Square enix says tombraider did not hit sales target

cloud493

3.4 million copies of Tomb Raider have been sold in four weeks, publisher Square Enix has revealed, which is not enough to hit the game's sales target.

Fellow Square Enix title Hitman Absolution sold 3.6 million units since its launch in November last year, while Sleeping Dogs sold 1.75 million since last August.

There's no mention of what the company's internal sales expectations were for the trio, just that all three missed their respective marks.

Square Enix expected 14.9 million retail game sales from North America and Europe combined in its six-monthly forecast last September. Considering the fact that Tomb Raider, Hitman Absolution and Sleeping Dogs were the only big releases for these regions and accounted for a combined 8.75 million sales worldwide, it's clear that their targets were a good deal higher.

Today's numbers, published in Square Enix's latest financial report, do not count digital sales.

The figures are predicted totals for the current financial year. With five more days to go, they're unlikely to change very much unless you personally go out and buy 500,000 copies of Tomb Raider right now.

The business' North American sales momentum was singled out as being particularly "ineffective". The continent recorded just two thirds of Europe's sales. Back in September, Square Enix had forecast that North American sales would be higher than Europe's.

Price protection - where a publisher is forced to compensate retailers for any games shifted at cut cost - added to Square Enix's woes.

The company revealed earlier this morning that its net sales and total profits would be significantly lower than expected for the current financial year.

In large part this is due to a restructuring of its games business, a measure necessary due to lacklustre sales of its console game portfolio. Company president Yoichi Wada has also been replaced

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-03-26-tomb-raider-has-sold-3-4-million-copies-failed-to-hit-expectations



Now I'm no business whiz as these things goes, but its a pretty odd situation when sales of 3.4 million units is considered bad. The problem seems to be that not every new game is gonna sell like call of duty, assassins creed, whatever. To say thats bad is crazy, they must have turned a good profit there, even with costs, marketing etc.

Zillah

cloud493 wrote: »

To say thats bad is crazy, they must have turned a good profit there, even with costs, marketing etc.

Are you privy to these expenses? I think they're in a better position to say if sales were disappointing or not. Big games are like big movies - they invest obscene amounts of money into them and need to make back even more obscene amounts for the business model to be effective.

Otacon

Budgets have now gotten far too big. They basically need every game to be COD-like in order to 'meet expectations'.

krudler

Pity if it didnt because it's well worth playing, but do remember the franchise was tarnished for years with crap games, Angel of Darkness, shudder. Underworld or whatever it was called was good though.

sweetie

its only barely two weeks old!

krudler

Even if it was a disappointment sales wise, it got good reviews and was well recieved by anyone who played it, thus breathing fresh life into the TR franchise again, expectations go up, people become interesting in a sequel, sequel makes more money, wheels keep turning. I just hope it doesnt go down the EA route of "you didnt outsell everything ever so thats the end of your franchise"

GTR63

Wonder how much money they burned on the Multiplayer that nobody asked for and nobody is playing.

calex71

GTR63 wrote: »

Wonder how much money they burned on the Multiplayer that nobody asked for and nobody is playing.

What makes that worse is that they have said they have no plans for single player DLC only for multiplayer

GTR63

calex71 wrote: »

What makes that worse is that they have said they have no plans for single player DLC only for multiplayer

If that doesn't change its such a blown opportunity, the game not having challenge rooms/tombs was such a mistake too.

Zero-Cool

Crazy, it's only a few weeks old and is a brilliant game. It was a 'success' in the gaming world as it is generally considered a very good game.

Mad how little Sleeping Dogs sold and that was the 3rd best game of last year imo.

FutureGuy

sheehy83 wrote: »

Crazy, it's only a few weeks old and is a brilliant game. It was a 'success' in the gaming world as it is generally considered a very good game.

Mad how little Sleeping Dogs sold and that was the 3rd best game of last year imo.

Unfortunately, games are like movies. They can be sh!te and sell a ton or be brilliant and fail miserably sales-wise.

I think Square Enix made a dreadful mistake by saying there was no plans for single player DLC. Lots of people traded it in as a direct result of that announcement. SE also seem to think that the multiplayer is good enough for people to keep the game and seem to be focusing on it to make more money post launch, as Bioware/EA did so successfully with FIFA and Mass Effect 3 multi player.

