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'Tomb Raider' Sales News: Rebooted Game Outsells Previous Versions, 8.5M Copies Sold

Virginia D'Cruz Tuesday, April 21, 2015

A screenshot of the rebooted 'Tomb Raider.' | FACEBOOK/Tomb Raider official page

Despite being critically panned since its release in 2013 for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC, the rebooted "Tomb Raider" recently became the best-selling game in the franchise with over 8.5 million copies sold. News of the record being surpassed was announced by Crystal Dynamics, the Square Enix-owned studio that developed the game.

Even when it was first released, the game proved to be an instant hit, breaking first-day and first-month record sales. Despite this, Square Enix expressed disappointment with the first month's sales figures of 3.6 million since the company had expected it to earn more.

The latest report that the rebooted game had outperformed others in the franchise came as a pleasant surprise to the company. Until February of this year, the game had only sold 7 million copies in total, but it has sold 1.5 million more since then.

When the game did not do well in 2013, it even led to Square Enix announcing a loss instead of a profit in its financial report. Its CEO Yoichi Wada subsequently stepped down. This was followed by a round of organizational and business model restructuring within the company as it struggled to cope with the financial loss. At that time it was widely reported that in addition to "Tomb Raider," several other games such as "Hitman: Absolution" and "Sleeping Dogs" had also underperformed.

"Tomb Raider Definitive Edition" was launched in January 2014, bringing the game to the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 along with better graphics. The sales from the Definitive Edition were included in the recently announced record-breaking sales figures.

As for the future direction of the game, the next installment in the franchise is titled "Rise of the Tomb Raider." This will be launched for the Xbox 360 and Xbox One sometime during the Fall of this year. This exclusive release resulted from Square Enix and Microsoft reaching an agreement about the game. The agreement stipulated that the software giant will be responsible for the game's publication. However, the deal will be timed release with the game released for PlayStation consoles afterwards.