Game News The Witcher sold more than one million copies

[Lesifoere]

I've don't know a single person who has even heard of The Witcher, but some have heard of the biggie hypes like ME/F3

same here.

Likewise. Most people I talk to, even those who game somewhat, are like "what's the Witcher?"

 

[Barrow_Bug]

Good for them. They are a comparably smaller studio than most of the big guys, and they have done wonders in terms of PR. Despite some shitty DRM stuff, and the fact that some of the design of some quests is really off, I'm glad for them.

I was following TW from the beginning, so in terms of hype I can't say it was all encompassing.

 

[dagorkan]

Anecdotal evidence: I've don't know a single person who has even heard of The Witcher, but some have heard of the biggie hypes like ME/F3.

FFS there's even a F3 poster on a bus stop near where I work which considering it would be way way down on a list of where to put posters in the UK means they're spending serious dosh.

I can remember seeing posters in bus stops for Oblivion, Stalker, GTA and now Fallout 3, so actually it's very common.

The Witcher has been in a privileged place on the shelves in all the video game stores I've been to in the last year. Don't tell me nobody knows about it, anyone who buys PC games will have at least seen it. It's more likely they weren't interested in LARPing a white haired emo faggot, and either ignored it or were trying to be polite.

 

[Volourn]

L0LZ This too funny. Again, the game was advertised in all gaming mags, was hyped all over the net, was seen on game focused shows on tv, was pimped by fuckin' BIO to their x amount of users. The fuckin' BIO site itself is a huge fuckin' potential audience, you dumbass.

Anecdotal evdience: My non gaming 'friends' and even casual gamers haven't heard of games like ME, NWN1/2, JE, BG, or FO3 either. *shrug* If you aren't really interested in games, you simply aren't going to pay attention to most of these. Only sports games, and stuff like Mario have that wide spread effect that everyone's heard of them. BIO's rep is non existent amongst true casuals. Even casuals who have played/heard of KOTOR probably don't know who BIO is even though they made the game, and they only know it as just another SW game.

 

[Claw]

Bullshit. TW was hyped a lot. All over the gaming mags/websites, on the BIO site (not exactly unknow), and it even ahd some television exposure on the video game shows.

Those are all hardcore niche sources.

Oblivion, Bioshock and others have TV spots during prime time and posters in public places. I know people who aren't gamers, and they have seen advertisement for those games, but they have never heard of The Witcher. And there's enough people who buy games but never read gaming magazines, visit gaming websites or watch video game shows. You know, mainstream people. Not nerds like us.

Anecdotal evidence: I've don't know a single person who has even heard of The Witcher, but some have heard of the biggie hypes like ME/F3.

No gamer friends?

I can remember seeing posters in bus stops for Oblivion, Stalker, GTA and now Fallout 3, so actually it's very common.

No, it's not. Posters for less than half a dozen games isn't even close to common.

 

[Barrow_Bug]

Now this is some DEEP shit we're debating. Word.

 

[Volourn]

"And there's enough people who buy games but never read gaming magazines, visit gaming websites or watch video game shows."

And, like I said, thos epeople mtend to games like sports or Mario. Throw in some Sims and you got yourself a casual gamer. Not Oblivion, or Bioshock.

 

[dagorkan]

This argument is stupid since we know the Witcher was clearly promoted in the biggest gaming stores in Britain, so if you are at all interested in games you'll have seen it and the store itself is the best advertising you can get. Hazelnut is just making stuff up.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

Scientific research has proven that those sales numbers are quite good for a debut game based on a relatively unfamiliar IP from an unknown studio on a “dead” platform.

They couldn't release it on consoles because MS wouldn't have allowed it to be released with all the bugs. OH ZING.

Current subject is wheter or not The Witcher was a game that was as much hyped as are blockbuster productions in the West. And may I remind you that Poland is not the West? So the most important question is: was TW advertised in USA, UK, Germany in radios or television?

http://www.thewitcher.com/forum/index.p ... c=1059.185

In the end though, I would urge you to prepare a rigorous advertising campaign in the US. I have seen far too many great games become bargain bin titles in the US because no one here knows about them.

