TOMB RAIDER WEB

The very first Tomb Raider game from 1996 has sold around 7,5 million copies worldwide. Tomb Raider II, published in 1997, has even sold over 8 million copies. Without any doubt, those numbers seem to be hard to beat. But the Tomb Raider reboot from 2013 came to change it all.

In a recent interview, Square Enix CEO Yosuke Matsuda admits, that Square Enix expected around 6 million sold copies in the release year of Tomb Raider 2013. In reality, the game only sold 1 million copies in the first 48 hours and 3.4 million copies in the game’s launch year. Mr. Matsuda further admits, that those sale expectations were visionary due to several factors:

“I say this with the benefit of hindsight now, but at the time our numbers leading up to the release of Tomb Raider had been very poor and I think our people were probably banking on that and wondering how much it was going to help our final earnings. In the end, it didn’t quite sell as much as we had anticipated.”

However, Square Enix seems to be very happy with the lifetime performance of both Tomb Raider 2013 and Rise of the Tomb Raider now. And they sure can be.
The reboot from 2013 has now sold over 11 million copies worldwide, which makes it the best-selling Tomb Raider game of the series. Rise of the Tomb Raider has sold almost 7 million copies. The overall success of the rebooted game series is beyond debate.

It is no surprise that a new Tomb Raider movie, based on the story of Tomb Raider 2013, starring Academy Award winner Alicia Vikander, will hit cinemas in March 2018. Furthermore, it seems to be pretty likely that another Tomb Raider game based on the reboot universe will be developed.