The Witcher: Rise of the Console Profits cancelled?

[Deleted member 7219]

Well obviously they are still a small studio, I think only the big studios like Bioware have a chance of riding out the financial crisis while developing multiple projects. Frankly, I don't see how Obsidian are going to make it either.

I don't know why CDProjekt was making a third game, obviously that was a huge stretch. But I think they could have still made RotWW easily, seeing the potential profits from its release. They could have delayed development on Witcher 2 until RotWW was done and dusted.

 

[Zyrxil]

Jesus christ, what was the budget for the thing. 1.2 million are fantastic sales.

I'm thinking quite a lot of those sales were in Eastern Europe at a lot less than a USD$50 price point.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

Jesus christ, what was the budget for the thing. 1.2 million are fantastic sales.

I'm thinking quite a lot of those sales were in Eastern Europe at a lot less than a USD$50 price point.

Hmmm, and i imagine atari took a decent chunk of profit by publishing in the west. Damn shame really.

 

[Brother None]

Jesus christ, what was the budget for the thing. 1.2 million are fantastic sales.

An average-budget AAA (that is, 20-25 million) needs to sell 1 million copies to break even on normal publisher and distribution deals. TW did have an edge on being self-published locally but, as mentioned, not really at full price.

Honestly the game industry is just a bit inflated. But they did not loose money to it and that seems to have been their initial goal anyway.

I don't know why CDProjekt was making a third game, obviously that was a huge stretch. But I think they could have still made RotWW easily, seeing the potential profits from its release. They could have delayed development on Witcher 2 until RotWW was done and dusted.

Making a third game was just insanity. I wish i knew why they opted to cancel RotWW. Honestly, it doesn't make sense to me either.

 

[Gragt]

Sad for them but I personally am not upset as I do own any console. I was afraid it would mean other Witcher games would be cancelled but knowing that TW2 is still going is a good feeling; they might even be able to put more ressources on the development. And yes, I imagine that given the current situation, it'll need to be a hit.

 

[Elwro]

An average-budget AAA (that is, 20-25 million) needs to sell 1 million copies to break even on normal publisher and distribution deals. TW did have an edge on being self-published locally but, as mentioned, not really at full price.

But one of the problem with calculating such things is that their costs were not Western-European costs, too.

 

[Shannow]

Off topic, and I'm also bored (why else would I be posting on the Codex?)

1- You wish.
4- That's a bit of an exageration, don't you think?
5- You make it all sound so easy. If all that is required to develop a great indie game is "talent, originality and dedication" we would be seeing a lot of great indie games being released right? How come it ain't so? Most cheap and quick game concepts thrown around these forums from time to time ooze originality and talent (at least if compared to what mainstream games have). Yet 99,9% of them never get anywhere. Surely most of the people that post these ideas are wankers unwilling to go the distance, but that's only one of the reasons.

1. I see. Every time skyway, Darth Roxor or even wankers like Matt or Jaime go against the grain. They are hardly ever alone in their opinions. Opinions are like arseholes, everyone has (at least) one. Even on the codex. And the cases in which they truly all coincide are so rare that I can't think of a single topic where they do.
4. Exageration? Maybe. But not over-exageration
5. Here I thought I made it sound incredibly hard (length of statement != difficulty of implementation). You even went and proved my point. If you don't start/go the full distance you lack dedication.

To make an indie game, specially an rpg, one will need *a lot* of time. To top it off, he wil need to have *a lot* of time and still be able to eat, feed the kids and keep his life on check. Then off course, there's the matter that unless you are some dynamo able to program, model, texture, design, write and take care of every other aspect of the game development, you will need to get help. That's probably the hardest thing to do on earth, and if you are not able to do it(chances are you ain't), you will need money. Lot's of money.

Talent (which for me implies skill) + dedication (which is time, money, work, etc). You just left out originality which I admit could have been part of talent. I like mine better. It is shorter.


