Dragon Age - Release Window
 

EA's recent financial conference call has been chock full of interesting tidbits, including the comment that BioWare's Dragon Age will be released in fiscal 2009, which begins in April. From FiringSquad:
Thanks, r3dshift!
More information.

I'm concerned that this will hurt our plans to discuss how EA is of course going to cancel Dragon Age, which is vaporware that will never appear because EA is inherently evil. I believe this announcement shows a lack of respect for the topics discussed on this forum.

Good point, PatrickWeekes. Don't worry. We'll all do our best. ;)

No - it just shows that EA are such lowlife scumbags that they will engage in this sort of obvious subterfuge to raise stock prices before announcing that it will be changed to a console action game in the style of the Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance series … which will send the stocks *soaring* … and there will be great rejoicing, except for a few fat dweebs with thick glasses living in their parents' basements fondling their d20's and whining about 'the good ole days' …

Hopefully this means more accurate information about the game soon! And maybe more screenshots - the ones currently out are slightly outdated, hehe.

Hopefully this gives them time to get the toolset and standalone server working just perfect. Wouldn't want to squelch the rumours of how those are top prioirty and how flexible and simple the ruleset will be to change without using any sort of "hak" system. It will be a nice change to have all changes need to be server side only - finally!

Nope, this only shows that EA are quick to rush it out to stores. Or at least announce it as such (Dragon Age may still redeem itself if it goes the Spore way) before a multitude of delays. Same old, same old.

Guys, there is no evidence whatsoever that Dragon Age will not be ready for November 2008. I was expecting it to be released this coming November before EA's announcement during yesterday's conference call - and this latest announcement comes as no surprise to me at all - and I submit - changes nothing.

My bet is that Dragon Age will be in stores on November 20, 2008.

People have been lulled into this sense of "Dragon Age's release TBA sometime FAR away in the future" only because BioWare has released a handful of screenshots to date and has not hyped the game.

And that's the ONLY reason people on the net have taken this approach.

I put it to you that the reason BioWare has been very quiet on Dragon Age to date is because they wish to retain a competitive edge, do not feel the need to pre-hype the title given their reputation - and do not want to be in the position where they pre-announce features that end up being cut back.

Moreover, without a publisher who would have otherwise paid for hype junkets - BioWare would have been spending publicity dollars they would never have recouped directly from the publisher who would have had to be signed with at some point in the game dev cycle. To what end? That's throwing money away.

The ordinary drive in publicity comes from the publisher, not from the developer. Until the EA deal was approved earlier this month when the acquisition of BioWare/Pandemic by EA actually closed - Dragon Age didn't have a publisher. Development of Dragon Age has been entirely self-funded within BioWare/Elevation- and with no publisher screaming for milestone delivery and insisting on hyping the game and pressing for a release *soonest* - Dragon Age development has carried on quietly.

Which means exactly that. It has proceeded quietly; that does not mean it has not proceeded at all. People are confusing the two concepts.

Quietly developed… until now, of course. Now, like it or not, Dragon Age has a publisher. Accordingly, Dragon Age's development team must return to earth. Yes, Dragon Age's dev team is now going to have to put up with the "problem" of having to be developed like any other commercial title. Justify the dev budget and ship the damn product.

Frankly - I think the big question is not when Dragon Age will be released, but whether it will be only a PC title. My money is on a 360 port for sure; indeed, I think it even money on a 360 simultaneous release.

The repetition that "Dragon Age will be a PC only title" is not a belief I share. There is absolutely not a single good commercial reason why it should not be a cross-platform release. In fact, I think it would be leaving $150-200 million on the table to release it as a PC only title in this current market.

Last I checked - neither EA nor the good doctors at BioWare are fools. That means a console port. When that will be released is a better topic for reasonable speculation.

Did anyone take notice of that date; April 1??? I always worry when I see that for some reason. Probably because it's the date we've been discussing with Cleve for years!! :)

Could you explain to me why you think there is a stand alone server contemplated for Dragon Age?

If you are of the belief that there is a PW capability in Dragon Age - there isn't. Unlike NWN, Dragon Age loads only the current level into memory. It does not permit more than one area to be active at any time. Ever. I expect that level transition in multiplayer is of the "You must gather your party before venturing forth" variety of play.

Ergo, I think it extremely unlikely that there will be a stand alone server app for Dragon Age.

