Square Enix Games Sell Strong But Fail to Hit Targets

American sales have also been revealed to be weaker than those in Europe.

Square Enix has revealed that despite selling well, Tomb Raider, Hitman: Absolution and Sleeping Dogs all failed to hit the company's internal sales expectations.

As part of its latest financial report, it was revealed that Tomb Raider has managed to ship 3.4 million copies, while Hitman: Absolution sold 3.6 million units and Sleeping Dogs has sold 1.75 million.

The above numbers, which only include retail sales of the game as opposed to digital downloads, means that each of the titles has failed to move as many copies as the company was predicting. As Steam sales weren't included though and given the fact that the company has had a number of digital sales on its titles recently, the actual number of games shipped may be considerably higher.

How many of each game Square Enix was expecting to sell isn't mentioned in the report, though last September it was revealed the company was hoping to move 14.9 million discs in the six months ending March 2013. Seeing as only 8.75 million retail games have been sold, this could largely explain the company's financial forecast revision from this morning, which reveals it now expects to make an "extraordinary loss".

What's more interesting though is the fact that the company is claiming "ineffective" sales in North America are largely responsible, as the continent shipped just two thirds of the number of discs sold in Europe.

What do you think? Are Europeans just more enamoured with Square Enix's output, or is there a deeper issue here? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.



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