

Courtesy of CVG.

Following the registration of the elderscrollsonline.com domain name, now ZeniMax, the owner of Bethesda Softworks, has licensed the Simutronics HeroEngine for a “massively multiplayer game project currently getting underway.”

Last year, BioWare licensed the HeroEngine for the company’s first massively multiplayer online game, currently in development at its Austin studio and rumored to be a KOTOR MMO.

With today’s announcement, there are enough evidence to believe that there’s a Elder Scrolls massively multiplayer online game in the works.

GAITHERSBURG, Md.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Simutronics announced today that ZeniMax Online Studios has licensed the Simutronics HeroEngine. ZeniMax Online will use HeroEngine in connection with their massively multiplayer game (MMO) project currently getting underway.

MMO games are one of the fastest growing segments of the videogames market, with billions of dollars in global revenues – projected to reach $13 billion per year by 2011 according to DFC Intelligence. Millions of people around the world come together in online MMO games such as World of Warcraft, EverQuest, and Lineage to cooperate and compete with each other in a virtual world.

“ZeniMax Online selected HeroEngine because we determined it will serve our needs best,” said Matt Firor, President of ZeniMax Online Studios. “That fact that we can get up and running with meaningful art and content in the near term makes the HeroEngine a perfect fit for us.”

Simutronics first launched HeroEngine as a licensed development platform in 2006 after five years of development. Since that time the Simutronics team has added dozens of new features and integrated key technologies from the leading middleware vendors in the videogame industry. HeroEngine is being used worldwide by development teams looking for faster time to market through the HeroEngine’s unique collaborative development as well as unique tools for rapid prototyping and world building and a content pipeline that is optimized for the needs of MMO development teams.

“We are thrilled to have ZeniMax using HeroEngine,” said David Whatley, founder and CEO of Simutronics. “We have been fans of ZeniMax’s Bethesda Softworks games for years, and to have ZeniMax Online Studios as our latest licensee is an honor and strong validation of our team’s hard work and great design.”

An employee of comic publisher Top Cow Comics – which produces The Darkness comic series – has apparently let slip that a sequel to The Darkness game is in the works.

According to reports, developer Starbreeze Studios is currently hard at work on the second moody horror quest, said to be for Xbox 360 and PS3, for a late 2008/early 2009 release.

2K Games dismisses the chatter as “just a rumour”, refusing to comment further on the matter.