Why does everyone think that ROTR sales are bad because of the cramped season?

Look at when Uncharted 3 released. It released with Call of Duty MW3, Skyrim, and Assassin Creed Revelations. Uncharted 3 still got its sales just fine.

And Tomb Raider is a much older, long standing series than Uncharted as well.

The "majority on another platform" excuse makes sense because all we have to do is look at Tomb Raider's history for that.

I can understand most other excuses people have given except for the crowded season one.

I think if RoTR could have released in late September, and been given a proper bundle and decent marketing hype it would have done much better, and it could have been an added special for BF bundles: Get Gears of War bundle + RoTR for $299. Would have been huge.

It's a damn shame that they aimed the game for a November release with much fanfare talking like it would be a centre-piece of Xb one's Holiday line up, when it ended up being a forgotten orphan child among the hype of other games. Tomb Raider is always going to be somewhat of a harder sell on Xbox, so MS and SE really needed to give it a decent marketing push and some room to breathe. Releasing it in November denied it both of these key elements for sales success.

It is clear that games can and do have very successful launches at pretty much any time of the year, so there was no need to put its release in the holiday lineup, unless CD was unable to deliver a finished game earlier than that. Though MS may have also wanted to make the 1 year console exclusivity feel as long as possible. Basically, if you release a game in September with a 1 year exclusivity in the minds of people who want the game for the console getting the late port the current year is written off and the only thinking is about how long into the next year you have to wait. If you only have to wait until Sept of the following year then this seems like a shorter wait than having to wait 'till November.

I don't think that's the reason. It's been said time and again that Oct-Dec is equal to the whole first nine month sales combined. It just didn't appeal to the M$ crowd.

I think it is two things:

1) YES this holiday is insane with Fallout, Battlefront, and  bunch of other great games.  

2) Honestly I have to say: Who the F*ck cares about Tomb Raider?!  Their biggest market was on Playstation and they alienated them (Look it up).  It is insane that they thought this would do well on Tomb Raider's least profitable platform in its worst generation against so much conversation.

I'm guessing Xb one is going to quite easily outsell Xb og, as according to VGC it's only 7M away from that target. So depending on your preference Xb one will be the 2nd best or 2nd worst Xbox generation. I guess it all depends on which past gen console it ends up closest to in LTD sales.

I never felt alienated from TR, but then I was never an actual TR fan. I enjoyed the games, but it's never been one of my top franchises. I only got TR 2013 because it was free on PS+ last Feb. Enjoyed it enough to want to actually buy RoTR, so this is the only time I've actually felt alienated at all, but not because of the 1 year wait, but because of all the stupid spin that was going around trying to avoid admitting it's a timed exclusive without actually telling any lies.

The exclusivity was a bad deal, I have said it time and time again. With Uncharted 4 pushed back, RotTR would have sold in droves on PS4 just to scratch the itch.

Even if it was on PS4 though, that release window was horrid. Sep or even Jan-Feb would have been a much safer bet regardless of the situation. I mean it is not even like TR tried to follow up F4, they literally walked out on stage hand in hand and F4 just stole the show. While it would have done better on PS4 no doubt, the release window is perfectly valid for doing THIS poorly.

I agree, the date really hurt it.  The sales on PS4 will still come later...

gamers only buy 2-3 games during holiday between Halo 5, COD black ops 3 & fall out 4.

Wont be much sales of ROTR!

Battlefront as well.

It sells more on Playstation platforms, plus, yeah, too many games came out at the same time.