‘Tomb Raider’: Square Enix Blames More Selective Consumers For Lack Of Sales

Square Enix blames poor sales of Tomb Raider and Sleeping Dogs on more selective consumers.

Square’s expectations were apparently much higher than they should have been. Tomb Raider and Sleeping Dogs didn’t sell as well as hoped.

Tomb Raider had seen dragging through the mud, quality wise, in previous installments and gamers came to expect it after a while. The first two released on the PlayStation were actually quite good, but afterward they started sliding further and further into the pongee pit of “nobody cares.” The big problem with Tomb Raider 3 was that Eidos had promised certain additions to the game over the predecessor and those additions never showed up in the final game. Also, you never knew where the pickups were because they blended into the environment too well. You literally couldn’t see ammunition until you were standing on it, and even then you didn’t know what it was.

The recent reboot of the Tomb Raider franchise was a spectacular comeback that told the story of where Lara Croft came from as she dealt with being stranded on an island full of hostile natives and such. What may have killed it for the consumer was the over-reliance on quick-time events. Nobody likes those.

Tomb Raider did sell well, but apparently Square didn’t think it sold well enough. This is what happens when expectations are too high.

Sleeping Dogs was a game that used the Kinect to make you a Kung Fu fighter of sorts. Unfortunately it was the Kinect that probably killed it, as the device was glitchy and unreliable.

Yosuke Matsuda, the supposed next president of Square, stated:

“To put it simply, the packaged games business, and in particular the Western market packaged sales business’ operating and earnings efficiency, has been very challenging. In the fiscal year ended March 2013, we released the major titles including ‘Sleeping Dogs,’ ‘Hitman,’ and ‘Tomb Raider.’ These titles were lauded by the industry from a creative perspective, achieved very high levels of quality, and I believe that we achieved our primary goal of both reinvigorating existing IPs and creating new [IPs]. However, from the perspective of profitability, there was tremendous competition from many other strong titles, and with the diverse amount of entertainment options available, customers have become more selective, resulting in this disappointing outcome.”

Why do you think Square didn’t sell Tomb Raider and Sleeping Dogs as well as they expected to?