Kardiophylax, regarding CDPR's advertising campaign in the US. Up till now, when it comes to the US market, CDPR largely focused on getting gaming magazines and gaming sites interested in the game. Hence our close ties with Gamespot for example. We actually have one person (our chief game designer) whose job is also to fly here and there to prearranged meetings by our publisher to meet journalists, and get them hyped up about "The Witcher" at special and often closed get togethers. At this very moment, actually, he's been gone for about a week now (he normally sits opposite me). In addition to this, CDPR is heavily preparing for Gen Con, as this will be our last games convention in the US before the game's release. After that, it's up to ATARI to follow up on our work, to market it appropriately in the US. To this end, a sizeable budget has already been allocated with the an overall market strategy being finalised as we speak. I'm afraid I can't reveal more than that. However, keep in mind that the concept of the Witcher is not solely our PC game. It's based on Sapkowski's novels, after all. "The Last Wish" is due to make an appearence as a book title sometime next year. In the meantime, a comic book and other such projects that create brand awareness are in the making. To sum up, yeah, we're doing quite a bit of work to make the US gamer at least aware of what "The Witcher" is about. Simultaneously, however, we're not neglecting other countries. We're preparing quite a bit of language versions, after all

 

[Silellak]

They couldn't release it on consoles because MS wouldn't have allowed it to be released with all the bugs. OH ZING.

Mercenaries 2 would like a word with you.

 

[made]

Grats to CDP. I'm glad to see a new developer can, in this day and age, come out with a fresh IP, PC-only game that's not dumbed down for the masses and still sells well.

 

[Ausir]

Mercenaries 2 would like a word with you.

Or Fallout 3, for that matter.

come out with a fresh IP

It's not a new IP, it's a licensed one.

 

[Claw]

And, like I said, thos epeople mtend to games like sports or Mario. Throw in some Sims and you got yourself a casual gamer. Not Oblivion, or Bioshock.

Shuddup, dipshit. Don't tell me about "those" people. Some of those people are my friends, and they were quite hardcore gamers once. A few introduced me to cool games like Monkey Island, System Shock and Project Firestart.
They just care less, and play less now. They don't follow gaming media at all. That doesn't mean they only play sports games or some sort of casual games. However, they'll buy games they hear alot about, like WoW and maaaaybe Bioshock.
Also, if they see an advertisement for Fallout 3, they may just remember playing Fallout a long time ago and go out and get Fallout 3.
I'm not sure they would play TW even if there was more advertisement for it. But it might just increase their awareness about it to a level where they might consider it.

 

[made]

come out with a fresh IP

It's not a new IP, it's a licensed one.

I didn't say they invented it. It's fresh because it hasn't been recycled to death in countless other games before it.

 

[Hazelnut]

Anecdotal evidence: I've don't know a single person who has even heard of The Witcher, but some have heard of the biggie hypes like ME/F3.

FFS there's even a F3 poster on a bus stop near where I work which considering it would be way way down on a list of where to put posters in the UK means they're spending serious dosh.

I can remember seeing posters in bus stops for Oblivion, Stalker, GTA and now Fallout 3, so actually it's very common.

Fucks' sake Sheek, I know you can read - not in the mood or something? I know posters for games are common, but not in the bus stop opposite where I work which is nowhere near any of the big populations centres of England. It's not even in the centre of the town here it's on the outskirts.

Way to miss the point.

 

[DraQ]

DU should dumbfuck! himself.

Embarassing.

 

[Hazelnut]

Anecdotal evidence: I've don't know a single person who has even heard of The Witcher, but some have heard of the biggie hypes like ME/F3.

No gamer friends?

No, not in real life really. Some casual acquaintances who are casual game players. And I also keep getting my fag breaks ruined by WoW players' conversations - they're not gamers but play WoW and do smoke at my office. Drive me fuckin' nuts. *yawn*

 

[Hazelnut]

This argument is stupid since we know the Witcher was clearly promoted in the biggest gaming stores in Britain, so if you are at all interested in games you'll have seen it and the store itself is the best advertising you can get. Hazelnut is just making stuff up.

Ha ha ha. Gaming stores? I don't go into gaming stores, and no one I know does. No one's saying it was not promoted, I think they had a budget and targeted it well. Oh jeez, you need me to don't you, okay...

THE POINT: TW was not hyped like some of the very big names like F3/ME/CoD etc with blanket exposure that even reached non-gamers it was so pervasive.

Hope that helps ya Sheek. No, I'm not making anything up - do you really think that if I was to make something up it would be as unimaginative and weak as: "Anecdotal evidence: I've don't know a single person who has even heard of The Witcher, but some have heard of the biggie hypes like ME/F3."

Come on, don't ascribe your limitations to me! Oh, and I've always been completely honest - just the same as if you met me in real life. No façades here, as I've discussed here in the (now distant) past.