@Steel_Wind: But an AAA game never gets released without hyping it at least 6 months before. Since there is still no concrete news at the end of January, I don't expect a release in summer any more. The earliest release date I would agree is septembre or octobre, most likely they planned for a christmas release. But since there is still no concrete release date it also indicates, that they are not sure about the release 'til now. So it could still get "delayed" to Q1 2009.

Console: I also suspect, that there will be a console release. And I don't think the announcement "DA is going to consoles only" would have a bad influence on the stock value. Rather I think, EA's stock value would increase. ;)

Not a chance of that. Blizzard can get away with delaying to February. Nobody else does. That would include BioWare/EA. Won't happen.

This will not be a summer release - I agree. That means 4th quarter. If you are going to release 4th quarter - you HAVE to be in stores on November 27, 2008 for Black Friday the following day. That is not open to negotiation. Period.

To be sure you ARE in stores on that day - you make sure you are shipping 2 weeks previous. Hence, November 20, 2008 as the projected date. If I am off, it will not be by much.

That was the same rationale behind Mass Effect's release date as well, I might add.

BioWare would not want to alienate their PC userbase - many of who are, lets face it, somewhat defensive and "anti-console". The course they need to chart is to keep the PC users (who are primarily their forum registrants) happy - while reaching console players as well.

That's the mission.

Ah, I was worried over nothing.

:D

It is a little regrettable that BioWare got twitchy and locked their forum topics on release dates. I know why they do it - but given the announcement by the publisher - it is an entirely legitimate topic of conversation.

I know the rationale from BioWare is that the publisher does not know when it is going to be released - only BioWare does. *ahem*

While I share the sentiment, I think EA paid 600 million USD + so that *they* would be the people making those decisions, not the devs at BioWare. Given EA's release history and penchant for, *ahem*, committed development (read, crunch like hell), I think DA will be released by November 2008 - whether the devs at BioWare like the taste of that or not.

Welcome to developing a game with a publisher. Welcome to EA. :D

I never doubted Dragon Age's release and I still assume it will be PC-only (at least for the initial release).

As you'd expect, we've got a variety of readers who agree and plenty who disagree.

I take it you think "we" are a bunch of loony anti-EA, anti-BioWare psychos or something but I visit a variety of disparate gaming websites and whenever Dragon Age is raised (not by me) someone will say they thought it was canceled or BioWare doesn't make PC RPGs anymore. In fact, you'll see this on the official BioWare forums more than anywhere else. That isn't or fault, so BioWare's decisions have miscommunicated or confused or sent mixed signals to a bunch of people.

You guys can run your PR however you like and the fact that DA didn't have a publisher, or that ME was coming out first, are both rational explanations for the current course. They're also choices. Plenty of self-funded studios publicise their projects before a publisher is signed and I notice a BioWarian (sorry, forget who it was) saying the other day that as BioWare grows, they'll probably push PR on multiple titles at once.

So, if you're tired of seeing these reactions, don't forget that we didn't invent them. I really hope we see you posting more here again but until BioWare decides to release new DA material, there are going to be posters all over the 'net making assumptions about its status.

In summary: nice to see you again. ;)

Edit: "you" being Patrick after Steel-Wind pipped my reply. :)

At least EA is a publisher that can provide support for at least a year…

Still no friend of EA. EA did everything to show RPG players that they don't care for RPGs. Ultima and Lands of Lore as examples. They swallowed many developers, creative people. But after they were part of EA they haven't been creative anymore. A game like Assassin's Creed would never have been developed by an internal EA studios. At least I couldn't imagine.

So even if Riccitello says EA is boring gamers to death and tries to renew EA's image… we still have no proof that this is reallly true. We only see what EA did for many years. They bought many companies, IPs and produced endless sequels of once beloved titles. And it needs more than one BioWare release (of a game been developed since 2003) to convince me they changed.

So, no offense, but I'm sceptical. So I can't be disappointed if the result is the same as ever. I don't believe in marketing campaigns.

The only thing I'll say on this topic is that Im really looking forward to Dragon Age and any info that may be released about it :). I dont really give a damn about the rest, and I'll judge the game, the makers and the publisher once I get around playing it.

Please, Steel, continue to explain the politics and logistics of my job to me in a slightly patronizing tone. Any minute now, I'll be baited into releasing actual insider information.