The ponly thing is, the TR MP is garbage of the highest order.

The second hand market is now flooded meaning new sales will grind to a halt.

It looks like this game won't get a sequel now

Reekwind

Otacon wrote: »

Budgets have now gotten far too big. They basically need every game to be COD-like in order to 'meet expectations'.

Exactly. The big publishers are killing themselves with this mad pursuit of blockbuster games. Inflated budgets need massive sales to justify what is very obviously an unsustainable and highly risky strategy

Gunmonkey

And its only going to get worse next gen, as the art and animation departments have to be increased further across the board to take advantage of the extra oomph the PS4 and NextBox will have. And if they dont, irrespective of how well it plays/was written/is fun/etc, will be written off as "HUR DUR that looks like a Wii game hurrhurr" and tank in the charts.

Stev_o

Gunmonkey wrote: »

And its only going to get worse next gen, as the art and animation departments have to be increased further across the board to take advantage of the extra oomph the PS4 and NextBox will have. And if they dont, irrespective of how well it plays/was written/is fun/etc, will be written off as "HUR DUR that looks like a Wii game hurrhurr" and tank in the charts.

Think the gaming crash is going to hit fairly soon once the new consoles come out. Bubble is about to burst (or is already bursting if you want to be more accurate)

Red Crow

Otacon wrote: »

Budgets have now gotten far too big. They basically need every game to be COD-like in order to 'meet expectations'.

That's it. Plenty of people are more than happy to stick to franchise gaming: Fifa, CoD, Madden etc. When a game is being developed the main goal is to maximise profit, obviously. That goal however is leading to micro-transactions, DLC on the disk etc. I think at the same time that €50 a game is pretty expensive especially considering the hours people can get from CoD, FIFA etc. compared to buying games like Dead Space, Sleeping Dogs, Batman, Tomb Raider etc. that only last a couple of hours.

This creates two markets: one for the massive franchise games and then a smaller pool for games looking to become popular but who are never going to reach that "franchise" popularity.

krudler

GTR63 wrote: »

If that doesn't change its such a blown opportunity, the game not having challenge rooms/tombs was such a mistake too.

That, the secret tombs are all piss easy, its one small switch pulling excercise they could have been so much more, DLC with big old school style tombs would be brilliant, forget the MP its rubbish, plays identical to Uncharted's.

Stev_o

Eli Manning wrote: »

That's it. Plenty of people are more than happy to stick to franchise gaming: Fifa, CoD, Madden etc. When a game is being developed the main goal is to maximise profit, obviously. That goal however is leading to micro-transactions, DLC on the disk etc. I think at the same time that €50 a game is pretty expensive especially considering the hours people can get from CoD, FIFA etc. compared to buying games like Dead Space, Sleeping Dogs, Batman, Tomb Raider etc. that only last a couple of hours.

This creates two markets: one for the massive franchise games and then a smaller pool for games looking to become popular but who are never going to reach that "franchise" popularity.

Considering the attempts to push games up to 59.99 with even less content then before you can just see the negative reaction from a mile away.

Retr0gamer

All three games sold extremely well and Square Enix should have been happy with those sales. The problem was that they got greedy and over stocked suppliers with the games expecting CoD level sales which means any profit they made is being eaten away by the discount on credit Square Enix has to give retailers to clear stock. this means you'll be seeing Tomb Raider for 15-20 euro very shortly.

It's a complete and total failure on managements part.

Zero-Cool

Hopefully, they might set a small budget for the sequel using the same engine. Although, it doesn't help the sequel (if any) will be next gen which will need a few more quid pumped into it.

Things like this is what makes the execs demand taked on multiplayer because thats how COD makes their money and microtransactions.

Capcom already said there goal is to make "COD Money" and they were actually hoping Resi 6 would sell huge. I know people that only play COD & Fifa, they don't care or know about any other games coming out. Devs\execs can make their games COD like all they want but will never reach that height. They need to accept it and come back to gaming reality.

sweetie

I won't be too disappointed if there's no follow up because as good as TR was it wasn't really a tomb raider game due to those crappy tombs/puxxles and lack of platforming. A new Uncharted will suffice.

