Rise of the Tomb Raider was released in 2015 with a temporary one-year exclusivity on Xbox One and PC, at the time there were many complaints, but this strategy has become common.
On the other hand, today we found out thanks to the profile of Fabien Rossi’s LinkedIn, current CEO of CREY and former Square Enix employee, that this deal cost Microsoft $ 100 million. A very large figure for what the game ended up being and for the figures that are normally handled for this type of exclusivity.
Voluntary filtration
As we said, it is all due to Rossi updating his experience on LinkedIn and, as “Strategic Planning & Corporate development Director”, he claims to have closed a deal with Microsoft for a value of 100 million dollars. As if that were not enough, he clarifies that it is specifically for Rise of the Tomb Raider.
The Tomb Raider sequel sold just 1 million copies between Xbox and PC in 2015, while on PlayStation 4 it surpassed 5 million copies. Also, it was clearly a bad deal as Microsoft didn’t try the same with Shadow of the Tomb Raider, the third part of the trilogy.
It is worth noting that at this point Rossi has not modified his profile to hide this information, which is new. This figure leaves Microsoft in a bad place, since for other similar businesses they could ask for an equal or greater number.
In any case, it seems that the strategy has changed quite a bit since then, Microsoft is now acquiring studios and letting them work with exclusives instead of just buying it temporarily. Whether this will turn out better than Rise of the Tomb Raider remains to be seen.
