I think the reason why its struggling is because of poor business decisions by the publisher, it's not really the games fault. Every bad decision that Square Enix could have made with this game.... they did. Releasing against two of the biggest games of the year, timed-exclusivity on a console that not many people own outside of the US and UK (and even then, in small numbers compared to the PS4)... It will be another year at least until the game starts selling what they expect it to, and by then it will probably be too late. If they had a timed exclusive with Sony instead, or better yet, no timed exclusive at all, they probably wouldn't be having these problems. It's just bad decisions all-around.

Well I'm currently unable to buy it... This is part of what happens when you restrict sales, they are... restricted.

I was planning on buying this next year, maybe on PC or even wait for the PS4 version, but both GB podcasts made me buy it on release and I couldn't be happier about that decision. That said, I thought I already read about a third part being in development. Of course it wouldn't be impossible for them to scrap that due to poor sales, but I'm thinking the mostly praising reviews will make that happen. Also the fact that it has barely been a week since the game's release, so I wouldn't bury the whole thing just yet.

Yeah. I can't really understand these people saying that they should've just gotten an exclusivity deal with Sony or done no deal at all. One of those is potentially not an option or an inferior deal monetarily (no guarantee Sony would be willing to do any deal or an equivalent one) and the later option doesn't come with any up front guaranteed money (money that would pad out Square Enix's bottom line and help them fund the game's development). Given how Square Enix reacted to the last Tomb Raider's sales, they seem like they were definitely in a position where they'd be inclined to take a quick injection of cash to help provide an immediate stock price boost.

There's no way to reach the conclusion at this point that this was a mistake for Square Enix because they could come out of this pretty well. If there's any doubt to be had at the moment, it's definitely in considering whether or not MS made a good choice, but there's not enough info here to really be doing that either.

@bananasfoster: Square Enix is still set to publish the game on the other platforms.

Anyway...

I'm willing to bet that this deal was already in place when the Xbox One launched back in late 2013. Back then the console race wasn't that lopsided yet and a deal like this made a lot more sense for Square Enix... But considering how often Square Enix / Crystal Dynamics dodged the "exclusivity" question they really started to regret that decision.

And as bad as it may seem for Square, locking down Tomb Raider for fall 2015 was absolutely necessary for Microsoft. The Xbox needed a non-First Person, non-sports bundle to take the place of 2014's AC Unity and to shake the Xbox' reputation as a "shooter" console. They're pinning their hopes on good Black Friday console sales.

Wasn't Tomb Raider announced two E3s ago before Fallout was announced and when EA showed super early footage of Battlefront? I'm sure at that point nobody expected it to release close to those games. Also as others have said the Microsoft deal may have prevented them from moving it to next year but none of us know the details of the deal so it seems silly for so many people to call it an outright failure.

Edit: Anyways, this has been one of my most anticipated games since it was announced so I'm excited to play it sometime next year.

I hope the game's sales rebound. The first game was pretty good and the new series definitely deserved some more time to grow. I don't plan on picking up Rise of the Tomb raider, but that is more a function of my preferring the Uncharted formula to the slightly different Tomb Raider one (light hearted adventure and witty banter vs. serious, dark and gritty "realism").

Still in the top 5 best selling games last week in the UK...

I'm sure people are just buying fallout and call of duty first, tons of kids will get tomb raider for christmas I'd imagine. Let's see what happens after the holidays.

I think this generation more than any other I am really put off by the console fanboyism. Seeing comments where people are happy a game sells poorly because it wasn't on their console is kind of fucked. Makes me embarrassed to enjoy gaming as a hobby and to be associated with those types.

Guys, it isn't just that they released Tomb Raider alongside Fallout and Battlefront. They were also launching as a CONSOLE EXCLUSIVE, and that is just...fucking...insane. Seriously, Square Enix considered the last game to be a "sales failure," despite good sales. What made them think limiting to one console was going to make matters any better?

With that said, FUCK ME, THAT GAME IS SOOOOO GOOD! It's such a huge improvement over the previous game, and I'm really sad that more people aren't playing it. If anything, I think that's my #1 item that people should pick up for Black Friday shopping!

@jakob187: being a timed exclusive doesn't mean they just chose one platform and hoped they would receive the same amount of sales

Let me say this much ... I literally can't buy the game on a platform I own right now as I only play games on the PC, but when it does come out on PC like the first it will be a guaranteed sale from me. I loved the first entry of the reboot and by all accounts so far this one is apparently even better. So, I'd lay off the doom and gloom until the exclusivity deal ends and other platforms get the game. I think it will do fine.

