JoWooD - Gothic for Consoles?
 

JoWood has announced their intentions to develop for next-gen consoles, with titles such as Gothic, Spellforce and Dungeon Lords suggested as possible avenues to explore:
More information.

I always thought that the Gothics would make neato console titles.

*looks about cautiously*

Can't disagree. The leftovers from their original intent to bring Gothic to a console in the first place are obvious and Gothic I/II (in particular) would would suit it quite well.

I think Dungeon Lords would get laughed off the certification without significant work.

The thought of DL trying for Xbox 360, is too funny to really appreciate!! I can't see it happening. Gothic could definitely work!!

My assumption is that it would probably be new stuff in the series … probably take too much to rework them for consoles at this point. But then, perhaps at least G3 could be ported.

I always thought that the Gothic series would be pretty good for consoles. Maybe even better. I hope that this means that there will be more Gothic games in the future.

Gothic and some of Jowood's other games would likely be a welcome addition to the XBOX crowd as it appears to me to only have shooters of one type or another plus Oblivious.

The biggest problem to this is that Jowood would appear to have no concept of quality control whatsoever, which just doesn't fly on consoles, even with the possibility to patch on consoles. Not to mention, I really doubt that they could shoehorn Gothic 3 into the small resource pool available to consoles, after all most people reported requiring 1G of RAM for anything approaching decent performance, and 1.5+G for best performance. (I had 2G, so it worked out fine for me, along with a decent CPU x2 4800+ and decent GPU 7600GT KO which managed to run G3, NWN2, and Oblivious at high settings @ 1280x1024.)

cutterjohn makes a great point, Gothic might go for console but gotic is also known for his bugs and high spec for pc. Can a console handle that?

I think that they could expand the size of their development team if the were going to develop for consoles. The Gothic games are huge and I read somewhere that the devevelopment team only has like 20 people on it. I think that a lot of the bugginess can be attributed to trying to make a very ambitious game for such a small cost. I usually don't like porting to consoles, but I think that in this case, it would make the PC versions better.

Seriously, the gothic games came, saw, and conquered. Web-site forums flowered into existence as the word spread, the grapevine became alive, there was revolution in the air…..but now the halcyon days are over, the heyday is no more.

Maybe Jowood is 'clutching at straws' with this latest marketing ploy and yet i suppose there will be some casual console newbie takers…time will tell how many.

The sum of the whole approach is a well proven sales tactic where a small profit from each of the sub re-releases, Gothic, Spellforce, Painkiller and Dungeon Lords etc' together can add-up to a handsome grand total. If it can be done at all…..then Jowood is the big daddy to pull it off.
………………………………………….. ..
i can see it now……

"hey! dad"
"yes son"
"iv'e got the gothic game on my console"
"really…how far have you got"?
"well, this Diego guy says i have to do a test of faith…and i am stuck"
"no problem son, just go to Graham, buy a map and make your way to the old mine"
"wow, dad, how did you know that?"
"er… (cough) i read about it somewhere, oh and watch out for the minecrawlers"

:lol: :lol: :lol:

Can't you see?!?!? This could be DL's savior!! JoWood would have to pay DWB to finish the game so the consoles would take it! It's all falling into place! All the spells and skills working! The sloppy parts cleaned up! More quests! More lands! The fabled "caves" etc. on the game box that aren't in the game! Yeeeesssssss….. my preccccssioooussssss….


*begins to rock back and forth in the corner, drooling and smiling maniacally*

At a special price of just $39.99 for owners of both the original and CE versions …

Adding consoles to the mix would just mean even lower quality titles from JoWood. They're bad enough as it is.

Well, of course! Except now you'll be getting the Limited Edition Collector's Edition Dungeon Lords. With all new stuff!! Like… um…. CAVES! :)

Gothic on consoles would be win/win.

For starters they 'feel' very much like they should be on the console anyway, in terms of the controls. Secondly the enforced QA (and most likely they would recieve additional resources for QA from console makers directly) would do them a world of good.

I'm only surprised it's taken this long for it to be considered (that we know of). :)

+1

We´ve seen JoWooD mention console versions of their primary franchises several times before. The question nobody answers publically is "Who owns all the different parts of the Gothic franchise?". This means brand, name, world, scenario, distribution rights (for how long?), development rights, characters, etc.
Would JoWooD be able to greenlight a Gothic game without PB´s agreement? I don´t know but I doubt it. Just have a look at the copyright notice on a Gothic produxt of your choice since G2.

The latest official word from PB, by project lead Björn Pankratz in a podcast after the Austrian Game Awards 1 or 2 weeks ago:
PB is not working on a console product. They didn´t even carefully evaluate what needs to be done to convert G3, which makes a conversion to XB360 unlikely. Their technology is made for PC. They have nothing against consoles though. A later game could be multi-platform. Furthermore he said something which had to be understood in a way that they are not working on Gothic 4 yet. (Sounds like an add-on then. ;) )
The usual caveat: It´s not clear how much he was allowed to say and how much he wanted to say. I also might have remembered a few things incorrectly.