CDP had no guarantee that putting that much time and effort into the EE was going to pay off.
I think it's a safe bet that it's not a guarenteed road to more money.
There is no such thing as a guaranteed road to more money, especially in this business.
If it was strictly for money then every developer would be doing it.
No, only developers who felt they got jipped by the early reviews due to bugs and could afford to "relaunch" the game would be doing it.
Btw, the average review score for the original release was over 80%. Not exactly what most people would consider unfavorable.
The early reviews- the ones that matter, the ones that came out with the game's release before any patch- bashed it for its long load times, sometimes awkward dialogs and other bugs. The damage was already done by the time the load-time fixing patch(1.2?) came out.
I'm not saying they're not playing the public in their own way, but as long as it benefits the audience
It does, in fact I find that the way they try do do business is by creating long-term fans and I think that's great. CDProjekt is the only rpg house I like, they don't try to sell less for more and then respond to the audience by saying that the fans are greedy or aren't innovative enough.
I find it silly to speculate in such a negative fashion. There's no immediate incentive to do so.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by incentive or silly here, I don't believe there's anything to be gained or affected by some short comments on an article at rpgwatch, for good or for bad.
I'm just saying that I find lines such as "CDProj went above and beyond in supporting TW1" exaggerated when you consider that the EE wasn't just something done within the confines of a patch. The game got effectively re-packaged, re-marketed, re-sold and re-reviewed on account of the EE. I believe they were definitely looking to score more than just the good publicity/customer satisfaction patches get.
And to be honest, I had already played through TW1 more than twice by the time the EE came out and wasn't very impressed with it, not a fan of the two extra side campaigns, the new inventory system nor some of the new voices. Would've been happier with a properly implemented walk button/toggle and some sword sheathes.