Square and Microsoft were idiots to put Tomb Raider in the same time frame as so many other big titles. If it gets released in Sept or early Oct it probably does far better. They picked the toughest window of the year to launch a game on and on top of that maybe worst day of that window(same as Fallout 4). The marketing execs at Square and MS who picked that day should all be fired.
Yeah, I do hope they don’t give up on the franchise due to this, because this second installation in the series , is probably my favorite game of 2015.
TV adds have been pushing the XOne exclusives (Forza, Halo 5, Tomb Raider) hard over here.
Personally, Tomb Raider and Halo 5 was part of the reason why I got a XOne during Black Friday. I got Halo 5 when I bought the XOne, but will pick up Tomb Raider during the Holidays.
I mean, it could be that Tomb Raider sold a bunch as a part of bundles (which aren’t included in the individual sales) and digitally, but yeah likely not enough to negate the overall problem.
That’s a great point. Maybe MS will try and make good on Tomb Raider by continuing to bundle it with the system, similar to how they did with Alan Wake on XB360,
I just ordered an XB1 bundled with Tomb Raider, further skewing the results.
That’s not really how that works though. Bundling the game serves one of two purposes, either to help sell the console or to promote the series in general for future versions*. The TR bundle sales were not great, and also it was a Microsoft store and Best Buy exclusive, they clearly were hoping for it to have pull though and to help move consoles, but going forwards it loses value now that it’s proven to be a sales failure. So then you’d bundle it to help promote the franchise for future releases, the problem there though that already sort of happened with the first TR reboot game, though less with bundles and more with budget pricing and Steam sales. They’ve basically lost the foundation they’d built with TR with this release. It’s possible some GotY awards could give it a long tail and perhaps the PC and PS4 versions could end up overperforming, but frankly I think the franchise is going on ice after this one.
*Uncharted collection is an example of this, where Sony is seeing many new PS4 owners who didn’t own a PS3 and this is a way for them to get the series in front of them a few months before the next game in the series comes out early next year with Uncharted 4 in March.
We have some leaky NPD subscribers out there, it seems!
Here are some of those bits:
Call of Duty: Black Ops III - 4.89 million unit sales including bundles
Fallout 4 - 2.54 million unit sales including bundles
Star Wars: Battlefront - 2.10 million unit sales including bundles
According to the leaker, Black Ops 3 still sold more on Xbox One, factoring in bundles. Likewise Fallout 4 still sold more on PS4, factoring in bundles.
I’ll update the OP with the hard numbers.
Those numbers have to be way off. Bethesda announced shipping 12 million copies of Fallout 4. No way that many would still be sitting on shelves or digital sales have skyrocketed and are already way more than physical which makes NPD pretty much irrelevant.
NPD is only North America retail.
Fallout 4 is at 2.4 million on Steam alone: http://steamspy.com/app/377160
Then other worldwide sales at retail, and digital sales in the US and worldwide, could easily total 10+ million.
There are a few people living outside the US. They probably don’t have electricity let alone a game console, but might have bought copies of Fallout 4 anyway.