And you would probably still cover that at their sales volume.
$36 per game * 3.4 million = $122,400,000.
Even with a significant amount of price protection they would still end up over $72 million.
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Square Enix's insane sales targets for Tomb Raider, Hitman, & Sleeping Dogs revealed
- Thread starter Road
- Start date
And you would probably still cover that at their sales volume.
$36 per game * 3.4 million = $122,400,000.
Even with a significant amount of price protection they would still end up over $72 million.
They have basically confirmed sequels to all these titles already.
One is even getting a new studio to make it. (Hitman)
Here's Sleeping Dogs:
It's worth keeping in mind most of these titles will have notably shorter dev cycles since they're sequels.
What they are seeing are textbook long-tail PC sales.
Sounds like they can expect to see at least another million by the end of this year out of Sleeping Dogs, if not end of 2014.
So lets estimate and also be extra conservative and say the publisher cut for games is around $25 from a $60 sell price.
$25 * 3.4 million = $85 Million
Dunno if the game has broken even, I sure hope so. 5-6 million in the first month is crazy high expectations.
reptilescorpio
Member
Those Hitman expectations were insane, it sold well despite a lot of things.
Tomb Raider looks to have done well too, at the very least it will lead into really great sales for Tomb Raider 2 as long as they release it at the right time like they did here.
Nice to see Sleepy Dogs would have hit expectations once taking DD into consideration, the microDLC gamble hopefully worked for them, I know lots of people who picked up bits and pieces because it was so cheap.
Hitman dropped like a rock in price here though, was selling for even less than Sleepy Dogs quite quickly after release which was a bad sign.
Tomb Raider looks to have done well too, at the very least it will lead into really great sales for Tomb Raider 2 as long as they release it at the right time like they did here.
Nice to see Sleepy Dogs would have hit expectations once taking DD into consideration, the microDLC gamble hopefully worked for them, I know lots of people who picked up bits and pieces because it was so cheap.
Hitman dropped like a rock in price here though, was selling for even less than Sleepy Dogs quite quickly after release which was a bad sign.
TheBaronOfNA
Banned
Except that RE6 didn't also meet expectations and had a way bigger development team.
It does seem insane considering the last 10 years of Tomb Raider sales. RE6 was expected to at least sell that much since RE5 reached those numbers and their successful movie franchise is still going.
In 4/5 weeks? I'd say it's insane, especially when you take previous sales numbers of the IPs into consideration.
RE4 and RE5 sold more than that.
TheBaronOfNA
Banned
Is difficult to say when is pretty clear that some exec loves to inflitiate numbers and expectations...
1/10
I don't think next gen will be the first gen where budgets don't increase.
It doesn't seem very sustainable to keep raising them when you're not charging way more or getting way more sales either. I'm expecting it'll get more level headed maybe, that those games that are known big sellers like CoD get their budgets raised, while those that are on the lower end of the AAA spectrum get them staying about the same or dialed back some.
EatinOlives
Member
They expected 5 million from Tomb Raider? Are they fucking nuts?
Femmeworth
Banned
So were these crazy expectations the only thing that kept Wada his job until recently? I don't know what that says about SE's investors.
Man-is-Obsolete
Member
Call of Duty has put it into every publisher's head that there are 10-20 million active buyers out there that they can sell their game to them. It simply won't happen, so many of that group is completely oblivious to even when Call of Duty launches.
SatelliteOfLove
Member
This confirms what some of us in our "Wada finally got his ass fired" thread and what Jeff and Tricky were surmising on last weeks' Bombcast: they're having spry shortstops swinging for the fences to make up for big hitters striking out, firing the little guy when he flies out, despite his skills at contact hitting, base stealing, and glovework (baseball season started, forgive me).
The days of AAA are doomed. There will soon not be the investors, cash, boardmembers, developers, and the like who want to and are still capable of it. It ATE itself to death.
They apparently can't get the little ducks in a row on the financial side, so the failures on their pig-fuckingly ignorant input on game design is hardly a surprise.
