Rise of the Tomb Raider
Sequels That Didn’t Surpass Their Predecessors, According to Steam
Tomb Raider – 5,495,033
Rise of the Tomb Raider – 2,491,210
Last week, leaked data from Valve revealed the player estimates for over 13,000 games on Steam. The information has provided a valuable resource for examing the landscape of PC game sales, so we’re looking into the data to determine which sequels were able to recapture the volume of players garnered by their predecessors.
Despite failing to hit expectations in its first month, Square Enix’s Tomb Raider reboot has become the best selling game in the series’ history, selling more than eleven million copies since its release in 2013. Even with that being the case, the sequel, Rise of the Tomb Raider, has had less than half the number of unique players on Steam. It’s still said to have sold more than seven million copies across all platforms, but a more than 50% drop-off on PC is surprising, even if it’s been out for nearly half the amount of time.
The issue certainly can’t be attributed to quality —Rise built on everything that was great about the reboot. What might have handicapped it was launching just four days after Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, and the same day as Fallout 4. And over on console, Rise was a timed Xbox One exclusive, which surely wouldn’t have done anything for its performance.