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Eidos: 1.5m Tomb Raider Sales Miss Expectations

Rob Crossley's picture

By Rob Crossley

January 9, 2009

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UK publisher Eidos Interactive – formerly SCi Entertainment – has said that sales of Tomb Raider Underworld have missed the company’s internal forecasts.

Eidos says that the latest edition of the Tomb Raider franchise – developed by Crystal Dynamics – had sold 1.5 million units by the end of the year. But shares in the troubled publisher fell sharply, by as much as a quarter, as the company announced that these figures had missed expectations. Eidos claims that many retailers in the US had restricted stock, which had particularly hindered the game’s sales performance.

“In a difficult North American economy we have seen retailers restricting inventory levels and triple-A products being price discounted above our expectation,” the company stated, before revising its expected revenues to £160-180m, down from its previous guidance of £180-200m.

Eidos remained positive about its other properties, particularly Batman: Arkham Asylum, which Eidos expects will boost its  fortunes in the financial year. The game is already looking encouraging, as shown in our preview.

rydamgw's picture
On January 10th rydamgw said:

kinda dumb comparison rah since LBP is a PS3 exclusive while TR is across all platforms even PC so its definitely doing worse than LBP in terms of sales .

Dan_Chippendale's picture
On January 10th Dan_Chippendale said:

Either that or the fact the game has more bugs than an indiana jones movie...

ArronC07's picture
On January 10th ArronC07 said:

That was money well spent by Microsoft for the DLC.............

grognard66's picture
On January 9th grognard66 said:

I wouldn't have expected even1.5 million from the Tomb Raider franchise across all platforms. I'm not saying it's a bad game, but anything more than that just sounds unrealistic considering when it was released, what it was up against and where the IP stands in today's market.

carg0's picture
On January 9th carg0 said:

this franchise has been allowed stagnate by Eidos, who've been gladly sacrificing a quality product for sex appeal since TR3, so i don't feel sorry for them in the slightest. they should be grateful for the die hard's who still believe.

this franchise had Mario & Zelda-level potential written all over it and for the first couple of years we saw that promise. it was insane. her character not only re-defined the industry, it defined an aspect of pop-culture's throughout the mid-nineties. unfortunately for the rest of us Eidos saw nothing more than the 'soft-core Jenna Jameson of videogames' and the rest became history.

now both the character and franchise are met largely with indifference as the games released for it (while profitable) continue to wallow in a cavalcade of mediocrity and revolving-door booth babes -- oh, i mean "models".

sadly, one can only imagine what Tomb Raider could've become had it originally been made by Nintendo or even Miyamoto himself.

Sabrerain's picture
On January 9th Sabrerain said:

I think the real problem here was the release of so many AAA titles at the time, people only have a finite amount of money. With some many titles available I wonder if other publishers titles suffered ?

Flybaba's picture
On January 9th Flybaba said:

These are very hard days for game development studios if 1.5 million units miss sales expectations... or the sales expectations where a bit optimistic?
I like tomb raider games but i am surprised that Lara is still selling so much!

NickgamertagO1's picture
On January 9th NickgamertagO1 said:

Maybe 1.5 million across all the platforms (360, PS3, PC?) isn't that good.

Even then though, that's still 80-85 million in revenue, I can't imagine that game cost more than 15 million or so to make.

@Ken,

Where've you been man?

Kenology's picture
On January 10th Kenology said:

Hey Nick. Been in Africa the past couple of weeks. Just got back this past Wednesday to the States. Good times. If you've gotta facebook, we can be friends and you can see all the pics.

Kenology's picture
On January 9th Kenology said:

Excuses, excuses... "Restricted stock"? Yeah right. More like people chose other games over a rendezvous with Ms. Croft for the upteenth time. Though I did personally buy the game.

rahvii's picture
On January 9th rahvii said:

You did because you love Lara, admit it :P

Hah, but really, although it seems a decent game to play trough, lots of good games take priority, they have to do better than that. But In any case 1.5m its not a bad figure, it just that the Tomb Raider IP needs something to really fresh it up to put it on the spotlight again, something more that Lara's HD body.

By the way, Little Big Planet it's awesome, buy it! :)

rahvii's picture
On January 9th rahvii said:

At least it sells better than Little Big Planet :P.

Kenology's picture
On January 9th Kenology said:

Ouch!