Square Enix’s high sale expectations

Posted on April 11, 2013

seleadin2

Square Enix expected their Tomb Raider reboot to sell at least 5 to 6 million units after four weeks time. That’s nearly double the amount of what the game’s sales did receive after four weeks: 3.4 million sales. On a similar note, they wanted Sleeping Dogs to reach 2 to 2.5 million sales, yet Sleeping Dogs received 1.75 million sales total. With Hitman Absolution, Square Enix wanted to reach a goal of 4 to 4.5 million sales. …And yet, they received 3.6 million sales for the game.

Mind you, Square Enix’s expected sale numbers for each of these games are just 80 to 90 percent of what they thought those games were actually going to make, four weeks proceeding the games’ releases. Due to these “disappointing” sale results, Square Enix has decided to conduct an expensive fundamental review of the company (of which I have written about in the past.) They’ve even gone so far as to can their long-term CEO, Yoichi Wada, likely (in at least part) due to these sale results. Or rather, due to their disappointment with the sale’s results. The sales that they actually did receive for their titles were still fairly good however, so it is not a stretch to say that they’ve overreacted to the sales’ results, in a very negative way.

Source: Eurogamer.net

Shane McNaboe

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I was five years old when I played my very first videogame: 'Super Mario All Stars + Super Mario World' (on the Super Nintendo.) Although, that was back in 1996, during the beginning of the Nintendo 64 timeline. Thus began my trend of always being one console behind. I owned a Nintendo 64 during the days of Xbox and PlayStation 2; and I owned a Game Boy Color during the prime of the Game Boy Advance. It was only until recently that I have started keeping up to date with the current console timeline. I bought an Xbox 360 during it's launch, and it is my gaming platform to this very day. Now hoping to someday own a PlayStation Vita, and a non-craptastic PC, I am also hoping to keep up with the gaming industry from this point forward. That is, until I become too old to care to keep up with technology. Or until I'm too old to remember my name, or something like that. You know, looking on the bright side of things.