Jugaccino

It seems as though it’s the end of the line for Lara Croft.  EIDOS are shedding a tear or two as the sales results are in for the latest Lara Croft adventure, Underworld, and it appears that the appeal for the franchise has seemingly left the building.

Not enough people around the world seem to want to whip out their wallets to buy the game and the offset is that the game is now going for an exceptionally low price, especially in North America.  The game is even selling for less money than older games like Prince of Persia, which has seen the light of day for some time now.

EIDOS had originally announced that they would be making yearly revenues of £200 million, however, the real results were over £20 million less than that from between £160 million to £180 million.

EIDOS is claiming that due to this underselling, the company would have to think about taking the issue up with its lenders about dept repayments.  “In an difficult North American economy, we have seen retailers restricting inventory levels and…products priced discounted above our expectations,” said the company.

“As we enter the second half of our financial year we are cautious about the potential for ongoing price discounting.  We have therefore revised our sales assumptions for Tomb Raider: Underworld and other products to be released and estimate our full year revenue will now be in the range of 160 million – 180 million pounds compared to our previous guidance of 180 million - 200 million pounds. We have passed our peak net debt position and we retain sufficient headroom within our committed banking facility but given revised profit expectations we may need to enter into discussions with our lending bank regarding our June 2009 covenants,” claimed EIDOS in a statement.

However, it seems that EIDOS will be turning their attention away from Lara Croft and looking at the possible success of the coming release of Batman: Arkham Asylum, which will be released this year.  It seems that they have simply bled Lara Croft and her Tomb Raiding adventures dry and it’s time to find another venture they can squeeze every penny out of.  That IS what business is after all.

An analyst at house broker KBC Peel Hunt, Nick Batram, claimed that the unexpectedly low sales of Underworld were disappointing but predictable given the broadening of the gaming market.  “Batman is a major second-half launch and given its importance to Time Warner, we still expect this to happen.  However, the Batman launch will be working-capital consumptive towards the end of H2 and the group may have to speak to its lenders,” claimed Batram.

It is a shame that it seems that we are witnessing the death of the Lara Croft franchise and what makes it even sadder is that the Underworld release didn’t get bad reviews.  However, many critics are claiming that if the game were good then surely this would be reflected in the sales results.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 9th, 2009 at 6:13 pm and is filed under Industry News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.