Rise of the Tomb Raider [XO, XOX, X360, PS4, P4Pro]

[Deleted member 11852]

Why would it be a bad deal? Was it a bad deal for Microsoft and Sony when GTA V for PC came out with first-person mode?

O/T but you realise GTA V has first person mode on consoles, right? The consoles that had it before the PC version came out?

Personally I think the party who may have got the worse part of this bargain was Square Enix. They're not exactly swimming in relevant and popular IP these days and they had high hopes for resurrecting Tomb Raider in 2013 and were disappointed with the sales it did multiplatform. Maybe they've since given up with resurrecting the franchise and had low expectations but this release did nothing for them or the franchise/IP.

Oh well, the still have Final Fantasy and they'll milk that franchise as much as they can.

 

[Sigfried1977]

Launching Tomb Raider on the PS4 during the originally planned 6 months after the XBone's release (April 2016) would mean launching it within one month of Uncharted 4 in March.
As good as Rise of the Tomb Raider might be, this schedule would be completely brutal to it. No one would even mention Tomb Raider within 3 months of Uncharted 4's release.
Just as a comparison, Uncharted 3 for PS3 exclusively sold over 6 million copies, whereas the cumulative sales for 2013's Tomb Raider for PC + X360 + PS3 (before the Definitive Edition remaster for new-gens) were around 3.4 million.

And even if ROTR released at the same time as the XBone's version last month, it would launch within one month of Uncharted's remastered trilogy for the PS4 in October, which - again - would cause a hit on Square Enix' title.

That said, postponing PS4's ROTR for 2016's Holidays might have been a very good decision.
What I'm guessing is that Square-Enix will probably try to refresh the game a little bit by then, in order to call the attention of the press.
They can show substantially better graphics by taking advantage of the PS4's higher performance and/or maybe even *gasp* supporting PlaystationVR, include whatever paid DLCs they release in the meantime and then just call it "Rise of the Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition".

It probably still has a better shot against Uncharted than it did against the juggernaut that was FO4, and who knows what big holiday season IP it's going to face at the end of 2016 when it's long since been old news.

I think this whole deal was bad for everyone involved. Unless MS paid SE a pittance of course.

 

[pjbliverpool]

Since I hardly ever buy games as soon as they launch, regardless of how much I've anticipated them, I really couldn't care less about timed exclusives. As long as I get to play the game while it's grahics are still current I'm perfectly happy. In fact I'd rather play a game later if it means the devs take more time to improve it.

 

[London Geezer]

But we all know that they will sell it at full price, so my usual wait will be even longer.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

But we all know that they will sell it at full price, so my usual wait will be even longer.

If 2016's holiday line up and even half as good as this years Tomb Raider won't be on my buy list until early 2017 for PS4. And that assumes it's not cheap on Steam sometime over the summer and I didn't buy it cheap already!

 

[djskribbles]

But we all know that they will sell it at full price, so my usual wait will be even longer.

I just don't feel right paying full price for a year old game, I don't care how good it is. I'll wait until the PS4 version hits $40. If they launch at $40 then I'll be there day one.

 

[Phil]

I don't get the logic behind launch later, earlier, whatever just so that it doesn't come out on the same frickin' day another game comes out. Do people seriously think that people have the budget for just one single game and that any game not bought on day X is a lost sale for good?

I might be willing to concede that launching close to heavy hitting games on the same day perhaps to limit sales. Better to find a time when there is no competition. But launching a game now just before christmas has other benefits; It's Christmas, console sales are at a historic high and there are lots of people who are either picking up consoles for themselves, for their kids, for whoever and with it, probably games too. Tomb Raider lack luster sales have little to do with Falllout 4 - there are not even comparable games, not even close. And even if there are people who like to play all sorts of games, doesn't mean they would just as well pick up two very different games for very different types of entertainment. I've been switching back and forth between Fusion Trials and Witcher 3 the last few months, sometimes between Trials and MGS5. So what? No, the lack luster sales of Tomb Raider on the Xbox is simply because the game did not have the best appeal on that platform, as simple as that. If you look at historic sales of Tomb Raider across all platforms, it is evident most fans are on the PC and on the PlayStation. This time around, it's even more tainted to the PlayStations advantage since we know lots of ex Xbox owners have bought a PS4. So it just shifted even more to that market.

Now, launching together with Uncharted 4 - well, that might pose some issues since the games are rather similar. As a fan of both series, I wouldn't hesitate a second to buy both on day 1. Worst-case; I might get one sooner, the other later, but I'd definitely get both eventually (at full price). So within a time frame of 3 months, it wouldn't be a lost sale either way for either games. Neither will it be on the Xbox when it launched close to Fallout 4. Some people might have decided to go for F4 first, but they will eventually get Tomb Raider too (if they had any interest at all in it).

 

[Sigfried1977]

I have the budget to buy two games on the same day. Since I never play more than one game at any given time, I just won't do it. And a lot of people have a very finite budget indeed, particularly the ones for whom gaming isn't such a high priority. I know journalists in particular love nothing more than to glibly dismiss the people for whom the hours per dollar metric is a real concern, but there are a lot of those people out there. Besides, it's not like FO4 was the only massive fish in the pond. Poor Lara also had to go up against Star Wars, Assassin's Creed, CoD and Halo. And sure, there will be gamers who'll just pick it up later, possibly even at full price, but unless you are a Nintendo game, sales figures suggest that people have a tendency to forget you ever existed once you're out on the shelves for longer than a week.