The only games in which I recently saw any kind of origanility/talent (at least in the visual department) are certain adventures and that "Zeno Clash" FPbrawler (which is an indie). In RPGs the last game that truly impressed me with consistently good visuals/setting/atmosphere/story was PS:T. And it did so without a 20 million budget, Bloom, next-gen, you know the rest.

On cancelling the port: I find that strange, too. But you have to keep in mind that TW already has reached most of its market penetration. E.g. Assasin's Creed supposedly only sold 40k times with its pc-port. If TW console were to bomb on a similar level sales might not keep CDP afloat long enough to do TW2. So keeping to TW2 now while you still know you'll be able to fund and finish it with predictable sales of probably 1-1.5 million later on might be more on the safe side. Pure speculation, of course, and I still would have gone with the port...

 

[1eyedking]

I hope CD Projekt goes down.

Fuck you, they are the only good <s>publisher</s> developer around here.

 

[bhlaab]

1. Is the Witcher an RPG?
sure
2. Is the Witcher a good game?
i've heard good arguments for both
3. Are the Choices and Consequences in the Witcher real or fake?
well its a video game so fake
4. How much does CD Projekt suck for hyping up their patches?
they gave a massive rerelease away for free so not much
5. only fucking retards play console games, amirite?!!
developers seem to think so

 

[bhlaab]

Well obviously they are still a small studio, I think only the big studios like Bioware have a chance of riding out the financial crisis while developing multiple projects. Frankly, I don't see how Obsidian are going to make it either.

I don't know why CDProjekt was making a third game, obviously that was a huge stretch. But I think they could have still made RotWW easily, seeing the potential profits from its release. They could have delayed development on Witcher 2 until RotWW was done and dusted.

If they're really tight for money it makes a lot more sense to play to their established audience than try to create a new one on a different platform.

 

[MetalCraze]

The rumors are that CDProjekt are in some serious shit right now. They fired most of the Witchers CDPRed devs and people working in CDP publishing department.

Hope it's true. Maybe next time CDPRed will do a more creative game than another generic title with a story on a par with a Bioware game (with a generic superhero with no remorse and character saving the world from the time-travelling supervillain) and the same "amount" of fake C&C and meaningless character "development" that is even worse than the one in Mass Effect.
Plus collectible sexcards to appeal to the actual target audience.
TroO RPG.

They also deserve to go down for their retarded Bethesdian-style hype of FREE patch and for feeding us the crappy Aurora engine again (while keeping a better thing for consoles), tons of bugs and crappy translations.

 

[Wyrmlord]

1. Is the Witcher an RPG?

I am not going to be deliberately contentious here, but anyway, to put it succinctly:

This is a RPG.

This is a RPG.

This is a RPG.

This is a RPG.

This is a RPG.

This is a RPG.

This doesn't exactly look like a RPG.

That is all.

 

[Elwro]

What? Can't see the difference.

 

[Darth Roxor]

What? Can't see the difference.

It's rather obvious. Compare the TW screen with this:

Conclusion? TW doesn't have carrots. How can you have an RPG without carrots?!

 

[made]

What? Can't see the difference.

Noob. In TW you control only one character, real RPGs start at 3+ player controlled units. Ergo, this is the ultimate RPG:

 

[FeelTheRads]

Wyrmlord's reasoning at its best.

"Dungeon crawlers have no story therefore no game should have story."
"Some screenshots from random games clearly show that one of them in not RPG"
etc.


Not that I consider The Witcher an RPG, though.

 

[Wyrmlord]

"Dungeon crawlers have no story therefore no game should have story."

That doesn't even make sense.

Look, if you just want a basic rundown of what I think: it's that you don't make a setting first, and then wrap a game around it; if anything, just start with good game mechanics, and then all the appropriate settings and situations built around can be put in.

But anyway, forget about defining a genre. It's really just a way of saying, "This game is similiar to that game".

And that's why all I did was say - "Look, these are a set of loosely similiar games which we more or less call computer roleplaying games. The Witcher seems to be an odd one out here."