I agree. I look forward to seeing what Bioware does in their first IP for the PC crowd. The hype is my least favorite part of the game release process anyway and the last thing to use to judge the game. Just glad to hear it's on the way.

I agree with this completely. My least favorite part of Mass Effect was watching people construct a completely different game in their heads based on what they read into the press releases.

Almost makes you want to just not announce a game until a few months before release, at all, so you're just springing it on people, and they don't have time to get burned out by overhype or unrealistic expectations.

I doubt it'll ever happen, though.

LOL. (It wasn't just posted to you Patrick. Lighten up a tad, hmm?).

Actually, it's worse that that. To be technical about it, they aren't just announcing the anticipated release date as market information that might reasonably affect their share price as a publisher. They announced it because they are self-publishing. EA is now the developer, too.

Which was my point, after all. The old argument of "the publisher knowns nothing" doesn't really cut it when you happen to be them, as it were.

I think S_W you are missing the sarcasm of this whole thread, a sarcasm our resident Biowarian started that you may have missed. S_W, in case anyone doesn't know, headed the excellent DLA project for NWN including some premium mods. (unless you've been hired full time and I missed that news).

A couple of months ago we were lamenting the lack of real development information and Patrick came on to tell us that they will likely begin development in earnest after Mass Effect is released.

As for the details of my post its based on David Gaider's? infamous "there will be some sort of toolset" post where he said that they were concentrating on the game itself. Back then it was also said to be a spiritual successor to NWN and BG.

There was a quiet collective groan at the comment but that was the early days of DA's development so we've (the rest of the NWN PW community) had a wait and see attitude. We only recently learned (here from Patrick) that the game had officially been backshelved for their console development.

We had hoped that was just marketing speech and an early development comment. Especially since there were also statements from before where they said they would open up the core of DA to be more flexible for changing. NWN did have its limitations after all.

I, and a number of other people, are seriously hoping for this and improvements over the even more rigid NWN2.

Now, obviously you have more contacts with Bio than any of us (I used to correspond with Jay Watamaniuk when I was a judge on the writing contest but I think his junk folder has forgotten who I am) and we have a limited engagement with Patrick when he stops by. (hi Patrick *waves*)

So it sounds like you have a little more info on just what it entails. My sarcastic comment, which is not to be taken too seriously, is what I dream DA will actually be. I've scoured David's blog for comments on this but he mainly sticks to philosophical gaming/ RPG concepts and info on the IP instead.

Any more information on DA that you have is definitely welcome. A lot of us are still in the dark.

PS - I've been tried to get a Cthulhu model shoved back into NWN but NWMAX seemed to be telling me I needed to export every piece of it. What am I doing wrong? Is it something to with skin? Thanks.

I can give an example to this.

I bet you've never heard about a game called "Wind Chaser". It will be out during May this year and we know next to nothing about it.

As I learned today, it is an tactical game with people whi can "level up" and have "classes" - which reminds me of Jagged Alliance, but the setting is totally different.

What I want to say is that releasing such a (PC-)game with next to no information at all is a hazardous game of which no-one can really say how it might go, what results it might have.

Bioware has the advantage of being a very well known, almost "huge" company - compared to this little start-up company that created Windchaser.
This means that the reputation of Bioware alone makes people interested in *any* game they release - no matter what. So - they can be totally silent towrds a game and release it in a sudden.
Chimera, the makers of Windchaser, cannot do this. No-one knows them. Thry need a publisher who does marketing for them - or self-made propaganda.

All in all - it's not easy … but a bit easier if you have a rather well-known company.

Alrik: Good point on too little press being a bad thing, too.

Lucky: To be clear, Dragon Age has in no way been "back shelved", and I'm sorry if I gave that impression. It's got a big-ass dev team, it's working on a tough schedule, and it's showing off milestone deliverables to the rest of the company regularly. The only "back shelf" that I meant in the earlier post was that it wasn't being publicly talked about much, because Mass Effect was what all our marketing efforts were focused on. Hopefully now that it's out and the new year has rolled around, Dragon Age will start getting the big press rollout it deserves. (This may be what you meant, but I don't want what I said taken out of context, and then people on other forums are saying that Patrick Weekes talked about DA being back-shelved, and then HR pulls me in for a talk.)

