Piranha Bytes - New Publisher: Deep Silver

Among others the following PR was posted on the new WorldofGothic sister site WorldofPiranha and the Deep Silver homepage :

Piranha Bytes and Deep Silver come together

Planegg/Essen, 18-6-2007 – The German development team Piranha Bytes and Koch Media's premium games label Deep Silver will be working together in future. Deep Silver has already acted as a co-publishing partner for Gothic 3, the most recent title developed by the team from Essen. Further details concerning the two companies' cooperation will be released at a later date.

"We came to appreciate Koch Media as a competent, reliable and strong partner during the development of Gothic 3. We look forward to continuing and extending our cooperation with them with our work on a new joint title," says Michael Rüve, Commercial Manager for Piranha Bytes.

"We are very happy about this collaboration with Piranha Bytes. The team possesses a lot of experience, maintains close relations to its community, has established a successful brand within Germany and beyond its borders and captivated countless players. We're very excited to be able to exclusively accompany Piranha Bytes' work," Koch Media's Managing Director Klemens Kundratitz comments on the forthcoming cooperation with the team.

It has been a rumor for weeks, now we have the official confirmation: Deep Silver, the Gothic 3 co-publisher and at least exclusive distributor for Gothic 2 in its home market publishes Piranha Bytes´ next game.
More information.

Good news! Now let's wait and see what there next project will be.

Excellent.

Of course, that still leaves Gothic 3 in the lurch … and I can't say that I am all that enthusiastic about PB with the release and 'final' state of the game … maybe they can hire on DW Bradley for QA on the next title?

Well, well. They had two pretty solid releases, and a crap one, and they have correctly analyzed that they bit off too much on G3. I'm optimistic that they will be able to concentrate on their strengths again. It might even help that they can focus on a new IP, and throw the Gothic balast over board. In most series things tend to get stale after a while anyway.

Originally Posted by GhanBuriGhan
Well, well. They had two pretty solid releases, and a crap one, and they have correctly analyzed that they bit off too much on G3. I'm optimistic that they will be able to concentrate on their strengths again. It might even help that they can focus on a new IP, and throw the Gothic balast over board. In most series things tend to get stale after a while anyway.

I agree, although my wording would be that they've made two *excellent* titles, and one that's pretty good. Even with its faults I had quite a bit of fun playing G3, and it was certainly a better RPG release than many other hyped RPGs from 2006… I'm still going to be interested in whatever new game PB decides to work on, and most likely I'm also going to buy their next title.

Yah this is indeed good news

I have been waiting for this news to emerge as I suspected that PB's new publisher might be Deep Silver, a division of Koch Media(?). Deep Silver also published Secret Files: Tunguska, a very nice and excellent adventure game.

Also, isn't the 'net a wondeful place —- where rumours actually turn out to be true -

most of the time

Originally Posted by aries100
Deep Silver also published Secret Files: Tunguska, a very nice and excellent adventure game.

I actually heard that they are bringing that game to the DS as well!

Tunguska DS is made by 10Tacle Studios Mobile and Tunguska Wii by Keen Games (Anno 1701 DS). The original team is working on Secret Files 2.

Originally Posted by aries100
Deep Silver also published Secret Files: Tunguska, a very nice and excellent adventure game.

oh, the other day I took one of my random trips to RPGDot and saw a screenshot of Secret Files there. It looked really interesting and so - as I do with all games - went to Metacritic and the reviews of Secret Files wasn't in its favour. But is it worth trying out?

Originally Posted by txa1265
I actually heard that they are bringing that game to the DS as well!

I actually found that game boring. I was really surprised when I finished it that I actually played through the whole game.

Regarding the new PB game. I hope it will be an rpg. And I hope it will have a medieval atmosphere.

Originally Posted by Asbjoern
oh, the other day I took one of my random trips to RPGDot and saw a screenshot of Secret Files there. It looked really interesting and so - as I do with all games - went to Metacritic and the reviews of Secret Files wasn't in its favour. But is it worth trying out?

Its alright, but nothing special. Not your Syberia, Monkey Island, Broken Sword or Moment of Silence though.

I liked Tunguska. One of the better point & click adventures out there. The interface is very comfortable, the graphics decent and the German voice acting very good. Don´t know how much they´ve invested into the translation though.

