Tomb Raider, Hitman, and Sleeping Dogs All Underperform for Square Enix

[Gahars]

So if you've been following the news, you might remember that Square Enix is in something of a kerfuffle (well, without Wada, I guess you can call it a drought).

And here comes some more bad news - Tomb Raider, Hitman: Absolution, and Sleeping Dogs have all underperformed for the company.

By how much? Well...

Sleeping Dogs has sold an estimated 1.75 million copies to day, followed by Tomb Raider at 3.4 million and Hitman at 3.6 million. Square Enix blames these "slows sales" in part for its "extraordinary" financial losses this year.

Destructoid

So, to recap: 3.4 million copies sold in less than a month is a slow start. Okay. Seriously, it just begs the question... What the hell were they expecting? What the hell did the budgets look like? Did they burn money in late night bonfires or what?

Considering their financial woes, these extremely unrealistic sales expectations might be their final fantasy.

 

[X_XSlashX_X]

Wow Tomb Raider is such a bust! 3.4 million copies, I can't believe it sold that low!

 

[Satangel]

Can't believe this shit. Are you telling me these guys won't even turn break-even on these games?!
Or that they just expected more sales, probably a stupid estimation on their part.

 

[kristianity77]

I thought Tomb Raider had sold by the bucketloads?? The sales figures are either exaggerated, or the budget for Tomb Raider was so high, they never had a chance of making a profit on it in the first place! If Tomb Raider has shifted 3 million copies across all formats in a month, I'd have said that was a success! surely only a handful of games per year go on to make sales that large anyway?

 

[Kouen Hasuki]

Overestimating strikes again

 

[KingVamp]

If it's because of oversize budgets then they really need a new game plan because they going to end up sleeping with the fishes.

 

[Rydian]

Insert my stereotypical "are they seriously too stupid to realize that part of making a net profit is spending less?" speech.

 

[431unknown]

I blame piracy.... And they will too.

 

[emigre]

If it's because of oversize budgets then they really need a new game plan because they going to end up sleeping with the Dogs.

Fixed that for you!

 

[p1ngpong]

9 Million Games Sold​

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Can't Buy Enough Paper Towels​

To Dry These Tears ​

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There there, I beg you don't cry. ;O;​

 

[Devin]

^TOO LATE.

They should undershoot their expectations. So when it actually does better than them, they can call everything a success.

 

[Rizsparky]

I assumed all three sold well, it's pretty demoralising when your game sells well but still doesn't satisfy the overestimated predicted figures.

 

[Skelletonike]

Well... Seeing as Dragon Quest IX sold 2.34 millions in the first two days after release just in Japan, it is low. z.z

 

[Taleweaver]

Okay...I really want to know on what kind of budget these games were made. If it turns out that they had estimated that a certain worldwide economical crisis (you may have heard of it) would have zero effect on the sales...then it's only fair that Wada quits.

I'm not a marketeer, so I'm probably approaching things way too simplistic. But as others in this thread, I have issues seeing these sorts of sales figures as bad.

 

[Arm73]

It's their fault.
I've been meaning to write this for a long time...but well, here's what I think:

I've been happy with game graphics since the GC days, to me , being an older gamer ( I started playing around 1979 - 1980 at the arcades, games like Asteroids, Frogger, Mario Bros, Amidar were my favorites ) after the humble jump to 3d graphics in the early PSX days, everything that comes with the Dreamcast era and onward is gorgeous looking !

But then we had a major jump to HD TV, now we needed more power and more eye candy to look good on those 1080p displays, therefore a jump in computer / videogames graphics had to be done and it was justified.
With it, of course we had a great increase in development costs as well.
Today, the result is that companies need 100 million budget to produce a AAA game and for very diminishing investment returns.
Seriously, in the 80s you could only dream of such sales figures on our Spectrums and C64s.
But the industry survived because games could be ( and in fact were ) programmed by very small teams of 1 - 4 people, often working from their bed rooms !

Now we have developing teams of 200+ people !
Of course it cost more to develop games !
That leads me to my next point.

I have a fairly decent gaming laptop.
It runs Batman AC, TR, Black Ops 2 and other games of that caliber at 60fps with medium to high settings.
Those games look absolutely gorgeous for me, even though you see a few low res textures here and there, I'm really happy with it.

But developers push for more.
I tried Need for Speed Most Wanted ( 2013 ) and Far cry 3 and I had to lower the graphic quality to the bare minimum in order to achieve a playable frame rate.
Developers make more complex, better looking games. But WHY ??
I mean why can't we settle to a good game engine like Batman AC and keep developing games that look great, play smooth and don't cost so outrageously much to produce ?
My guess is ( other then satisfying you games whores out there ) is to push the industry forward, and sell more hardware.
In fact, I've had this PC for 8 months and I'm already thinking of buying a better one so I can play the latest games at decent speed.
It's a PROFIT DEAL ( stole the line from Pachter ) !!
The industry is greedy and they want you to buy new consoles, new graphic cards, new PCs, so that they can develop even better looking games to justify a price increase ( maybe $60 to $70 ).