The days of AAA are doomed. There will soon not be the investors, cash, boardmembers, developers, and the like who want to and are still capable of it. It ATE itself to death.
They apparently can't get the little ducks in a row on the financial side, so the failures on their pig-fuckingly ignorant input on game design is hardly a surprise.
carpediemdp
Member
Hope this doesn't mean it will be the the end of Sleeping Dogs. It was easily my GOTY of 2012. I still play it!
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.
so basically they took franchises that were pretty solid and decided they were suddenly going to be among the best-selling games of the year.
I'm hoping that its just marketing budgets that get slashed.
It really is getting cheaper and cheaper to make games, with the middle ware and engines that are out there.
If you know your audience, and cater to that, the game will sell itself via word of mouth.
Don't need to cater to the lowest common denominator and have a 50 million dollar marketing budget to make sales.
I really enjoyed Sleeping Dogs, and the PC port was amazing.
I hope to see more from United Front.
There's going to be a casualty in all this, soon enough. I expect one more decent size company to fall apart before anyone bothers to do anything.
He was probably bloody good at fudging the numbers and telling porky pies.
TheBaronOfNA
Banned
"Square Enix Japan is cool, Final Fantasy XIV is going to have a succesufull relaunch in a dead transaction model, Final Fantasy XIII-2 was a success and everybody likes Lighting ... please don't fire us"
Other than confirming that the earlier numbers were estimated shipment number, these number really don't tell us anything about the profitability of any of these titles. If the next Call of Duty sold 15M worldwide LTD, it would miss expectations by a huge margin, but it would still be plenty profitable.
We will need to see how well Tomb Raider did in the the March NPD report. I have no idea of it was vastly overshipped or not, but on the surface 3.4M copies seems like a good start.
We will need to see how well Tomb Raider did in the the March NPD report. I have no idea of it was vastly overshipped or not, but on the surface 3.4M copies seems like a good start.
RealDeadOne
Member
Those are all very respectable numbers, either Square is totally crazy or FFXIV, XIII-2 and Versus are losing them so much money they need their other games to rise to the (Just) cause.
No wonder they're leaning so heavily on mobile games now, they keep flushing money down the fucking toilet on these Final Fantasy projects nobody is even asking for (except Versus I guess, if that ever releases) and they don't have a single Call of Duty or even AssCreed sized game to make up the money.
I take that back, Kingdom Hearts III is all they really need to get a boat load of money fast.
No wonder they're leaning so heavily on mobile games now, they keep flushing money down the fucking toilet on these Final Fantasy projects nobody is even asking for (except Versus I guess, if that ever releases) and they don't have a single Call of Duty or even AssCreed sized game to make up the money.
I take that back, Kingdom Hearts III is all they really need to get a boat load of money fast.
Except that Disney owns the franchise, and would undoubtedly take a big cut of whatever profits the game generated. It could still be a better situation for SE than what they've been doing recently though.
Admittedly these things DO take momentum, and I kind of expect THQ could've been a wakeup call everyone's starting to pay attention to. Though if Square Enix starts selling off Eidos properties or whatever that'll really be making more sit up and pay attention I think.
TheBaronOfNA
Banned
They diluted almost all their key japanese brands.
sacrificengineer
Member
All it tells me is that games sold well and SE is a moronic company. I hope Wada gone for good.
Except it doesn't tell us that either.
SE distributed 3.4 million copies of Tomb Raider to retailers, but we have absolutely no idea how many of those copies are still sitting on their shelves unsold to end customers.
I suppose inventory checkers and matching that against other new releases is a crude way of checking. If it's sold out at a lot of stores locally then I'd hope it was doing OK.
Once 800k sales on a straight port of a decade and a half old game were deemed insufficient for making a Chrono sequel it was pretty clear SE lost their fucking minds. Then again maybe a lot of them just sat on shelves unbought.
Tomb Raider charted pretty well across Europe.
