What was changed
Tomb Raider had run for 17 years when Square Enix and developer Crystal Dynamics rebooted it in March 2013. The publisher entered the release with very high expectations after a less-than-stellar fiscal year, and CEO Yosuke Matsuda later admitted the target set for the game was 'extremely high'.
The reboot was a critical success, reinventing Lara Croft as a survival origin story, but its early commercial performance fell short of those ambitions. Over time sales climbed steadily across PC, PlayStation and Xbox platforms, helped by later special editions.
By November 2017 Square Enix said the 2013 game had sold 11 million units, with the 2015 sequel Rise of the Tomb Raider at about 7 million — nearly 18 million combined, and roughly half of the reboot's sales on PC according to SteamSpy. Matsuda called the franchise 'a very important piece of IP'.
What it achieved
11 million units sold for the 2013 reboot; with 2015's Rise of the Tomb Raider, the two games passed 18 million copies combined.
Why it worked
The origin-story reboot gave a 17-year-old character a new emotional depth.
Multi-platform releases and special editions extended the sales tail for years.
Matsuda's admission that the launch target was too high reset expectations for the sequel.
What can be applied
A reboot can revive a long-running franchise, but the payoff may take years: set expectations from lifetime sales, not launch hype.
Aftermath
The reboot trilogy anchored Square Enix's Western portfolio through the 2010s, continuing with Shadow of the Tomb Raider and an animated series. Tomb Raider 2013 became the industry's standard example of how a reboot's real value is measured in lifetime sales rather than launch-week numbers.
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