 

[London Geezer]

It's also not always about how many games we could afford to buy at once - we probably could but many other couldn't - but, more importantly, about the coverage and airwaves. When the market is flooded with adverts and marketing for Battlefront, COD, Halo etc, naturally there will be less space to advertise Lara. Hence people will tend to care less, with obvious chain effects.

 

[Phil]

This might all be true, but Tomb Raider is a big fish all in itself. At least it used to be. I can't fathom why a Tomb Raider game would need to hide behind an action RPG and an online shooter. Surely, there must be a lot of Tomb Raider fans outthere. Well, there are - just not on the Xbox. If you have two similar games competing by launching on the same day, I agree, it might be better to launch them one after the other. But the big hitters right now aren't very similar and its Christmas. I'd say right now, the odds that people are buying more than one game are significantly higher than any other time throughout the year. In fact, it probably makes sense to let them all go head-to-head now than risk launching later when interest as died off.

And the last point; The Rise of the Tomb Raider is supposedly a brilliant game. I don't see its sales lacking because of Fallout or StarWars, it's lacking because it's on the wrong platform and the publishers were just begging to piss its fans off with the exclusivity deal. I really think it's that simple.

 

[Sigfried1977]

I don't think TR is that big of a fish anymore to be honest. Uncharted 3, a true single platfrom exclusive, damn near moved as many copies as the TR reboot did across 5 systems, and Uncharted is nowhere near the juggernaut some of these really huge games are either.

 

[Phil]

I think Uncharted has sold great because it is a quality franchise that just got better and better; Hence why the series as a whole has been growing and gaining praise. Tomb Raider used to be that too, but somewhere in the transition after the PSone, it degraded significantly in that it was unable to capitalize on a big big name. How many games have a motion picture with a big name actress to show for? Not many. This might not matter much to serious gamers but I genuinely think the reboot is a fantastic game and its sales in the millions reflected on that. In fact, it's a pity they stuffed it up with the exclusivity-deal-on-the-wrong-platform - if they had simply gone multi-platform and used a bit of marketing here and there to promote their game, I'm quite optimistic they would have surpassed the sales of the reboot including the definite editions quite handily. How could they not? They were IMO on the best part to increase the userbase of the series again with actual quality backed behind a strong name. Instead, fickle gamers are pissed at having to wait a year to play it on their platform of choice. This is really going to bite them long run IMO and it's a fricking shame given how good the game supposedly is. It deserved better than this.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Tomb Raider is not a big franchise anymore because after the original TR1, and maybe TR2, it was just a whole bunch of shitty games. The reboot was fairly popular, but a lot of the copies sold at lower price points. Unless you're in the 30+ demographic, maybe even 35+, Tomb Raider probably doesn't mean a lot to you.

 

[davetherave]

Totally agree. It seems that SE weren't happy with the sales of TR in 2013, which is now over 6m in total. Pretty impressive to be honest, but it seems they didn't want to invest loads of money in a sequel to that game and not to recoup enough in copies sold. Hence the reason they allowed MS to bankroll an timed-exclusive deal.

What I'm not sure is, how much MS paid to get a 12 month window for the console version. It may recoup the costs and missed sales by going down the route they have chosen.

In the end, is will be no surprise that they will sell significantly less than the 2013 game. I wouldn't be surprised if it sells a 2m less.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Microsoft paid for the exclusivity in the hopes that the game would move more people to buy the XBone instead of the PS4 this holiday season, and they were probably successful to some point.

Really?! How many Tomb Reindeer bundles moved X1s? How many of those buyers were going to get a PS4 until TR was limited to X1? I doubt it had any measurable material benefit to X1 sales at all. It was a gamble that didn't pay out.

 

[Scott_Arm]

MS gambled on the popularity of the title so they could have an action adventure game in their lineup this year. It's a great game, but they were wrong. The game is not a top-end selling franchise. I really hope it has legs, because it's great.

 

[Phil]

How well did Microsoft promote Tomb Raider? I don't watch TV, so it's hard for me to judge this. Then again, Europe isn't really a big market they seem to be investing a lot in (except for maybe the UK) so I wouldn't know either way. If I were Microsoft, I would have promoted the crap out of Rise of the Tomb Raider. It was supposed to be their Uncharted, their alternative - one of the big reasons to get a Xbox over a PS4 (if you were still deciding for one or the other).

BTW; As for some of the above; I just wanted to add that 6 million is a great number. Yes, most of those sales were probably reached at less than full price point, but the big goal here was to get as many games out in the open as possible to show the world that you can still have a very very decent game with a big name. In the case of the Tomb Raider, a genuine great game - in fact one of the "big games" last generation IMO, it was that solid. With this, it should have been the great basis to promote the new game, the sequel. Argh, it just makes me angry to think that it's lack luster sales is simply down to a seriously fucked up exclusivity deal. It's downright a tragedy.

 

[NRP]

I lost interest in Tomb Raider when ShootMyMonkey left Crystal Dynamics.

 

[Scott_Arm]

@Phil They advertised the game pretty heavily online and on tv. From a marketing standpoint, I'd say they did just about everything right in pushing the game to the general public and to Xbox owners. The interest is just not there. It could be that most of the fans are on playstation or on pc, but I doubt it. I have a feeling that even if it were released simultaneously on all platforms, it would still be a relatively under-performing title. I'm just hoping it does ok when it hits those other platformings, because it's great. Wouldn't be surprised if it didn't generate much interest.

 

[Deleted member 86764]

Apparently "the boss of... Crystal Dynamics" has quit after 10 years working for the developer.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-12-16-crystal-dynamics-boss-quits-after-decade-at-square-enix

Left of his own choice or pushed?