Not that I consider The Witcher an RPG, though.

And it doesn't look like you disagree either.

Besides, whenever we start seeing a few offbeat takes on a genre, we start referring to it a different genre, for convenience sake. Otherwise, would we have needed the term, "Japanese Roleplaying Game"?

 

[Elwro]

What? Can't see the difference.

Noob. In TW you control only one character, real RPGs start at 3+ player controlled units.

HOLY SHIT my worldview is shattered

And thanks for the pic, I'd have troubles understanding otherwise. :wink:

 

[JarlFrank]

RPGs:

I think they all are pretty similar here. You got lines of text and you click one of the lines to advance dialogue.

 

[Darth Roxor]

nice moshun blur

 

[MetalCraze]

Yes, except when you click one in Witcher he starts talking without any player control at all and dialogue only railroads into something you didn't want but could've changed if the game gave you control.
This is closer to adventure games than to story-driven RPGs.
Besides 2 options most of the time = weak.
Now add to this that TW has absolutely no character development (because you develop always the same character no matter what you do with non-existent stats) and that even the combat goes with little player control - and not only you don't have a RPG here - you have a game that plays itself.

 

[JarlFrank]

nice moshun blur

Moar liek being drunk as fuck blur.

 

[JarlFrank]

Yes, except when you click one in Witcher he starts talking without any player control at all and dialogue only railroads into something you didn't want but could've changed if the game gave you control.
This is closer to adventure games than to story-driven RPGs.
Besides 2 options most of the time = weak.

Yeah, but I just did this in response to Wyrmlord's pictures. While one person might define RPGs as Dungeon Crawlers, others might define RPGs as heavily dialogue-based games with stats and combat thrown in for flavor.

 

[Wyrmlord]

and not only you don't have a RPG here - you have a game that plays itself.

We don't normally call them games either.

 

[Hobo Elf]

What? Can't see the difference.

Noob. In TW you control only one character, real RPGs start at 3+ player controlled units. Ergo, this is the ultimate RPG:

Now I got ice cream all over my keyboard

 

[DarkUnderlord]

Seeing as people think I post in all these threads, I suppose I'm obligated.

1. Is the Witcher an RPG?

By the industry definition: Yes. By the Codex definition: No.

The skill system doesn't allow you any choice, instead you're spreading them around on the same points at the same levels because of the Gold / Silver / Bronze talent thing, even being forced to choose things you don't want to get simply because you have no other choice. This is despite CD Projekt's oft repeated claim that you could only get "60%" of the skills and that you'd have to "choose carefully".

The chapter nature of the game also goes against the RPG aspects where no matter what you choose, you end up in the same place at the same time. Choices you make at the time feel like big things but ultimately don't affect anything other than superficial stuff, if anything at all.

2. Is the Witcher a good game?

Yes. It's an excellent game (Except that it crashes on Vista way too much).

3. Are the Choices and Consequences in the Witcher real or fake?

What matters is whether the choices actually have consequences and whether those consequences are worth the choice. IE: Is my choice here actually going to matter (and make a difference) or is it a case where no matter what choice I make, am I going to be doing the same things as everyone else? The whole point of an RPG is that you get to choose what role you play.

The Witcher only gives you a "fake" choice between factions which are irrelevant to the main plot. The only consequence is whether its some guy wearing a red leather jacket or instead, a guy in a green suit of armour, standing by your side.

4. How much does CD Projekt suck for hyping up their patches?

In the interview they say hype is necessary, which it is but I do believe The Witcher falls into that category of promising things they failed to deliver on. Namely the "60%" choice in skills for a blatant example but also the RPG aspects they promised with the line that they're "the only guys doing true RPGs" anymore.

5. PCs are so much better than consoles, and only fucking retards play console games, amirite?!!

I have a Nintendo 64. I bought it for Goldeneye. I then realised shooters on the console suck and if this was a PC game, I'd ace it so easily. Instead I had to fight the controls. Still, it was fun.