• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Square Enix's insane sales targets for Tomb Raider, Hitman, & Sleeping Dogs revealed

kayos90

Tragic victim of fan death
Okay here are the previous sales for the franchises. Were I to make expectations for my financial projections, I would probably - at most optimistic - add one million to the previous entry.

sef1wnjl8.jpg


sef20tjzo.jpg

LOL. Deus Ex did good considering where it came from.
 

vareon

Member
One wonders how they get to this expectations and what are they doing so that they think they can reach it.
 

Scum

Junior Member
Not so sure about that. Only Eidos Montreal worked on any of those, and it was only Tomb Raider's multiplayer.

Crystal Dynamics developed Tomb Raider.
IO Interactive developed Hitman: Absolution.
United Front Games + SE London developed Sleeping Dogs.

Doesn't seem like Eidos has much to do with it at all.

A scapegoat will be needed soon enough...
 

VariantX

Member
Really, only a handful of titles across all publishers and genres even get near those numbers at this late in this cycle. Reality checks are a bitch.
 
Just bought Sleeping Dogs last week and it's great. Very fun action game and good story. Lots of completionist/collection crap to obsess over.

Seems so much better than the GTA series. I hope there will be a sequel.
 

Sblargh

Banned
So... it's Eidos' fault for those expectations? Just trying to read between the lines.

It's Eido's fault because versus XIII sold exactly the 0 number of copies they expected. And it meets its target every year they don't release it.

If only the rest of the company was this good.
 

Shantom

Member
These expectations (like the results) would exclude digital sales as well wouldn't they? Which means Square actually expected even more for these titles. The expectations had to be so high to cover the FFXIV mess, there's no other explanation.
 

Tomat

Wanna hear a good joke? Waste your time helping me! LOL!
A scapegoat will be needed soon enough...

Yeah, I didn't know that they were all owned by Eidos. So either Eidos gonna get slammed, or Eidos throws their devs under the bus.

Really hope nobody gets screwed because those are some fucking unrealistic numbers considering the popularity of the series before these games came out. Seems like shit management to me. I don't want to see IO Interactive die anytime soon.
 

Oersted

Member
Well, Darksiders II had to sell atleast 2 million copies to break even. And Tomb Raider had way bigger production costs, is the bigger IP and had obviously the bigger marketing campaign. Doesn´t seem so unreasonable in these times.
 

Derrick01

Banned
Haha these guys deserve all the failure that comes their way. Between the actual games and these figures they more than earned it.
 

wildfire

Banned
So how long can we expect Square-Enix to go the way of THQ. Gaf missed the chance on crowdfunding its way into buying their undervalued property. Can we make up for it by rescuing SE's assets?
 

antitrop

Member
Haha these guys deserve all the failure that comes their way. Between the actual games and these figures they more than earned it.

I know you hate Tomb Raider, but it and Sleeping Dogs are some of the best games I've played in the last 9 months.

Never played Hitman, didn't even know a new one was coming. I've heard all about how much it sucks. At least the graphics are good for the screenshot threads.
 

Game Guru

Member
...This is insane! If these sales are what are needed to survive on the consoles in this day and age, then console gaming is done!
 

DaBoss

Member

Zaptruder

Banned
Funnily enough, I ended up buying all 3 of these bomba games.

I guess I'm part of the market segment that leads publishers down traps! :p

Yeah, I've never advocated super glitz with derivative gameplay formulas, as much as I might enjoy them from time to time!
 

jWILL253

Banned
So... it's Eidos' fault for those expectations? Just trying to read between the lines.

No, it's Square's fault for setting sales expectations that high when only one of those franchises is actually capable of selling more than 3 million.

BTW, I should've been more specific: this is gonna come down hard on their entire Western division, not just Eidos. We know how this works: they hype up the IP, the game goes bomba (relative to their sales expectations, of course), the studio gets closed or sold. It's a damn shame, too...
 

teiresias

Member
Damn, good damn riddance Wada, particularly if these are the kind of projections he's basing things on. Wouldn't surprise me in the least if these ridiculous projections were being used to keep numbers up while the Japanese devs on the SE side twiddled their thumbs all generation putting out crap title after crap title.
 

lexi

Banned
I know you hate Tomb Raider, but it and Sleeping Dogs are some of the best games I've played in the last 9 months.

Never played Hitman, didn't even know a new one was coming. I've heard all about how much it sucks. At least the graphics are good for the screenshot threads.

