First month PC sales of Rise of the Tomb Raider were almost triple those made following the game’s Xbox One debut last November, research group Superdata suggests.
Superdata’s sales report for January 2016 is limited to digital copies of the game, where PC was always going to record higher sales but even so, suggests errors were made with regard to when the game released originally.
The group described initial Xbox One digital sales of Rise of the Tomb Raider as “soft”, due to the game’s current-gen exclusivity to Xbox One and its launch on November 10th, the same day as Fallout 4. By contrast, the PC version was released at the end of January and Superdata says that version benefited from a “seasonal lull of AAA games.”
Microsoft, which partially funded the game, has stated that Rise of the Tomb Raider performed strongly on Xbox One and sold “well over” one million copies. Square Enix has yet to reveal sales figures for the game’s PC version. Rise of the Tomb Raider was released on Xbox 360 on the same day as the Xbox One version, it will also come to PlayStation 4 later this year.
Superdata reported total digital game sales of $6.3 billion for January of this year, an eight percent increase compared to last year. Every sector saw year-on-year growth, with PC increasing the most. That segment rose by 33 percent year-on-year, with the notable exception of pay-to-play MMOs. Console digital sales also saw strong increases, with a 30 percent rise recorded in January 2016 relative to January 2015.
Home console owners have increasingly been buying digital games, Superdata suggested. Fallout 4 game director Todd Howard recently stated that digital sales of the game were stronger than those at physical retail.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, FIFA 16, Grand Theft Auto 5, Destiny, and Fallout 4 were the top-grossing games in terms of digital revenue.