I think that was more of a case of S-E having zero plans on making an actual Chrono sequel so they made up a missed sales target to shut fans up.
Phoenician_Viking
Banned
SE seems like they want to destroy Eidos or something with those very high idiotic expectations.
I only playing Sleeping Dogs, and i´m enjoying it a lot
I only playing Sleeping Dogs, and i´m enjoying it a lot
Oh yeah, I can definitely believe that. Though it'd have probably been better either to stay quiet or simply say "there are no plans at this time/we'll pursuit it if a good opportunity arises", especially as we'd have no idea what a good opportunity really was for it anyway.
John Harker
Definitely doesn't make things up as he goes along.
Y'all got to get with the times! These estimates all seem pretty reasonable to me for blockbusters. High maybe for new IP, but more conservative than what the bigger players are targeting
I feel some context has to be given to what they are shipping though.
Like expecting the newest Splinter Cell to ship 5-6 million would seem ludicrous to me even if it has a lot of people working on it for a long time, because it's just not that big of a franchise currently.
Obviously something like Assassin's Creed 4 expecting 10-12+ million would make sense, but that's a huge franchise.
TheBaronOfNA
Banned
Well, Square believes that a MMO relaunch with a subscription model is viable...
akidnamededdy
Banned
For as much as it's already been said in this thread, I still think it can't be said enough how pants-shittingly ridiculous that Hitman projection is. Did nobody at any of those meetings pull up the series' previous numbers and say "Hey wait a second"?
John Harker
Definitely doesn't make things up as he goes along.
Yea, I'm not saying I'd expect them to reach those targets... But I understand the rational of setting those numbers. Big data points that this is how you gotta play if you want to succeed with blockbusters. Games in top 10, especially top 5, sell more than ever before. If you aren't building to that, you aren't going to see returns on big budget games. They'd metacritic 85+ and a hell of a budget. Unfortunately there's only so many games that can hit it which is why I said kudos to Square for trying with new IP and female led games. Your splinter analogy is a good one but imagine Ubi wants numbers near there, but likely has a lower forecast due to releasing timing and SC has never been a top franchise on its own, its more hitman than tomb raider.
I mean, look at what we do know pubically- EA wanted 5 MM for dead space 3. Is dead space a bigger franchise than tomb raider? Not in a long shot. When you look at it this way, TR seems fair to me, they'll likely ship it in the long run. Im assuming that's global sell in?
Ghost_Protocol
Member
I'm frightened to know how much they're betting on FXIV: A Realm Reborn. I expect almost no one to buy that game again, regardless of how much they've redone. Maybe a million. Maybe. They better blow that thing up at E3.
For us on GAF doing back-of-the-napkin analysis - sure. But SE wants these to be their western AAA franchises. That's why they bought Eidos in the first place (nevermind that these franchises weren't profitable then either, which is why Eidos was on the market in the first place). And if they want to compete in the AAA space, then these games have to have the same "AAA qualities" as their brethren from EA, Activision, T2, WB, etc. Which means similar budgets, marketing, and expectations.
I'm telling you, SE, Capcom, etc. could be in for a real world of hurt focusing on the west with budgets about to jump again going into a new gen. I just don't see them being able to compete in the AAA market in the west and remain profitable doing so. But they might be willing to die trying.
grosvenor_92
Member
Sleeping Dogs could reach the 2-2.5 million
Absolution certainly won't reach its target
Tomb Raider I'm gonna buy it soon but its only been a month so I can't say if it will or not
Absolution certainly won't reach its target
Tomb Raider I'm gonna buy it soon but its only been a month so I can't say if it will or not
TheBaronOfNA
Banned
Yeah. They need to focus in a MMO relaunch
Xux
Member
A lot of the FFXI community is older now so I'm sure they don't have a problem paying such an insignificant amount of money each month.
Lysander91
Banned
How could they think that any of those numbers were plausible? Hitman is such a niche franchise and Sleeping Dogs is a brand new IP. Tomb Raider hasn't sold like that since Playstation One.