Witcher Patch news and Developer Comments

The Witcher
Jabberwocky

Jabberwocky

True Synaesthete
Joined
October 20, 2006
Messages
1,081
Location
Midwest, USA
Um... can't seem to post any comments on the actual newsbit on the hompage, so just thought I'd start a thread here in the Witcher section...

Can someone please clarify what 8 + min usd means? I'm sure it's United States Dollars, but what kind of abbreviation is 'min'?

He (Michal Madege) indicates that they haven't seen profit yet off of the game. I'm shocked at this, although I really have no experience as to the financial aspects of the gaming industry. Does this seem odd to anyone else or am I just out in left field?

Finally, I notice that while he pretty much gaurantees more releases, he in no way indicates they will be associated with the Witcher universe. Bummer, though I still think it's likely they will be.
 
Joined
Oct 20, 2006
Messages
1,081
Location
Midwest, USA
I think he meant 8 mil, instead of 8 min. They had quite a long development cycle, which was very beneficial, so they probably have a little catching up to do, clearly they will make a profit later if not sooner.

The only things I can think that would help them, since most of the reviewers here in the US are out of touch with quality RPGs, (they are groomed to be console shills), would be for them to stagger the release until they had the 1.2 patch out. This way if they are successful in getting the loading time fixed, reviews would have been much better.

Additionally maybe advertising or even cheaper INTERVIEWS with the US press websites focusing on the aspects of how they are portraying realistic sexism, bigotry and genocide, then ignorant reviewers can't point to these things as a negative in the game. Since they are portraying them realistically and giving you the choice how to handle it, you turn it into a positive it was intended. :)
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
2,772
That's a good idea for them,Acleacius.

I was impressed by their openess by explaining truthfully what was going on and how they were aproaching different markets. It's a nice change from the usual corporate BS we usually get.
 
Joined
Feb 3, 2007
Messages
5,347
Location
Taiwan
I agree he means million for min( = more than 8 million dollars US) . It's weird you can't comment on the news article Jabberwocky--I pulled up the screen with no probs. (Just click on the comments (0) thingy) Anyway, we can just as easily talk about it here...

I'm not too shocked they haven't as yet made back their 8 mil--it's been what, a month or so, since the initial release? A lot of people are still waiting for the patch, or playing all the other big games that came out last month in other genres. And I think word of mouth is going to be a factor, too, which may give them some additional momentum but takes a bit longer.

I also liked the up front way Michal Kicinski talked--no buzzwords, no jargon or slogans. It sounds a lot more sincere than the usual garbled adjectives we get from say, the Bioware doctors.
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
7,834
Well I could pull up the comments page just fine, but when I went to sumbit my post it gave me a database error message. ?

I assumed it was supposed to be 8 million, but that sounded high to me and so I wondered if it was something else. Is that not high to make a game nowadays? Or am I thinking of a game like Gothic with a development team of only 20 people?

Anyway, while the US marketing could have definitely improved, I think that it got more attention than the three Gothic games put together. And I remember loads of interviews and articles about the mature aspects of the game, - if these game reviewers went into this completely oblivious then it's their own fault, there was information available.
 
Joined
Oct 20, 2006
Messages
1,081
Location
Midwest, USA
Epic Games is considered a tiny company to be producing AAA titles, I believe they had 30 people working on Gears of War while many AAA titles have a hundred or more.
 
Joined
Nov 18, 2006
Messages
525
Location
Sweden
$8m does not seem that high to me. Licensing the engine, speedtree, LUA, havok?, renderware etc. is all quite expensive. Production costs are quite high for a title like this, and finally it was developed over a long time.

I hope they'll break even, but it sounds like the business plan was not really to make a lot of money out of this self-funded release, but instead to establish the brand and studio as worthwhile commodities to enable better negotiation with publishers in the future. The only alternative (if they could even get a publishing deal before) would be to sign away so much of the returns and management of the targets it probably wouldn't be the same game. This way they could control the game, and have a much stronger position to start from (compare the kind of agreements Bioware can get vs Obisdian). And if they don't lose *too* much money they'll be able to say to a publisher 'look, if you don't give us a good deal then we can always do it ourselves..'
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
1,877
I think I read a statement by a CDP guy saying that they don't expect profits from the first game - it's just for letting the world know about The Witcher. Profits will come later, while the studio is financed (I think) by the other part of CDP (the biggest game distributor in Poland, also translating games into other languages).
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
589
He says "mln", not "min". ;) So, yes, US$8 million. It's probably on the low side of most AAA developments these days (typically at 8-10+) but a huge amount for a European CRPG, so it depends on the perspective you take.

I've read Gears of War cost ~$9M (not sure how reliable that is) but consider that cost with 30 staff against, say Mass Effect, which had 130 people on it last February.

On the other hand Drakensang is budgeted for a mere $1M, I believe. In that sense, it's a shockingly expensive project for a Eastern Euro developer. When you consider their cost advantage (I assume Polish programmers are considerably cheaper than NA), they sunk a lot into this over the long years of development.

For a retrospective comparison, Baldur's Gate cost $2.5M but that was nearly a decade ago.
 
Joined
Aug 30, 2006
Messages
11,842
Location
Sydney, Australia
Hi everyone!
I think CDP guys stated somewhere that their break-event point is at 700 thousand units sold. Anyway, in Poland it's selling like hot cakes...And I can't think of any other game beating The Witcher's record here in near future.
 
Joined
Dec 10, 2007
Messages
22
Location
Poland
Hello and welcome to these forums. Thanks for the info as well!! :)
 
Joined
Aug 31, 2006
Messages
12,828
Location
Australia
Ausir said:
Hell, only one Polish movie ever was more expensive than The Witcher game. And I'm definitely not talking about the crappy Witcher movie.
Click to expand...

With Fire and Sword? That was a good one too. :)
 
Joined
Oct 19, 2006
Messages
8,540
Prime Junta said:
With Fire and Sword? That was a good one too. :)
Click to expand...

I think he meant crappy "Quo vadis". But now plans of film about Battle of Vienna are being prepred and that film should cost a lot of more.

If you like "With Fire and Sword", you can also watch "The Fludge". It's much older but I think you would like it (and it has great music) - more hussars ;).
 
Joined
Oct 7, 2007
Messages
117
"The Witcher" has already sold in Poland in 90 000 copies and Christmas are coming. And on 12th of December demo of The Witcher was added to the one of best selling newspaper in Poland.
 
Joined
Oct 7, 2007
Messages
117
In Poland, most of the copies have already been sold, so CD Projekt re-issued the game recently, updated to 1.1a.

And yes, I meant "Quo Vadis". "With Fire and Sword" costed more or less the same as "The Witcher" game
 
Joined
Nov 10, 2007
Messages
200
8M USD for one platform? Sounds like way too much. I bet they´re talking about the whole project including CD Projekt´s part of the marketing costs. Stuff like press events or 3-4 GC booths can get quite expensive. It´s also possible they´re including a coupple of stand-alone add-ons.
 
Joined
Aug 30, 2006
Messages
7,830
Yes, I think they also include the marketing and publishing costs for countries where CDP is the publisher too. As for one platform, they're probably going to port it to X360.
 
Joined
Nov 10, 2007
Messages
200
Yes, I saw this today.
 
Joined
Aug 30, 2006
Messages
7,830
Ba...Ba...Ba.. Patch me, damn it! :)
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
2,772
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom