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Forums - Sales Discussion - Analyst: Tomb Raider cost $100 million, needs 5-10 million sales to succeed

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kitler53 on 27 March 2013
zarx said:

Let me guess this is the same guy that said that Bioshock Infinite cost $200m lol.

Edit: the actual quote actually sounds less stupid than the OP makes out

"Square Enix's franchises are well established and require ever-higher production budgets to match and surpass past performance. The latest Hitman and Tomb Raider sold in the three million unit range and got Metacritic ratings above 8. Those numbers would rate as successful for JRPGs that earn more from vendors as exclusives and have manageable budgets. But for games with development budgets approaching $100 million to be truly profitable, ratings have to be above 8.5 and sales need to be in the five to ten million unit range."

He doesn't actually say TR cost $100m at all.


okay wow, that quote and the OP aren't even close to stating the same thing.



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Degausser on 27 March 2013

The actual quote doesn't say that Tomb Raider cost $100m budget, but tbh I wouldn't imagine it's far off given the long developement time, huge marketing push and size of the studio which made it. It's a high production value game and every bit your definition of AAA - in the sense of large budget needing large sales to repeat large rewards. It's impossible to know but I'd say a game like this probably needs something around 4m-5m sales to 'hit targets'. but at somewhere around the 3m it could hit break even point - especially after DLC sales.

There's nothing really surprising here though, every company is trying to make a COD, a FIFA, a battlefield, a Skyrim - something which literally prints money. If they fall short then the reality is sales around 3m arn't good enough to hit expectations.

The industry is becoming more and more all or nothing - THQ didn't do a great deal wrong but they just couldn't compete with the bigger publishers and make IP which could sell the 3m+ required. At budgets go up and the bigger publishers continue to dominate further, it's gonna be the turn of SE, Capcom, Konami, Namco etc to feel the pinch - luckily they all still have a fairly healthy, profitable Japanese market to fall back on.



DamnTastic on 27 March 2013

already at 3.4Million shipped...

c'mon 5m to break even? -.-' How retarded are those companies these days.



burninmylight on 27 March 2013
Nem said:
Player2 said:

Yes, the problem isn't the (if true) $100M budget itself, but Square-Enix focus in single player games. They need to make more online multiplayer games like Final Fantasy XIV and Dragon Quest X, that will save them for sure.


So true.

Analysts... why do they even exist? They give no good advice.

And for the record... Tomb raider HAS multiplayer. Someone needs to inform that analyst of that.


FFXIV has been a disaster and a huge money sink for SE. I don't know if the game is SE's biggest critical flop, but it is definitely its biggest commercial flop. Another Final Fantasy MMO is the last thing it needs right now. What it should do is get to making the games people are begging for and stop plopping down so much resources into the presentation side of things.



cbarroso09 on 27 March 2013

keep putting so much effort on graphics, and that is what you will get. Next one will be Rockstar with GTAV. I mean the next game to be waiting for a 10 million seller to make some profit. Developers are playing with fire, one false step and they are done.



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darkknightkryta on 27 March 2013
ryuzaki57 said:
darkknightkryta said:
ryuzaki57 said:

10 millions?????

It will be lucky to do even 3. Those SquareEnix douchebags are hilarious. But they earned it with their idiotic western focus, looking down on fans and not releasing any decent Japanese game. 

What anime is this?

Sorry I don't know... just picked this from google. Reminds me of Katsuragi in Evangelion but it can't be that.

Just google searched, it's Fate/Stay O_O



oldschoolfool on 27 March 2013

they should get close to the 5 million mark,as in 5 million shipped. They have a good chance of breaking even,but that's about it.



Heavenly_King on 27 March 2013
Barozi said:
$100m ?
Not sure if I should believe that.

Uncharted was like $20m....


Anyway it needs to sell 2.9m units at full price to break even.
The 10m is exaggerated, 5m lifetime would be enough. Why didn't you put the real context from the quote in your title ? Probably only to get more hits.

yeah, but if you see the early concepts of the game, it was going to be something completely different, and so they remade the reboot.  That takes a lot of money I think.



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Munkeh111 on 27 March 2013

So they may break even on this game, but there is certainly interest and excitement for the franchise.

What they have to do is be sensible here and make a sequel with a sensible budget. Uncharted games have reportedly cost $20m ish, so $100m is completely insane.

Square Enix made money with Deus Ex, so they can make money with single player games, they just need to make sensible budgets

Going free to play and adding more online multiplayer may be the best bet, but I wouldn't like it at all. I have really enjoyed all these single player games and hope they don't waste more time adding in average multiplayer



IsawYoshi on 27 March 2013

What the heck were they thinking? Expecting to sell 10 mill. is laughable, how many series do that?