Witcher 3 - Status and The Witcher Mobile Game

Myrthos

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GameBanshee brings the news that a NeoGaf forum member translated CD Project Red's 2014 financial report, in which they mention the current status of The Witcher 3, work on a mobile adventure game of The Witcher.

About their plans for 2014 with respect to new developments:

  • Witcher comics - digital and paper
  • Continuous intensive marketing action for TW3
  • Witcher 3 preorders
  • Release of The Witcher Adventure Game (board game) - Q3 2014
  • 2 mobile titles: The Witcher Adventure Game and a new multiplatform project.
  • Together with an external development studio we are working on the multiplatform mobile game, which uses advanced features of tablets and smartphones
  • We are entering a completely new territory, both in terms of gameplay and business model
  • Work on the project began over a year ago, independently from TW3 and Cyberpunk 2077.
  • The game will be announced together with beta sign-up.
  • Commercial release this year.
And about The status of The Witcher 3:

Finished:
  • Dialogue lines are closed & implemented
  • They are currently recording voice overs for each language version of the game
  • The world of the game is completed - locations are finished, all important gameplay mechanics are already implemented
  • Graphic assets and animations are nearing completion
  • The game can already be played in full
  • REDengine 3 supports all 3 platforms
  • The physical elements of the collector's edition are in production
What's left:

  • Implementation of the remaining side quests
  • Importing voice overs and testing their quality/changing them
  • Gameplay testing and balancing
  • Continuous work on improving the quality of graphic assets, animations, effects and sounds - this will last until just before going gold
  • REDengine3 optimization
The reasoning behind the 2015 release:

  • Less competition
  • Improved effectiveness of marketing campaign targeted at aware gamers and not random gift-buyers.
  • Better polished game: the last 20% of time stands for 80% of the game's attractiveness.
  • More new-gen consoles on the market = more customers
More information.
 
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The reasoning behind the 2015 release:

• Less competition
•Improved effectiveness of marketing campaign targeted at aware gamers and not random gift-buyers.
•Better polished game: the last 20% of time stands for 80% of the game's attractiveness.
•More new-gen consoles on the market = more customers

- True
- Not that important
- True
- Unfair since you're not making tetris for nextgen consoles, should be "better the game = more customers"
 
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Actually I think the more next gen consoles = more customers argument is sound. It's been hinted that the Xbox One and the PS4 will both have some type of year 1 price drop, most likely in time for holiday season 2014. That's when the two consoles will really take off and go more mainstream and that's when current gen console development will really start to take a hit.

So, I think they are right to wait until March/April 2015. That's a good critical mass time for the new consoles and their best opportunity for console sales. PC-wise, they could release now or in 6 mos and wouldn't make a difference. Every PC RPG gamer is going to pick it up, who has the money to do so.
 
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I want a gold sword. Actually, just send me the money.
 
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Will you still have all the choice to choose between a SILVER sword and a STEEL sword???

Now THE sword will have one side made of steel and one made of silver. No more switching required.


Joking aside, you could use more weapons in both Witcher games, it's just that none of your skills* affected them making it totally useless to do so. Maybe it's going to be different in the 3rd game.
 
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Continuous work on […] going gold
To me this sounds as a clear statement that TW3 will actually have gold swords, too.
 
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This sounds bad to me. They hold the game back to release when there's less competition. Why? Unless they're worried their game won't stack up.

More marketing? Really?

Polish. Only valid reason in the list.imo.

More next gen consoles. Give me a break. Why not wait 7 years then there will be many more next gen consoles.:rolleyes:

If that's a concern then release for ps3, Xbox and pc and hold back the ps4and xbone release until there are just the right amount of console sold.

If the games not done then don't release it, I get that. All these other reasons though sound more like EA, not CDPR.
 
The original release date sounded bad to me. This sounds about right. I always thought that original date seemed much too soon for something as ambitious as TW3.

I have zero interest in a mobile adventure game though.
 
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Well I knew it was due to consoles, and competition not optimizing. I wonder why they didn't say that in their press release.;)

The original release date was going to target somewhere between Sep/Dec 2014, and now it was pushed back to February 2015. So it's not a long delay.
 
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So… Money. To make more of it, specifically.

Unfortunately by delaying, at least for me, I will now be so entirely excited about playing everything else being released that I can wait for TW3 to go through a few price drops before I purchase, when before it was a day-1 buy.

I think the other games this year had more to fear from TW3 than vice-versa.
 
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I don't see it being because of competition. There are a lot of RPGs being released this year but not of the open-world action variety.
 
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If there are a lot of games coming out people will usually limit what they buy so it increases the potential for people not to buy the game just because they need to limit expenditures and people that don't know the series are even less likely to buy the game for that reason. Not everyone has the ability to buy everything they want so delaying the game to a point where there are less releases means there are less people waiting till later to buy which means more full price sales.
 
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Nowadays with the overflow of information about a game's progress people have become more restless it seems.Blizzard had a name once for huge delays but in this case we were talking about a great deal of years.Anyway a few months of delay if the result is pleasing doesn't really matter.
 
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Blizzard had a name once for huge delays but in this case we were talking about a great deal of years.
If every developer was like Blizzard we wouldn't have any games to play. The developers would also need huge cash reserves to take 6-8 years just to develop a game.;)

Anyway I'm glad they delayed it for a few months instead of a whole year. Seems we have to redo the polls since the games picked will not be coming out this year.
 
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Valve's even worse than Blizzard in terms of how long it takes to release games. Steam's an even bigger cash cow than WoW. I guess the more money you have coming in, the less incentive you have to actually finish any games. Funny how that works.
 
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Valve's even worse than Blizzard in terms of how long it takes to release games. Steam's an even bigger cash cow than WoW. I guess the more money you have coming in, the less incentive you have to actually finish any games. Funny how that works.

I think Valve is pretty much dead as a developer.
 
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I don't see it being because of competition. There are a lot of RPGs being released this year but not of the open-world action variety.

Maybe they didn't want to compete with Dragon Age:I? It's supposed to be open-world and released in the fall isn't it?
 
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I think people are being more than a little naive here if they think that all a developer should care about is the quality of their game and not how much it will sell (marketing, timing). Releasing a big-budget game is still a huge risk.
 
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