@archer88: People having been saying things like that since at least the PS2 era. It's certainly not new to this gen.

Unlike Street Fighter V, Bayonetta 2, or Dead Risng 3, this was a game that was definitely going to happen. It was already well into development. MS threw money at it anyway until it became an exclusive, and Square Enix gladly cashed their check. So yeah, I'll admit that my first thought upon hearing this news was the sort of shameful joy that the Germans have a word for, but that's hardly due to console fanboyism. If Sony did the same thing with the next Far Cry, and it ended up under-performing, I'd feel the same way.

I bought it and I'm enjoying it.

Then you've got blinders on, because this game is pretty heavily pushed all over the place. Preroll ads, TV spots, the dashboard itself, you name it.

...also, people should read the fucking thread before replying to the subject line. The sales aren't "appalling."

I know it isn't anything new, I think I've just had enough of it at this point, that's all.

Yeah, it isn't so much the comments in this thread or even this specific instance that's bothering me. It just floors me when you have developers that put a lot of time and effort into creating a wonderful game and people want to see them out of a job because a game came out first on a console they don't own.

Releasing it next to Fallout and Black Ops 3 and making it a XBone exclusive at the same time certainly wasn't the smartest idea ever, so I can see how this game is having problems now. Shame really, since it looks really cool and I definitely plan on picking it up once it makes it's way to PS4.

I'm only one person but yeah, I definitely would've bought it if I wasn't released in the same month as Fallout.

I'm confident I still will buy it when I'm done Fallout, but that's not helping their sales numbers today :(

I would've bought it before any of the other November releases if it were on PS4.

@spaceinsomniac: you can't say that. you have no idea of when development started and when Microsoft stepped in. that's all just baseless conjecture stated as fact

I'm sure it doesn't, but I also don't put anything over the heads of suits at the top of corporations. At the same time, they could've easily seen more sales if it weren't a timed exclusive, and they know that. We can only look at it from the outside here and say "Microsoft must've offered them a huge chunk of money for a timed exclusive on this thing," but does that chunk of money offset the sales they missed out on through PC and PS4? I know the PC crowd really enjoyed the amount of work that went into the product they received (it was excellent IMO), so why would they shun out those crowds and then say "man, only 60,000 copies?"

Of course they aren't going to sell gangbusters of the game, particularly when the previous iteration was mired in a crazy amount of controversy and released to a minimal response. This one has to compete for retail space with Black Ops III, Fallout 4, Halo 5, Battlefront, and Assassin's Creed this holiday season. That's a tall order to fill for a franchise that...frankly...isn't as popular as Sq-enix would like it to be.

They need to reel their expectations in substantially on what they are going to see. I predict that the sales for PC and PS4 will be about as dismal in the onset. It's just not a huge "must have" title (despite being an excellent game).

If this is really the case, then that really sucks for them. However, considering it isn't on either of the platforms I play on, I don't really care either way.

yea well coming out on the same day as Fallout is just dumb. Also only coming out on one system should really tell you something about not what to do in the future.

I will buy this game eventually, but it'd just be stupid to throw money at it now when my gaming time is spoken for. I still haven't finished Halo 5.

It's a great game. They literally could not have picked a worse day to release this game. Unbelievable.

Without exclusives there would be little if anything setting the consoles apart. Arbitrary i know, but true.

I agree. Reading through this thread just made me angry. Seeing people hope that a game does poorly for nonsensical reasons is sad. It's a great game, and we should want great games to do well so that developers keep making great games.

I think most people saw this coming. Not sure what these companies were thinking. Xbox One exclusive? Out on the same day as Fallout 4? Hopefully Microsoft gave them SO MUCH money upfront that Crystal D can at least more than break even. But this was just bad planning all around.

Shame people would rather buy janky garbage like Fallout 4, but that's age we live in. I've seen this happen to often, with games that deserve to sell more. Then when Tomb Raider is no more people will complain "why u no make moar Tomb Raiders?".

I mean, not only did they release it in the same time window as Fallout and CoD , they released it as a timed exclusive on the console that just very recently released an iteration of its flagship 1st party exclusive. But as bad as the sales might seem, I'm sure they got good money to be a timed exclusive. Whether or not that'll make up for a "poor" release, who knows.

The fact that it was the game director for Driveclub that made the Sony dig is the worst part; he shouldn't be allowed to criticize anybody or anything.