Originally Posted by Asbjoern
oh, the other day I took one of my random trips to RPGDot and saw a screenshot of Secret Files there. It looked really interesting and so - as I do with all games - went to Metacritic and the reviews of Secret Files wasn't in its favour. But is it worth trying out?

Don't believe anything you read on metacritic…

Believe what you read at gameboomers or justadventure or adventuregamers
the three main and best adventuresites, imo. Their reviews were fine, but yu should check the reviews out for yourself A guy from adventuregamers.com once made a thread about how all the major non-adventure game sites consequently scored adventure games like 25-30 points lower than say FPS, or even RPG games. (he had statistics to back his claim up…) For adventure games, I only trust the three mentioned sites. But it is an adventure game…so for some gamers, it is boring…For others, it isn't…

The game is really worth checking out. I bought it - after I played the demo. A wonderfull vibrant demo of the game. The puzzles in the game advances the story, there a few illogical ones, but in the setting, they make sense. Unlike many (new) adventure games, if you have forgotten to do something in a scene (or screen) you can actually go back and to what you forgot to do in the first place.

and yes, the team is now currently working in Secret Files 2, to be released in 2008, I think??

But see, if you can find the demo, and check the game out for yourself

edit:

oh, and for PB's new game: I hope it is an rpg of some sorts, maybe in a medieval setting or maybe even in a sci-fi setting, though not like Mass Effect or Fallout 3's setting…

Yes, the Tunguska demo is good. After playing it you´ll know for sure if you like it.

I am hoping a gothic clone is their first product to be released.

I hope they will surprise us with their next release. A totally fresh Ip just as suprising and devestating as G1 was for the most of us :d :d

What great news for PB! I bet their next game will be awesome!

*LOOOL*

This gives Koch Media's recent disposal of a substantial share of their Jowood stock an even more delicate touch…

Haha, that's what I'd call a proper raping (of JoWooD) . First, Koch saves their ass by taking over their debits and they get a few million shares (46%) in exchange for EUR 1.00. Then they sell the shares at a profit of over 100%, making millions in the process (easily enough to fund PB's next project and probably the one after that, too ), they also score royalties from sales of Gothic III, probably making another couple million or so just from that and then when all is said and done, they get in bed with PB who were at least a major part/factor of JoWooD's "life insurance", leaving JoWooD to bleed to death from the wounds.
Well, the Gothic rights should be quite a bargain in a few weeks or months when JoWooD will be on their knees and I'm sure that Koch will be glad to "help" JoWooD out once more when that happens. From a business "ethics" point of view (I know, no such thing really in business ), this is about as asshole-y as it gets from Koch and PB but, well, tough… that's life, that's business, that's in-your-face professional money-making on Koch's part. They've squeezed every last drop out of JoWooD and now left the dry corpse behind. Tough for JoWooD… Koch has properly f'ed them over big time .

All that I'm wondering about is when PB and Koch made the plan to cooperate. I wouldn't be surprised at all if this plan was made a looong time ago already. I don't think that it is a coincidence that PB concluded the story of the Nameless One in Gothic III. Why would they do that if they ever had real, honest plans to continue making Gothics?
Also, it always seemed a bit strange that PB was so vague about the future of Gothic. Once they mentioned the possibility of a prequel, then -another time- they said that the story of the Nameless One could be continued, … they never really seemed to have a plan or an idea how to continue the franchise. No surprise if they already knew that they'd be working for someone else after Gothic III…
It would also explain why Gothic III was such a sloppy hack job. PB might have known that it was the last game in the franchise and for them it was all just a matter of delivering the product to JoWooD, you know… to dump it off and to go 'kthxbye'. Not a "labor of love" or anything they put any real effort or even "heart" into.
To top it off, what they might have done is that they delayed Gothic III intentionally in order to 1) secretly lay the groundwork for their Koch/Deep Silver projects as a side project and 2) comply with Koch's request to delay Gothic III until the blocking period for the sale of Koch's JoWooD shares had passed by so Koch could use the profit from the shares to fund PB's future projects. That would be almost too evil to be true (aaah the dirty fantasies) but who knows?