Agreed. Loved both Sleeping Dogs and Tomb Raider, put a combined 100 hours into these two titles.
 

kayos90

Tragic victim of fan death
No, it's Square's fault for setting sales expectations that high when only one of those franchises is actually capable of selling more than 3 million.

BTW, I should've been more specific: this is gonna come down hard on their entire Western division, not just Eidos. We know how this works: they hype up the IP, the game goes bomba (relative to their sales expectations, of course), the studio gets closed or sold. It's a damn shame, too...

The games that Eidos released did fine critically. While Eidos MIGHT hear something from SE, this is basically all on SE. No one deserves to be hammered on the head in this situation but SE. Eidos created fine products. SE thought something different and ran with it rather than be realistic. Heck, even if they were idealistic the numbers created in such a position would be better than what they gave. There's realistic, idealistic, then outright lunatic.
 
Square Enix must think all you need is a marketing campaign and you got the next COD on your hands.

5 to 6 million units on launch month? What are those guys smoking?!
 
Hopefully Tomb Raider reaches its target. That game is pretty damn good. Plus it was fun reading all the meltdowns by the haters in the review thread.
 
I told you all...

Yeah, I didn't know that they were all owned by Eidos. So either Eidos gonna get slammed, or Eidos throws their devs under the bus.

Really hope nobody gets screwed because those are some fucking unrealistic numbers considering the popularity of the series before these games came out. Seems like shit management to me. I don't want to see IO Interactive die anytime soon.

I don't think they would be slammed. The Wada's final report was pretty transparent in that they tried to shift the blame of his own incompetence to Eidos/WesternMarket.
 
...This is insane! If these sales are what are needed to survive on the consoles in this day and age, then console gaming is done!

It has far more to do with bad management if that value is a breakeven number. Ignoring that, most of these projects should have been killed long before completion because none of them are really better than the competition (sans maybe Sleeping Dogs and that has more to do with the Hong Kong locale than actual gameplay).
 

Eusis

Member
Didn't they have absurd expectations for sales of Chrono Trigger DS? Like, several hundred thousand wasn't enough? While there's something to be said for budgets spiraling out of control it seems to me that SE's just kind of fucked in the head when it comes to sales expectations period.
 

GraveRobberX

Platinum Trophy: Learned to Shit While Upright Again.
That's a lot of fucking stock in warehouses collecting dust, Holy Shit!

So if I buy Tomb Raider say July 2014 for $4.99 I'll still be buying a first print run copy?

So they expected Tomb Raider and Hitman to double their sales from their previous entries? Why?

If Ass Creed can do it, so can we!
 
Hopefully Tomb Raider reaches its target. That game is pretty damn good. Plus it was fun reading all the meltdowns by the haters in the review thread.

Even if it reaches its sales target down the road, it'd be with lowered base prices so it wouldn't match the expected revenue.
 

Sblargh

Banned
Is it safe to assume these games sold enough to at least pay for themselves, right?

If so, there is some hope that they won't be thrown under the bus, right?
 

Darryl

Banned
Split bump.

I'll say there's zero possibility these were profitability lines unless Square Enix is by far the worst run gaming company ever.

I wonder what their subscriber expectations are for Final Fantasy XIV 2.0? 3 million? 5 million?

i remember reading somewhere that their projections for the first one was 1M but i've never been able to find that source again

Is it safe to assume these games sold enough to at least pay for themselves, right?

If so, there is some hope that they won't be thrown under the bus, right?

sure, it's possible. these are still high figures. they could've still been insane and predicted a return of 100%+ somehow.
 

Scum

Junior Member
Yeah, I didn't know that they were all owned by Eidos. So either Eidos gonna get slammed, or Eidos throws their devs under the bus.

Really hope nobody gets screwed because those are some fucking unrealistic numbers considering the popularity of the series before these games came out. Seems like shit management to me. I don't want to see IO Interactive die anytime soon.
Good ol' pisspoor management.

Wada already resigned.
I'm sure the new management team can make room for some more.

There's being optimistic, and then there is this.
lol
 
Is it safe to assume these games sold enough to at least pay for themselves, right?

If so, there is some hope that they won't be thrown under the bus, right?

IN GDC one of the Tomb Riders developers was pretty happy to announce that the game had the best launch in its franchise history...

So yes, it seems to me that it was Square Japan Bullshiting the investors...
 

Foffy

Banned
Jesus. As much as I love the Hitman franchise, they really expect Absolution to not simply outsell all of the previous games, but at 5 million units? What the fuck? The Hitman series is usually a slow burner for sales I thought, and Absolution's changes all but killed the legs it could have had.
 
Top Bottom