Game News The Witcher 3 delayed AGAIN to May 19th

[Kem0sabe]

The games budget is about 3 times less then Skyrim budget

Try to think about why this is a bad argument.

I was not saying that the Witcher will be worse then Skyrim. HELL NO! But making a huge open world, complex RPG is not cheap and I am not sure that CDP were up to the task when they started, they overestimated themselves.

Witcher 2 cost 8 to 14 million dollars to make, the same game in kwan would cost 20- 40 million dollars easy. Just do the math, it's a simple math ignoring a few things like publisher cuts, price cuts and taxes but a good exercise for imagination... 60 dollars multiplied by two million copies like Witcher 2 sold while exclusive for PC is equal to 120 million dollars, if the potatoes are making the game for half the budget of Skyrim that was 80-100 million dollars (including Marketing), that is 40-50 million dollars that they can get back by 1 million copies sold (obviously really dumbing down the calculus). CDProjeckt can easily have a lifetime sales of five million copies and if they are lucky, who knows? I really fail to see where is the problem you guys are shouting, they seem to have the perfect potato slam dunk to me, Feargus could only dream.

I remember Witcher 2 going on sale not long after release, the game has been dirt cheap for a while now. How many of those copies sold were full price and how many were sold for 5$ would be an interesting statistic,

 

[GloomFrost]

The games budget is about 3 times less then Skyrim budget

Try to think about why this is a bad argument.

I was not saying that the Witcher will be worse then Skyrim. HELL NO! But making a huge open world, complex RPG is not cheap and I am not sure that CDP were up to the task when they started, they overestimated themselves.

Witcher 2 cost 8 to 14 million dollars to make, the same game in kwan would cost 20- 40 million dollars easy. Just do the math, it's a simple math ignoring a few things like publisher cuts, price cuts and taxes but a good exercise for imagination... 60 dollars multiplied by two million copies like Witcher 2 sold while exclusive for PC is equal to 120 million dollars, if the potatoes are making the game for half the budget of Skyrim that was 80-100 million dollars (including Marketing), that is 40-50 million dollars that they can get back by 1 million copies sold (obviously really dumbing down the calculus). CDProjeckt can easily have a lifetime sales of five million copies and if they are lucky, who knows? I really fail to see where is the problem you guys are shouting, they seem to have the perfect potato slam dunk to me, Feargus could only dream.

I remember Witcher 2 going on sale not long after release, the game has been dirt cheap for a while now. How many of those copies sold were full price and how many were sold for 5$ would be an interesting statistic,

I know right. On GOG they practically give it away all the time.

 

[Darkzone]

Witcher 2 cost 8 to 14 million dollars to make, the same game in kwan would cost 20- 40 million dollars easy. Just do the math, it's a simple math ignoring a few things like publisher cuts, price cuts and taxes but a good exercise for imagination... 60 dollars multiplied by two million copies like Witcher 2 sold while exclusive for PC is equal to 120 million dollars, if the potatoes are making the game for half the budget of Skyrim that was 80-100 million dollars (including Marketing), that is 40-50 million dollars that they can get back by 1 million copies sold (obviously really dumbing down the calculus). CDProjeckt can easily have a lifetime sales of five million copies and if they are lucky, who knows? I really fail to see where is the problem you guys are shouting, they seem to have the perfect potato slam dunk to me, Feargus could only dream.

The calculation is a little wrong. You are assuming that they are selling it for $60 a copy, this would be true if only they would sold it in USA and in their own shop. If we take VAT away then it would be around $40. And if we take the seller margin, like that of steam or shops, then it is around $27. Then we have to take the lowering of the price into the account. I have no numbers, but i would suggest to half the price for an more realistic estimation. So at the end we can state that they sold more then the 2 million copies but for a price of $13.5 to $16 (this number can be even higher due to the sales in europe and the commonwealth). Now we can state that they have made on The Witcher 2 at least around 27 - 32 million dollar, with does cover the current production costs. My guess would be that they have made around 40 - 45 million dollar (1/3 of your estimation). According to the wikipedia (haha) the witcher franchise has sold as to Feb. 2013 around 5 million copies or 7 million copies according to the witcher facebook page. 1.7 million were sold to May 2012, which is only 1 year after the release. So around 2.5 - 3.5 million copies of The Witcher 2 were sold. And with current pre-order they have more then enough money to pay for the development of the witcher for at least 1 additional year, if the dev cost is around 0.8 - 1.2 million per month. In poland this is much money, despite the high estate prices in warsaw. For 0.8 million per month you can have 300 developers working in poland alone on The Witcher 2.
In a way it does blow Skyrim out of the water. But what will be, we shall see this in its time.