Randall Floyd

FutureGuy wrote: »

Unfortunately, games are like movies. They can be sh!te and sell a ton or be brilliant and fail miserably sales-wise.

I think Square Enix made a dreadful mistake by saying there was no plans for single player DLC. Lots of people traded it in as a direct result of that announcement. SE also seem to think that the multiplayer is good enough for people to keep the game and seem to be focusing on it to make more money post launch, as Bioware/EA did so successfully with FIFA and Mass Effect 3 multi player.

The ponly thing is, the TR MP is garbage of the highest order.

The second hand market is now flooded meaning new sales will grind to a halt.

It looks like this game won't get a sequel now

Yup, hello Bioshock Infinite.

Dravokivich

sheehy83 wrote: »

Mad how little Sleeping Dogs sold and that was the 3rd best game of last year imo.

Remember they are not counting digital sales, which I'd expect is how those 3 games have been sold in quite considerable numbers.

GTR63

Retr0gamer wrote: »

This means you'll be seeing Tomb Raider for 15-20 euro very shortly.

Better not happen by Friday, I needs money for Luigi.
Are many games selling 5m copies nowdays anyway?
I doubt GOW: Judgement or Ascension are selling near as well as the Trilogy finales.
No offence to Sleeping Dogs but that game is a 2m seller if you ever saw one. A sequel to a vaugely remembered francise that was canned then picked up renamed and shipped. I think Tomb Raider will sell better long term, good reception and a lot of people are just waiting for a price drop.
I dread the restructuring lines these companies come out with.

Retr0gamer

To be honest Square Enix is in desperate need of a restructuring, the japanese sector anyway. They were worried about staff getting poached by other developers that they specialised them so much that they wouldn't be attractive for poaching. It got so bad that they quite literally had 'cobblestone girl' working in their art department who specialised in creating cobblestone textures. They learned how inefficient and costly that structure was when they made FFXIII and have been desperately trying to restructure into a more western development process.

Kirby

Didn't their head honcho resign yesterday? That could be part of the steps they are taking.

Kinski

Retr0gamer wrote: »

It got so bad that they quite literally had 'cobblestone girl' working in their art department who specialised in creating cobblestone textures.

That sounds like a job that could only end in suicide. Probably by throwing yourself from a great height onto cobblestone paving.

ancapailldorcha

If publishers are so stupid that they think the long term fans of their franchises secretly want the games to play like COD or whatever's selling well then they deserve to go bust.

Turtwig

Just another little theory that I'm putting out there. Pure speculation, of course.

It's not clear what the individual targets for Tomb Raider were.

Square Enix expected 14.9 million retail game sales from North America and Europe combined in its six-monthly forecast last September. Considering the fact that Tomb Raider, Hitman Absolution and Sleeping Dogs were the only big releases for these regions and accounted for a combined 8.75 million sales worldwide, it's clear that their targets were a good deal higher.

Consider this, TR sold 3.4 Million in under four weeks. It'd be incredibly premature to say that a game didn't reach it's targets. (How much do BF4, Half Life 3, Pokemon I forget etc. sell in four weeks?). My suspicion is that this is a translation error ,poor wording or a combination of both. Collectively the trio of titles sales failed to meet the target and are a disappointment. TR of course is still very active in sales and already accounts for half the sum of the other two titles. So either Squeenix have ridiculously silly expectations for a franchise they dug through the mud or their official report was just worded badly. I'd say if you were to ask them for a press release they'd be praising the game's sales so far.

But, again just speculation and conjecture.

Retr0gamer

Games companies don't care about sales after the first month. After that month that are selling the games cheap and possibly losing money on stock they sold to distributors since they are taking a credit hit so retailers can discount the software.

It definitely isn't a translation error.

ShadowHearth

3.4mil sold in few weeks and not including digital versions ( which most PC version would be i assume ) is worded as bad. Where the 6 month plan is to sell 15mil?
I honestly dont get their logic. I would love to know how much they spent on that games development.
Even if you sold each tomb raider game for 20eu ( real average price would be about 40eu ) these last two weeks in it still 68mil alone in first two weeks. I know its not pure profit, but holy ****, thats only first two weeks. Unless game development budgets are counted in billions and not millions these days!

Pixelbastardo

wait, "not counting digital sales" where they make most profit with zero manufacturing and shipping costs....