1.5 million sales for Tomb Raider Underworld

By James Orry - 09/01/2009 - 10:59am GMT

Sales below Eidos' internal forecasts.

Eidos has provided an update to the market on its trading performance over the Christmas period, revealing that Tomb Raider: Underworld, its big release of Q4 2008, failed to meet internal forecasts, selling 1.5 million units as of December 31, 2008.

While the game charted in the Top 10 for the six weeks from launch to Christmas in key European territories, Eidos notes that Lara's latest had a slow start in North America. This is attributed to a difficult North American economy which has seen retailers restricting inventory levels and triple-A products being price discounted above the publisher's expectations.

With this is mind, Eidos has revised its sales assumptions for Tomb Raider: Underworld and other products to be released and estimates full year revenue will now be in the range of £160m-£180m compared to previous guidance of £180m-£200m.

Moving forward Eidos stated: "We believe our strategy of focusing on cornerstone franchises is further validated by the current challenging and competitive environment. We are concentrating our efforts and resources on those high quality titles that will deliver long-term franchise value while pro-actively managing our cost base and exploring ways to improve the mechanics of the business."

Eidos has also pegged Batman: Arkham Asylum as a big success for 2009, with the game having benefited from cross-promotional opportunities including a trailer included on all DVDs of the movie The Dark Knight.

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Posted at 11:09 on 09 January 2009

Karlius

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I actually think the Tomb Raider Franchise has been exploited to it's death. Should have kept Lara Retired for a bit longer if they wanted to drum up excitement for what is a good solid game.

I would like to see the sales figures by console as I imagine the Wii selling most units due to the lack of quality gaming games available this christmas.

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Posted at 10:43 on 13 January 2009

dav2612

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It's not out on the PS2 yet which has the biggest user base, is it not a bit early to talk about disappointing sales figures?

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Posted at 10:55 on 13 January 2009

PS3Owner

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The deal to hack at the game and cut some bits off it to use as DLC for Microsoft probably didn't help them. I suppose they were wowed by the bag of cash MS were offering, but they failed to take into account the negative impact it had on their reputation and integrity.

A lot of people, including Xbox owners, were not happy at the synical move of bringing DLC out so closely related to the main story so soon after the retail release. And there were even more PS3 owners that vowed to boycott the game entirely!

Ironically, last time I checked the game had sold more globally on the PS3 than it had on the 360 even with exclusive content. And when you factor in the large number of fans boycotting the PS3 release because of the DLC arrangements it makes you wonder if they backed the wrong horse.

Hopefully studios will learn three lessons from this:
1) You don't need to wait for November/December to release your AAA games
2) Exclusive DLC does not necessarily equal better sales
3) Selling your soul to Microsoft doesn't always pay off

Posted at 11:30 on 13 January 2009

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