And yeah, that was my sarcasm in the beginning. I had to go into lurk-mode here rather than participating, because there were a few too many people explaining to me that EA was going to downsize my job, and really, there's a number of times I need to hear that each day, and that number is low. Add in the people aggrieved that the company had the temerity to develop a handheld game aimed at a target audience that isn't them, the homophobic slurs, and the people who feel the need to explain that they're not broken up by BioWare's upcoming closure at EA's heartless hands because we were never that good anyway, and… yeah. I left. We'll see if staying back works.

Steel Wind: Don't play coy. I will not lighten up. Your post was a patronizing call for authority you do not have, and if you didn't want a response, then quoting me was a bad idea. You have as much right to make predictions as anyone here on the forum, and if you want to misrepresent yourself as an insider on Dragon Age because you got jousting to work in the Aurora engine a couple years ago, then knock yourself out. That's between you and anyone who chooses to take your opinion seriously. But I worked weekends on Dragon Age. I memorized the crunch dinner schedule on Mass Effect. I don't recall seeing you there. Don't tell me how things work at a big-boy company until you work for one.

Gothic came fairly unannounced, and is one of my all-time fav. games, but it was hardly a "major title" at the time.

Edit: I know very little about both Steel_Wind and PatrickWeekes (other than S_W being involved in NWN mods, and PW working for Bio), but I don't think the size of a company has much to say. I'm a developer in a company many times the size of BioWare or even EA, but I wouldn't say I know a lot about what's going on inside BioWare/EA.

You work in BioWare Patrick, which gives you a lot of inside info on the current projects of BioWare, but calling it a "big-boy company" and referring to "how things work" might seem wrong. Chances are, if S_W is a developer, he's working for a company much larger than Bio (doesn't give him inside info though, as I pointed out).

Just wanted to point out that whatever info you have come from being an insider. I know quite a few here are, in fact, developers, and I wouldn't be surprised if most worked in companies as big as Bio/EA. That still doesn't mean we have anywhere near the amount of info here that you do, however. :)

I decided to change that and wrote/compiled an article here.
I put into it all information I could find about "Windchaser". ;)

Indeed. I make a point of not telling people who work at other companies what it's like to work at that company, when I haven't actually worked at that company myself.

The "big boy" comment was a response to his patronizing "welcome to game development" line. I've shipped Mass Effect and busted my ass for Dragon Age and the unannounced title. I don't need anyone to condescendingly welcome me to game development.

Well, just in case you haven't met your quota for the day: EA is going to crush your soul with their devil hands of murder!

@Maylander: I'm fairly sure Patrick was talking about game dev companies; not general software dev companies. EDIT: Patrick beat me to it…

w00t! Dragon Age approaches!

Korplem, that may just be my new.sig… :)

Maylander, I think Patrick was just trying to contrast a major gaming outfit the size of BioWare vs indie and mod outfits, not place BioWare in the company of Microsoft or Oracle or whatever.

Aaaaanyway….it's going to be interesting going forward. Dragon Age sounds like a fairly hardcore setting (low magic, no instant healing potions, no teleporting, no time spells, heavy religious overtones…) and it will be an interesting to see how that integrates into BioWare's approach.

Edit: too slow, again.

Aah, fair enough, that makes perfect sense. Thanks for clearing that up!

Back on topic, I have high hopes for DA, it's been in development a long time. I already posted a topic on the general RPG forum which contained a summary of DA info - to me, it sounds very interesting.

Actually Patrick, I didn't even recognize the name. It did not register with me that you were somebody who worked at BioWare. The regular posters here may have recognized it - but I'm not one.

As for my info sources on the game - they are what they are and I don't need to justify them to anybody (including you) or back off on their accuracy. Not that there is much of that knowledge ever offered at all. It's a pretty tight ship - as you well know.

The "welcome" line was tonguee in cheek (see the smiley?) in BioWare being scooped by an announcement from a head office they are not used to having - and by reason of now being owned by a public traded company. A very new event at BioWare. And DA hasn't had a publisher until now. It was not "welcome to big leagues" - not at all.

But leaving that aside - tell me - are you always this rude? Sometimes, you know - its better to not hit the reply button. I've never had such a rude reply from a BioWare employee anywhere at any time on any forum for any reason. That statement does not require revision or equivocation.