Yeah, it really sucks. I quite liked the rebooted Tomb Raider and if I had an Xbox One, I would buy the sequel in an instant.

I think what made the game's sales suck so much was the fact that it was on one console, it had no advertisements to speak of, and it came out right next to two well known and anticipated game titles. I actually didn't know that this game was coming out until I saw its release date three days before, and that's some awful work on the publisher's part.

The decision to make it a timed exclusive, AND release it next to other big games, were dumb fucking moves and I hope the long term sales, after the other versions come out, tell the developers that people do want these games.

Love the Tomb Raider series and this would have been a Day One purchase but you know I don't have an Xbox One. Also it didn't seem very smart to quietly release this game the same day as FUCKING FALLOUT 4.

You can take this with a grain of salt since I've never been a Tomb Raider fan, but I suppose I'm not very surprised.

I felt like the reboot was a big deal, you know? I may not love it, but the franchise has a hell of a legacy. So I think when the reboot happened there was a lot of attention brought in because it's a "new thing". Sure, there's been some controversy about the game's release since it was announced, but I think it'd be silly to say that seeped outside our own echo chamber and into the mainstream.

More importantly, I think the Tomb Raider Reboot did well when it did because

• a) people were excited about the reboot aspect
• b) huge install bases
• c) dearth of exciting titles at the time for PS3/360 ?

It doesn't matter how you feel about Fallout, releasing TR on the same day was always a bad idea.

I know 3 people, personally, who are fair-weather gamers and who bought PS4s just for Fallout. Anecdotally, this is bad news for games that are not Fallout. Oh and there's that little known star wars game too I guess..

Halo came out this year

For years and years and years practical information has told us that Xbox owners buy Halo games. Halo only comes around every few years, so let's say the average Xbox owner is burning a purchase on this game.

Lots of games this year

I mean seriously. There's a lot of fucking games out. Tomb Raider might just be too late frankly. For me to afford that game I would have to had skipped out on 1 of Metal Gear Solid V, Fallout 4, Xenoblade Chronicles X or NHL 16, and that's silly. Again, I'm not a big fan, but in a different year, I would totally pick it up! But why bother this year? There's gold in the rivers of game mountain!

:D Must be the age we live in, but, it's a shame you have to resort to posts like this rather than accept Fallout's well-deserved popularity and the bad decision making of companies who are too busy looking at themselves to realize they are at best 5th or 6th place on the list of games most people give a shit about this holiday. Or is your stance that the millions happily playing Fallout are just wrong? You think they made the wrong decisions, not Square Enix?

@kishinfoulux: Funny you say that as I am closing in on 140 hours for Fallout 4 lol.

DIdn't what's-his-face from Xbox marketing explain exactly why they chose to release it when they did? i.e. essentially "Yes, it was a bad time to release it, but it was the least bad time we could come up with"? That and basically releasing it next year wasn't an option or something along those lines? Hey, call me crazy, but I think it's funny a bunch of people are calling the decision dumb as if they could do a better job. It was a lose-lose situation and they tried to make the best of it.

I am probably talking out of my ass so feel free to tell me I am wrong. I always saw Tomb Raider as more of a Euro-centric series not that it isn't popular in the States and other territories. Just based on friends I have living in England it seems like Sony consoles do much better than Microsoft and Nintendo. So knowing that it seems like this game was doomed to bomb until the PS4 release next year because Tomb Raider might be popular it isn't exactly a console seller like a Grand Theft Auto.

Meh, I kind of hope they get crushed. Third party exclusivity deals are almost always unfriendly to consumers to begin with but when you take a franchise with a long-standing fanbase on a particular platform (i.e., Tomb Raider on Sony consoles dating back to the PS1 in 1996), and you remove that group's ability to buy your game on their console of choice, you deserve lousy sales figures.

Yes, it was explained in no uncertain terms why it was released on the day it was.

People thinking that the suits in charge are speaking out of their ass, and out of some arbitrary dislike for companies. They have a lot of inside info, plus a lot of people whose job is to maximize sales potential of a product. I'd say releasing it against Fallout 4 is the smallest amount of overlap between audiences; a huge FPS crafting-centric sandbox versus a linear third-person shooter.

