Tomb Raider, Hitman and Sleeping Dogs sell millions, but fail to meet targets

Tomb Raider is expected to have sold 3.4 million copies by the end of March 2013, but this falls short of Square Enix’s sales forecast for the title.

Likewise, the publisher’s two other major releases – Hitman: Absolution and Sleeping Dogs – underperformed.

Hitman has sold 3.6 million copies, whilst Sleeping Dogs has moved 1.75 million copies.

All these figures exclude digital sales.

It’s not known how many units each was forecast to sell, but the publisher had hoped to sell over almost 19 million “HD Games”.

Square Enix noted: “In particular, North American sales force was ineffective, ending up with 2/3 of number of units sold in Europe”.

Six months into the year Square Enix reported HD game sales of 6.19 million, including 1.5 million of Sleeping Dogs. For the year Square Enix forecast sales of 18.8 million units.

By our calculations it therefore expected to sell a further 12.6 million by the end of March 2013. Sleeping Dogs managed 0.25 million more units, Hitman sold 3.6 million and Tomb Raider 3.4 million.

This gives a year total of 13.44 million units, leaving a huge five million units discrepancy – there’s no way catalogue sales would have come close to making this up.