Microsoft had paid quite a surprising amount of money for Rise of the Tomb Raider's exclusivity deal, according to a report.

The report comes from Twitter user Timur222, who spotted a LinkedIn profile having information about the deal. Fabien Rossini, the former Strategic Planning and Corporate Planning Director of Square Enix, mentions on his profile that the Rise of the Tomb Raider deal cost a whopping $100m.

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His profile states that he was the "Strategic Planning and Corporate Planning Director working directly with the CEO in a senior leadership role responsible for the company’s game portfolio and corporate strategy, building strategic partnerships with first parties, including negotiating $100m Tomb Raider exclusivity deal with Microsoft".

Why the deal sounds bizzare

This seems like quite an unrealistic sum of money for an exclusivity deal. The absurdity of the number can be implicated from the fact that the entire development of Shadow of the Tomb Raider, the most recent game in the franchise, cost somewhere around $75 Million to $100 Million according to Eidos Montreal boss David Anfossi.

It could be that the entire deal was for other things as well, which includes marketing and merchandising. However, even if we take all that into account, the amount still seems quite off. For the record, the game sold only 1 million copies on Xbox and PC in the first year. It did get a PlayStation launch a year later, and that had quite a significant impact on the sales with overall sales reaching 7 million a year after that.

Fans were expecting the launch of a new Tomb Raider game at Gamescom as the original developers were teasing an announcement. However, it turned out to be a new project, Dream Cycle, instead. For now, a new Tomb Raider doesn't seem likely to release anytime soon.