The Tomb Raider reboot was very successful in 2013, so it wasn’t a surprise to see the game being pushed towards the current console generation a year later by Crystal Dynamics. They have started working on the sequel, which was first announced as an Xbox-exclusive, followed by a timed exclusive announcement. This game was released a week ago, and we know about some sales information already.
Rise of the Tomb Raider launched on November 10 on the Xbox One and the Xbox 360, causing some disappointment regarding sales. In the UK, only 63 thousand copies were sold in the first week. The previous game managed to pull 183 thousand in the same amount of time, so it’s a huge fall compared to that number. There are two reasons: one, Lara Croft shared the same launch day with Fallout 4, which was also pushed by Microsoft themselves, bundling their console together with Bethesda’s game. Two, the UK also prefers the PlayStation 4, which explains the low number.
Square Enix doesn’t care about it; they probably got a huge wad of cash by Microsoft for the timed exclusivity…
UK sales: Rise of the Tomb Raider < 63,000 (Tomb Raider debuted selling around 183,000 units).
— Erren Van Duine (@ErrenVanDuine) November 16, 2015