Square Enix have released new figures for the two latest mainline entries in the long-running Tomb Raider series and it makes for some fairly impressive figures. Combined, both 2013's reboot and the 2015 follow-up, Rise of the Tomb Raider, have now sold in excess of roughly eighteen million copies across all platforms -- that works out at just over eleven million for 2013's Tomb Raider and around seven million for the follow-up which, at the time, was a timed exclusive for the Xbox One. An exclusive in a series that, historically, has been associated more with Sony's platform than it has Microsoft's. And while the numbers were clearly bolstered by follow-up special editions for both titles, that's taking nothing away from developer Crystal Dynamic's equally-acclaimed iterations on Lara Croft.

You may recall that Square Enix had set fairly lofty expectations for the initial sales of 2013's Tomb Raider -- following a less-than-stellar financial performance in the previous fiscal year for the publisher -- and while the game did turn out to be a critical success, sales of the game have, over time, steadily increased following a less-than-expected commercial performance during its first few months. Even so, speaking in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Square Enix CEO, Yoskuke Matsuda, admits that the expectations for the game prior to release were perhaps too much.

"Overall our earning numbers were not very good. It was immediately before the end of that fiscal year, in March, that Tomb Raider came out so we had very high expectations for that." Matsuda explains. "Looking back on that now, I think the target we set for ourselves was extremely high." He goes on to admit that the company were perhaps over-reliant on Tomb Raider's success to see their financial year through but ultimately ended up with not quite the sales numbers they were banking on.