| bunchanumbers said: Isn't this standard for Tomb Raider? I sincerely doubt that this game would have had massive sales even if it was PS4 exclusive. People like to act like the first one had blockbuster sales and in a sense it did. But the vast majority of those sales were at basement prices. I would not be shocked in the least if CD and SE were planning on this and took the MS money to make sure that it didn't need nearly as many basement sales to break even. |
Seriously?
http://www.engadget.com/2013/03/29/crystal-dynamics-tomb-raider-had-best-week-one-sales-in-franchi/
http://www.gamespot.com/articles/tomb-raider-sets-franchise-sales-record/1100-6406183/
1M in 48 hours, and 3.4M sold in the first month (Release 5th March 2013, PR about 3.4M sold 29th March 2013). Given that TR didn't see massive discounting for quite some time, it's doubtful that 'the vast majority' of the LTD sales of TR2013 were at 'basement prices'.
If anything, it seemed to prove that perhaps Square Enix are simply bad at budgeting :
http://www.gamespot.com/articles/tomb-raider-fails-to-reach-sales-target/1100-6405929/
The cheap reboot 'definitive editions' probably pushed the series over the top profit-wise, but it was certainly alarming that such a successful title could be viewed as a disappointment by SE.
Now let us compare to TR2015.
We know that the UK numbers were pretty awful, let's be generous and estimate 65k by now. And the US numbers look to be presumably 150k or so by now. Oh hell, let's go crazy and say that the rest-of-world numbers are another 100k (lol-worthy, but whatever). That's 315k. Now let's be exceedingly generous and double that number for the first full month, even though games almost always lose a significant % of sales week by week as time goes on. That's 630k. Almost certainly wildly optimistic when faced with the data we have, but let's just take that as the best case. If anything, the overly generous number should more than account for the minor sales of the XB1 Best Buy TR bundle.
630k <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< 3.4M First Month.
And in closing, NO, it should not have been a PS4 exclusive. It should have been :
(1) - Mutiplatform just like TR2013.
(2)- Released at a sane time, either before Halo 5 started off the holiday bonanza, or afterwards, say on Black Friday or early December. Literally the worst time imaginable was releasing it on the same day as Fallout 4, immediately following Black Ops 3, and immediately preceding Star Wars Battlefront. Put simply, it was doomed not just by temporary platform exclusivity to a brand that isn't a market leader, but up against the most brutal competition of the year. TR2013 cleared north of 3 million in a month launching in March. Why didn't they learn that was a decent strategy?
And in closing, it has to be clear that detonating a franchise of your company in exchange for some temporary payoff cash is REALLY short sighted. The brand has far more value if you can build it up and maintain a solid fanbase. The way this was handled runs the serious risk of irreparably damaging the brand of Tomb Raider, particularly if it's going to be continually mismanaged by the publisher.
The devs did more than great work imho, even the 360 port is well made. But the business deals behind it seem truly mismanaged and blind.
EDIT : Some quick math on first month differntial. Assuming the ~$27ish per copy publisher return holds true for the first month, the missing 2.7 million copies compared to TR2013's first month add up to around SEVENTY-FIVE MILLION DOLLARS. Obviously the future PC and PS4 releases can compensate for that somewhat IF they are fairly successful, but again, late ports almost always fizzle out. Let's go crazy and assume that they can make half of those sales back in the future, 1 million PS4 first month, and 350k PC first month. That still leaves $37,500,000 on the table as lost income.
Ask yourself logically : did Microsoft give $37,500,000 or more for timed exclusive rights? On what planet would that make sense? I think the answer is obvious.
