Games never sell as well after the hype wears off. It doesn't matter if a game reviews well, people will still lose interest a bit after release because the hype is dead.

There's still a good chance the PS4 version still outsells the XB1 version because of the size and range of the PS4 audience. Twice as many people and a large group of them probably already planned to buy the system for games in this type of genre, while the XB1 is pretty much a shooter machine.

Microsoft wins no matter what happens unless the game comletely dies out the gate, and because people in general mindlessly purchase based on hype, that won't happen. Second entries into AAA type franchises have a decent track record of outselling the first. MGS, RE, Uncharted, Halo, Gears, Tomb Raider, CoD, etc. are all good examples. So realistically, if Tomb Raider was already as good as the original, it was likely going to sell more than the first going by history. So it may sell more than the first but less than if it hadn't had exclusivity.

If it sells better than the first, which it would likely have done without MS, then MS will say they improved its sales. If it flops, people on PS4 aren't going to rush out in droves to buy it, and MS will spin it as the first title XB1 sold more than PS4 with and try to use it as proof that exclusivity on XB1 is a valid route to go.

Less risk for the Square-Enix? Yes
More money for Square-Enix? Most likely
Higher sales for Square-Enix? Probably not
Good for the future of the Tomb raider franchise? Undetermined

Polygon is little more than click bait and add revenue, a poor excuse for journalism even by the "standards" of video game journalism.

I have no idea what you mean......

Of course you don't!

Ah, is that exclusive just a timed one? Nice to know, if early users and reviews won't sink it before, in a few years I could free some space in my backlog for its Master Race version. I almost never buy games right after launch anyway.

PS About that article. If Squeenix needed that money fast and MS was the only one ready to pay it, it had no choice, period.

Yeah, I think it says a lot that Sony didn't feel the need to grab a large chunk of exclusives for this "major" release. They're pretty confident with their multiplatform superiority as is, not to mention the fact that Uncharted 4 is going to slaughter it sales wise.

SE is currently like poison, I imagine Sony wasn't going to pay and MS would offer something, so SE went with the money.

SE has a habit of overdoing things so badly that they can't make money off of it. Tomb Raider, Hitman, and Sleeping Dogs are all examples of games that many would consider a success, but SE had unreasonable expectations about. Their "conservative" estimates were at 5-6 mil in sales for each of those titles, which is why their decent to great sales were still a disappointment to them.

Also lets not forget this is the company that released FFXIV 1.0 and tried to charge money for it. It wasn't even their first MMO, and it's not like FFXI was thrown together with stick and mud either, it was an amazing game, making it hard to understand how they failed so miserably out of the gate on something they put so much money on. Then lets not forget how they keep trying to develop a new engine for every project, spending tens of millions on engines, like crystal tools or whatever for 14, that's heavily outdated and scrapped before the release.

I think normal fans don't see how bad SE is as a company. If you played FFXI, you'd understand more.

I never played FF games, but in Squeenix's hands too many series I love, like Deus Ex end Thief, or I used to love, like Tomb Raider, were, if not unrepairably ruined, surely watered down or dumbed down, or made posh and a little shallow, or a mix of all these things, this is enough for me to consider it quite evil, and yes, that attitude of theirs you effectively describe is surely one of the main reasons why they did it. There are games you can profit on if you properly make them and keep costs under control, but that simply cannot be milked as more mainstream titles, neither overhyped to make them appealing for audiences they don't belong to, trying to do it almost always backfires.

Tomb Raider alone? No. But Tomb Raider + maybe 2-3 more similar moneyhats? I don't see how that won't help the XBox One.