Tomb Raider and Rise of the Tomb Raider have sold around 18 million units

Tomb Raider and Rise of the Tomb Raider
Lara isn't going anywhere

The long-running Tomb Raider franchise has seen it’s share of ups and downs throughout the last several years. From massive success and critical acclaim to more disappointing results and buggy releases, Lara Croft’s adventures have taken many forms. The most recent installments, the 2013 reboot Tomb Raider and Rise of the Tomb Raider, have sold millions and garnered quite a bit of praise.

Even so however, publisher Square Enix was not exactly happy with the initial numbers. Despite Tomb Raider selling 3.4 million copies in it’s first month, the company forecast had been 6 million. It appears that the company no longer holds to this line of thinking.

Recently, in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Square Enix CEO Yosuke Matsuda spoke on the importance of the series and why expectations were so high:

First of all, Tomb Raider is a very important title and very important piece of IP for us, and nothing has changed about that.”

The fiscal year prior to the one where I became president was one where overall our earning numbers were not very good. It was immediately before the end of that fiscal year, in March, that Tomb Raider came out so we had very high expectations for that. Looking back on that now, I think the target we set for ourselves was extremely high.”

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.”

According to GamesIndustry.biz, Tomb Raider and Rise of the Tomb Raider have sold 11 million and 7 million copies respectively. Together, that’s an impressive 18 millions units. It’s especially impressive for Rise of the Tomb Raider, as it was initially released only on Xbox One.

Overall I think this is good news, as more realistic internal expectations means less stress on Crystal Dynamics. With the next game, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, most likely an open secret at this point, does this mean a reveal sometime soon? Perhaps at the upcoming 2017 Video Game Awards? We’ll see. For now, I’m just happy to see that one of gaming’s biggest heroines still has a bright future ahead.