And saying this game is hurt because of this? The exclusivity deal was signed specifically to offset the sales lost by going exclusive, even if it is temporary exclusivity. Square Enix got a huge amount of money for this, they're going to release it on the PC and see renewed interest, especially if the port ends up as fantastic as the previous game's, and then they're going to release it again as some sort of GOTY edition with another marketing push and see even more sales and interest, both on the PS4 and the Xbox One. This game, just like the last one, will sell several million units and will be financially successful, if it isn't already.

@nevergameover: what an unnecessarily negative thing to say

@the_nubster: It'll make it's money back in the long run no problem, but I feel you're side-stepping the fact that from a PR angle, this doesn't look great for either Square Enix or Microsoft, purely because Day 1/Week 1 sales, for better or for worse, do matter. To who exactly? I dunno! :P Analysts? Shareholders? Pundits? Fans I guess? I think it's easy to write the narrative that many are jumping on in this thread: "making Tomb Raider exclusive was a mistake, and Microsoft (not Square) will ultimately (literally) pay for it." For some people this is a justice of sorts. Personally? I don't care much but it is interesting to watch.

I agree with you in a large part but your post also partially reads as if Microsoft and Square could never make a bad decision when it comes to release windows, and that I don't agree with. Sure, they have experts. Yes they know what they are doing. Can they make mistakes though? Yeah, I think so.

The question of the game's success to me seems somewhat secondary. We should be asking (in 6 months or so, when we know more) whether or not the Tomb Raider exclusivity was valuable for Microsoft, for the franchise, and for gamers, and should we look forward to partnerships like this again? Or, alternatively, is this a situation that may cause less third-party exclusives in the future. As an industry fan, that's much more interesting to me.

I don't really care which platform I play it on, I'd just like to play it... once I'm done with Fallout 4 and Battlefront. haha Yes, their big mistake was that they timed its release very terribly. Then again, try and find another slot in this holiday season that is before Black Friday, and doesn't have a major release? I think it's sad if this prevents any further games in the series to be developed, but they dug their own hole. Lastly, UK sales results matter little compared to global sales. Give it time and see how things go once everyone has grown tired of Battlefront after one sitting.

I have a feeling square knew the sales where going to be low because it's exclusive and the low sales of the Xboxone so they released it on the same day as fallout 4 so that they could have a excuse ready. I really can't wait to play this game though on the PC it looks great lucky Xbox owners for getting this game early.

I mean... well, yeah, of course it's not selling great. It's only on two platforms, one of which is getting a gimped last gen version and the other is a console that has significantly lower sales numbers than the direct competition. I'd be surprised if it was selling particularly well. Hope Microsoft really stuffed Crystal Dynamics with a boatload of bucks to make it up to them.

Wasn't Square the publisher saying that the Tomb Raider reboot selling something like 3 million copies is a failure? So I wouldn't assume 60k on release week is anything positive in Squares eyes. I would of purchased Tomb Raider instead of Fallout 4, but I don't own a console so.... Positive note when released on Steam it will go on sale fairly quickly, or will have heavy pre-order discounts on alternate key sites.

It's been a part of gaming since Sega vs. Nintendo. Just easier to see it on the internet.

Mortal Kombat on the SNES not having a blood code was a huge gut punch at Nintendo owners, and Aladdin vs. Aladdin arguments in the 16-bit era were heated.

The first Tomb Raider was forgettable, and this one looks like more of the same. The quicklook didn't exactly have me glued to the screen. I tried to get interested, but it looks like I'm not the only one that is taking a pass. The GB GOTY debate will hash this out further.

@geraltitude: Sure, the numbers don't look great at face value. There have been plenty of people in this thread alone who have made sense of those numbers, not to mention the posts which have brought up that it's in the top 5 best-selling games in the UK when this thread was made (not sure about now). The people spelling doom and gloom for this game are just being hyperbolic. An important thing to remember is that, even in the circle of people who consider themselves "gamers," the number of people who look at sales numbers and reflect on them in any meaningful way is infinitesimally small. News like this doesn't really impact the front-facing end of selling a video game, you know?

I don't mean to sound like I'm unconditionally praising the people who chose a release date for this game, and the aforementioned explanation did make it pretty clear that they weren't totally happy with their chosen release date, but they went in with a certain number in mind because of the exclusivity, and I'm sure Square Enix negotiated for more money than exactly the install base they were losing was, otherwise they would have just done a simultaneous release. Run-on sentence.

It's just overall not as terrible a situation people are making it out to be. Could it have sold more? Yes, absolutely. And I want it to, everyone should be able to play every game. But, more than likely, a situation like this was accounted for.