I'll be generous and chalk it up to your just having a bad day.

Leaving that aside, no. If instead of asking me to lighten up a tad, hmm, you had replied with, "Oh, I didn't realize you were a BioWare employee," there would have been very little rudeness at all.

When one's character or experienced are questioned in a patronizing tone, rudeness is an entirely appropriate response. A smiley does not somehow make your post un-rude. :) See?

This is derailing the Dragon Age discussion, however. Feel free to PM me if you'd like to take this offline.

Hey Patrick, great to see you back posting. As far as the staff is concerned, you're always welcome. I'm still eager about DA and it's on my MUST buy list. I don't like EA for several reasons, chief among them Ultima 9, but I still have a high regard for Bioware and I sincerely hope it doesn't go the way of other game developers such as Origin!!

Me too!!! :)

thanks for the clarification on the development of DA. I had misunderstood you. It sounded like the company stopped work when you talked about it before, not just the marketing department.

And well "a word" aside (I dislike swearing. the reason I like the watch is because it seems more mature over here and you don't get any of those "homophobic" comments as you say)

S_W where did you find out about areas only being loaded one at a time?

Patrick, can you confirm this?

Would this discount the possibility of standalone server doing this? There was a huge difference in NWN when the standalone server was running a mod and a host was using the game to do it.

The flexibility of DA modding is the real selling point for me.

PS- S_W, again, why was NWMax prompting me to export all my parts instead of my entire model?

In the Bio forums about - oh - 3 to 3.5 years ago? Georg Zoeller mentioned it as I recall. (I might be wrong on that - but I think it was Georg). Bio was quite clear about how PWs were not going to be possible with Dragon Age and why - but that was ignored and pooh-poohed, mainly because the news was unwelcome to the ears that didn't want to hear it.

That does not make it any less true though.

I think if you do a search on PWs and Dragon Age, you'll see Georg Zoeller mentioning that "zero" is a nice number when discussing the potential for PWs and Dragon Age.

Again, people don't want to hear what they don't want to hear.

I think it far more likely that a multiplayer game would simply be hosted by one player within the game as it was under BG. I could be wrong and you may be right - but I doubt that another stand alone app is in the cards without a clear reason for there to be one. NWN's mutiplayer model with simultaneous area loading had one - DA's does not. That's my reasoning for what it is worth.

Again, look more closely, and you'll see Bio hyping DA as a spiritual successor to BG2 and not NWN.

As for your NWmax question - post it in the NWMax forum and supply the proper context and Adam or James can answer you there.

I'd also note the Dragon Age is using the Eclipse engine. An engine that BioWare has made no secret is also being developed for use on the 360 and - potentially - the PS3.

I think that speaks volumes about the possibility of seeing Dragon Age on the 360 - if the commercial success of such a title was ever in doubt. I might be wrong - but the smart money is on consoles these days. Every. Single. Time.

Patrick and Steel - just an FYI you can edit you can personalize your own forum ranks in your profile now. That could prevent any confusion in the future.

And with Patrick, our lone developer these days, people could grovel to you more and thank you 15x for making a post.

Ooooooh. I'll go change it to "EA Lackey".

And I'll also check with people on the PR side of things to see if and when more info about DA is gonna be forthcoming. I imagine they have a plan.

I must admit that I was a little taken aback by S_W's comment on the whole 'welcome to development with a publisher' thing. I think we all need to remember that Bioware actually have been used to work with a developer before e.g. Microsoft. They know that there are milestones that need need to be reached, goals that need to met etc. - before the game(s) are being able to be shipped or released at all.

As for S_W's comment in general I think it was meant for us here at RPGwatch, not just Patrick Weekes. I know for a fact that Dragon Age will not get discussed much in the coming months pr. this thread on the Bioware off topic forums:

http://forums.bioware.com/viewtopic….forum=22&sp=30

Chris Priestly clearly says that the Sonic RPG will be the 'next game, we're going to be discussing' Since the Sonic RPG is to be released this summer (I'd guess), I think we will see info emerging on Dragon Age from around aug/sept 2008 or so.

I have no problem with Dragon Age being out for the Xbox 360 and the PS3 as well as for the PC. Many people can't afford to upgrade their computer each year or so so they have to buy a gaming console.

I have no problems with Bioware making a Sonic RPG for the DS either….

/aries100