Has Tomb Raider been wasted?

[binary solo]

I do wonder sometimes whether it's actual good news that people come down on, or if it's PR fluffery that people just can't let stand. If companies actually put out hard numbers rather than mincing around and contorting information into all sort of knots that make it hard for people to get a true picture then maybe people would be less inclined to point out the puffery and misdirection that exists in PR.

It also just so happens that the products that are not quite performing as originally intended or expected tend to suffer from the more egregious forms of PR smoke and mirrors, and hence people are more likely to be critical of that PR. Whereas the companies that are doing as well or better than expected feel much more comfortable about putting out spin-free information.

So it's not like Sony is putting out the same level of PR vagueness and it just happens that MS is being picked on more. The fact is MS is being more vague with its PR because it feels it needs to be in order to try to keep the narrative positive, and therefore people are calling out that vagueness.

But it's not like PS4 isn't suffering from some shennanigans in the public arena. Just look at the head of steam that built up with claims and videos of PS4 framerate issues with FO4 which started to give people a negative vibe about FO4 on PS4, and it turns out that PS4 and Xb one both pretty much suffer from the same technical glitchery, and arguably the 0fps moments on Xb one makes it somewhat more glitchy.

In terms of this topic, I think it is a very legit question, and one Xbox / MS fans should be engaging in. Why when RoTR was talked about with such fanfare last year have MS and SE seemed to kind of drop the marketing ball with it, and therefore destined the game to probably not achieve the sort of success it might have if a more concerted effort had been made? It's a damned shame, because I personally would like to see the TR franchise live and prosper and I would not give a single thought to CoD, FO or SWBF burning out and dying. But out of all these franchises TR is looking the most fragile because it has not received the marketing push it deserves. It is probably not hyperbolic to say that the franchise is completely dependant on the PC and PS4 releases next year to be assured of any further AAA games in the franchise being made. And you can almost guarantee that SE will not be doing a timed or permanent exclusivity deal with MS again for this franchise. So with these things in mind I think it is fair for all fans of TR, regardless of platform preference, to say that the SE/CD+MS venture with RoTR is not going to be successful in terms of the health of the franchise. Whether MS or SE made money out of the deal we'll never know. But while we should recognise that a company's only concern is profits so SE may feel like it did OK out of this, as gamers our main concern is the health of franchises we love to play.

Some people said right from the outset that this was likely to be a bad move from a game sales perspective. And it seems like they are going to be right. And regardless of what people might want to believe, all the BM'ing in the world from PS fans isn't going to stop Xbox owners from buying the game. What will stop them buying the game is not being interested in the franchise. And it seems like the Xbox user base is not very interested in the franchise. It is also probably true to say that over all interest in the TR franchise is not enough to get most people who prefer other platforms to buy a Xbox, especially not a timed exclusive. So it appears getting this exclusivity deal on RoTR may have been a miscalculation, as MS may have been hoping for a much bigger hardware gain from the deal than what they are likely to get. I would equate this to Bayonetta 2 with Wii U. I don;t know what Nintendo was really expecting there, but I imagine Nintendo was hoping for a pretty decent influx of genre fans, that appers to have never happened.

It's always a risk, on multiple fronts, exclusivising an existing franchise. Some times it pays off big, other times is really fails to achieve much of anything. I think when things get examined objectively a year or so down the track the conclusion is likely to be that the TR venure was more on the fail side than the success side. Aside from the fact that CD actually made a very good game, worthy of every sale it gets, and more.