When Tomb Raider released early last year Square Enix expected high sales for the game, with a forecast ofshifting around 5 million copies worldwide within the first month, instead reaching 3.4 million sales in such a time. This original target wasn’t met, and despite the critical success it was considered a financial failure.
Now it has come to light that Lara’s latest adventure has finally resulted in a profit which occurred at the end of 2013. Speaking to Eurogamer Scot Amos, who is the executive producer of Tomb Raider at Crystal Dynamics, said:
“We’ve crossed the line of profitability for the last-gen and PC versions. They’ve always been behind us, regardless of maybe what was said or how it was said in the press, and certainly at the end of the year we’ve actually gone over expectations because we’ve managed to get profitability back.”
With the release of the Definitive Edition of Tomb Raider happening soon it does show that Square Enix has faith in the franchise.
Source: Eurogamer
a inferior race
This had been charting all year and has only just made a profit? Ouch!
beeje13
Its crazy that a 3.4 million unit launch is a failure. In a way its no wonder some companies don’t do new ips. Hopefully the easier to develop for next gen consoles will make creative risks less…risky.
Avenger
I’m guessing the game must have had a substantial budget in which to revitalise the franchise. That is perhaps why 5 million was estimated. That and marketing campaigns, perhaps SE was expecting to reach a lot more people.
It all paid off in the final product though, and I’m glad that the game has become lucrative as well as a critical success because the game doesn’t deserve to be deemed a failure in any way.
rosswilson17
While the new consoles may be easier to develop for but the games will be getting more complicated, so I would guess more artists and programmers will be required. This will probably just make new games even more of a risk for companies :(
beeje13
True, then development tools need to advance to make time consuming or code-heavy tasks easier.
WalkingP
I’ve play TR on the PS3 and 360 and I guess I’ll buy the Definite Edition so that I least have one decent game to play on my PS4. So far my PS4 has been gathering more dust every day waiting for some decent game releases.
The Lone Steven
Ubisoft, stop expecting your games to bring in COD and GTA levels of sales. Stop giving your games high budgets and expecting them to bring in billions. It won’t happen. 3.4million sales is excellent for a reboot. In fact, can publishers please stop expecting to sell millions per month and set a more realistic sales forcast? Cheers.
Spence1115
Square Enix, not Ubisoft in this case.
JR.
I expect the Definitive Edition will sell 24 million copies by february 2014 and boy will I be disappointed if it doesn’t.
DividSmythe
Now it’s returned it wouldn’t so bad if I pulled out of buying definitive edition in a few weeks then… Forget that I’m still getting it. I’ve never really got into Lara to much but I’m willing too.
Spence1115
How much did this cost?! We all bemoaned them for calling 3.4m units a failure but if its genuinely wasn’t profitable then technically yeah, it was a failure for a while. It shouldn’t have taken this long to be profitable, they’re clearly spending too much on something!
bunimomike
Agreed. You can’t help but think the budget is wrong as 3.4 million titles is a damned healthy number. :-\
freezebug2
Jeez, sounds a bit dog eat dog. Obviously driven by the modern culture of overwhelming expectation and delivery, tough times!