Well, I'm glad their strategy is back firing at them and now the industry is at the verge of collapsing.
Like I said, I'm so happy with the level of performance I get out of my PC for 2010 - 2012 games, but why, WHY they need to improve graphics at the cost of gameplay ?
Why can't I be a happy gamer on this PC for the next 4 - 5 years ?
Why they need to spend so much money for games development and then cry over poor sales ( with unrealistic expectations ) and blame it on us , the gamers, because apparently we are all a bunch of pirates and we buy too many used games !

I'm sick and tired of these little games the industry is playing on us, give us some good video games that run well on our PC/PS360s and don't charge us a fortune !

By the way, if I knew how to post a blog, this would be it !

 

[ShadowSoldier]

It's their fault.
I've been meaning to write this for a long time...but well, here's what I think:

I agree, mainly Batman Arkham City. That game looks fantastic on my piece of crap computer and it runs it just fine. Doesn't have PhysX or the highest settings but still really good looking.

 

[Taleweaver]

I mean why can't we settle to a good game engine like Batman AC and keep developing games that look great, play smooth and don't cost so outrageously much to produce ?
My guess is ( other then satisfying you games whores out there ) is to push the industry forward, and sell more hardware.

I think you put the finger on the sore spot right there*. The large gaming companies think they're pushing the industry, but they're not. It's the customers (us!) who push the industry, by deciding what games we buy and which we don't. Yes, we're easily lured with fancy graphics and sequels to franchises, but we can only be lured so much. The excitement of better graphics is waning rapidly, and videogames have to compete with other video games who look pretty much equally gorgeous but now cost only a fraction of the price.

And what's the incentive of buying new hardware so often? Games just get better looking. Sounds, AI, gameplay innovation, content, re playability...pretty much every other aspect of AAA-games has been stale (or even worsened). Meanwhile, indie games are becoming serious threats to them. If you can have a much more fun game for a fraction of the cost and that DOESN'T require the latest graphic cards...then that alone is worth thinking about.






*in case this Dutch saying doesn't translate: it's basically that you've pointed out the one major flaw in the entire thought process.

 

[retKHAAAN]

And all three are great games...

I blame bro-gamers and grafix whores.

 

[DSGamer64]

Square Enix has had a problem of having these monstrous budgets for games for a few years now, they have no right to be crying about not breaking even when they don't even market their games aggressively. I don't think they have broke even on a Final Fantasy game since 9 came out because they spend more money on making cut scenes and voice acting then making a good quality game that people want to play. The games that they are complaining about aren't exactly household names like Call of Duty or something, if that is what they are expecting for sales figures anyway. Sleeping Dogs had a shit marketing campaign, I have seriously never seen an advertisement during prime time TV hours and they didn't do the same for Hitman: Absolution. Tomb Raider has had a modest marketing campaign, but it wasn't exactly strong and compelling people to go out and buy the game. Tomb Raider is a house hold name for a lot of gamer's these days, but with how bad the last few games in the franchise were (the last good one was the remake of the original game to be honest while Guardian of the Light was shit), it's understandable if people were hesitant to buy the game. Hitman is a sleeper franchise to me, it's an incredibly well made series but they have failed to market every game since it first came out.

I agree, mainly Batman Arkham City. That game looks fantastic on my piece of crap computer and it runs it just fine. Doesn't have PhysX or the highest settings but still really good looking.

See, the problem with that type of development is that it's already producing stagnation in gaming. Arkham City was developed using the same engine as about 75% of the other games on the market today, Unreal Engine 3. Very few games do use a custom engine and when Unreal Engine 4 comes out, most developers are going to switch to it. Unfortunately with that switch comes the growing pains of a new engine, including trying to optimize it for new console hardware. Unreal Engine 3 has had a good life span and brought gaming some fantastic titles like Gears of War and Borderlands, but it's a system that works best for smaller studios because the engine provides the framework for making a game, bigger studios can afford to use their own engines. Crytek has their Cry Engine 3, DICE has their own engine for Battlefield, etc etc. It's amusing that Epic Games hardly produces many titles, but I imagine they don't need to when other studios are feeding them money to license the Unreal Engine for a game.

It may be popular, but Unreal Engine 3 has it's limitations now and games do have other functions that aren't part of the Unreal Engine package like physics.

 

[narutofan777]

bad news, square enix took a chance and this is all they get?? what a joke. they need to forget about the western market. who told them to release multi platform games? y did they even bother with those games? no1 asked hitman to come bak, no1 asked tomb raider to come bak, no1 asked for sleeping dogs. what kind of a title name is sleeping dogs???

those games may had had some fans but they don't matter.

they shoulda stuck w/ rpgs and focus on the japan market. stick with what ur best at, that's wat they shoulda done. look at kenji inafune and where that got him with SEGA. "we need 2 look at what western developers are doing" - kenji inafune. lost planet 1 and 2 are complete trash and forgettable games. yoyo wada messed SE up and got himself outta there.