 

[Ryuken]

P.S. people mseem shocked that TW sold a lot. The game was hyped a lot, and as evidence by what wa sspent on it, it surely wasn't treated like a 2nd class class citizen. hell, they got advertsing courtesy of BIO. No doubt, 'engine from elite RPG developer BIOware' gave them extra sales. I know that I wouldn't have even paid attention to TW if it wasn't for the fact it was using Aurora. HUGE mistake of mine.

No, huge mistake by CD Projekt. The fact they used the Aurora engine limited TW's sales as the NWN engine itself was utterly shit, people remember the excellent mod community from that game and nothing else for a reason. CD Projekt tweaked Aurora to hell but they couldn't get rid of the hardcoded basics like too many loading times. I hope they can do their own thing next time.

 

[dagorkan]

This argument is stupid since we know the Witcher was clearly promoted in the biggest gaming stores in Britain, so if you are at all interested in games you'll have seen it and the store itself is the best advertising you can get. Hazelnut is just making stuff up.

Ha ha ha. Gaming stores? I don't go into gaming stores, and no one I know does. No one's saying it was not promoted, I think they had a budget and targeted it well. Oh jeez, you need me to don't you, okay...

I mean PC World, Game.co.uk, HMV, Zavvi, Dixons, Blockbuster etc, anywhere where you'd have games sold - I've seen the Witcher in "current releases" in all of them, and apart from Game, there are only a few shelves for all PC games. I've seen the Witcher put in a special spot on the shelves in PC World regularly, and a big poster at the entrance of an HMV megastore (normally you'd get DVD releases, best-selling artists and I saw WoW and Halo). Unless they're blind anyone who looks at the PC games section in any of these shops would have seen the same as me.

Of course it wasn't advertised as hard as top 10 bestselling franchises like CoD, GTA, Halo etc but it was definitely in the "mainstream" for PC games, at least comparable to NWN2 which I haven't seen a single poster for. Fallout 3 and ME probably get a bit more coverage but it doesn't matter, gamers were made aware of the Witcher and if they had wanted to buy it in larger numbers they would have.

I'm sorry but selling a million with that kind of coverage is not any great achievement. You need to accept that people didn't like the idea of a Polish Action RPG with a stupid elf looking guy on the cover.

 

[Lesifoere]

P.S. people mseem shocked that TW sold a lot. The game was hyped a lot, and as evidence by what wa sspent on it, it surely wasn't treated like a 2nd class class citizen. hell, they got advertsing courtesy of BIO. No doubt, 'engine from elite RPG developer BIOware' gave them extra sales. I know that I wouldn't have even paid attention to TW if it wasn't for the fact it was using Aurora. HUGE mistake of mine.

No, huge mistake by CD Projekt. The fact they used the Aurora engine limited TW's sales as the NWN engine itself was utterly shit, people remember the excellent mod community from that game and nothing else for a reason. CD Projekt tweaked Aurora to hell but they couldn't get rid of the hardcoded basics like too many loading times. I hope they can do their own thing next time.

I agree, though the thorough tweaks they did to it makes me appreciate how terrible combat in Aurora (and by extension NWN2) really is. People can cry twitchy combat all they like, but by comparison, TW's combat just flows so, so much better.

 

[yarpen]

I'm sorry but selling a million with that kind of coverage is not any great achievement. You need to accept that people didn't like the idea of a Polish Action RPG with a stupid elf looking guy on the cover.

At least million of them did, appearently . Anyway, arguing about coverage/hype is pointless.* If* we didnt have enough marketing - it's our/publisher's fault, shouldnt be an excuse. These days marketing is just as important as the quality of game itself, whether we like it or not.
Million copies is a certain milestone, regardless of IP strength. I'm sure our accountants would love to sell more, but personally, I think that it's a very solid number for a PC only RPG.

 

[Lesifoere]

Million copies is a certain milestone, regardless of IP strength. I'm sure our accountants would love to sell more, but personally, I think that it's a very solid number for a PC only RPG.

It definitely is. Here's a link for perspective, for what it's worth.

 

[Texas Red]

Million copies is a certain milestone, regardless of IP strength. I'm sure our accountants would love to sell more, but personally, I think that it's a very solid number for a PC only RPG.

It definitely is. Here's a link for perspective, for what it's worth.

Why the heck did Cossacks sell so well? It's from some Ukrainian company.

 

[Lesifoere]

I'm more surprised at the fact that D2:LoD sold "only" 1 million copies, but the information's outdated, the article cited being published in 2001 (and the sale figure given only two months after release).