The Witcher - Future Classic @ Forbes.com
 

Along with announcing a sales figure to date of 600,000 copies, the official site for CDProjekt's cRPG The Witcher posts a link to a feature article at financial site Forbes.com that lists the title among ten future classic games in an article about the future of video games. While the article focuses on console devlopment and the Wii in particular, it also has this to say:
They also have some comments on the future of graphics over content:
As a sidenote, Forbes makes a rather interesting prediction here:
More information.

That was… refreshing. A mainstream article about games that sounded like it was written by somebody who had actually *played* them -- and didn't mention sex, school shootings, or the deplorable state of youth today even once. Next to that, those bold predictions were more like a bonus!

No it just mentions stupid shit like WoW guilds being political movements - I'm sure it's tongue in cheek though, at least, I hope it is.

The press release also curiously mentions that "CD Projekt RED consists of 70 people working on two unannounced projects."

They are announcing something on Monday I read somewhere.

Ahh yes, "which will be revealed at a press conference really soon – February 18th!" from the main site.

Yes, I know. But they are also working on a second unannounced project.

Forbes is so damn good! I liked this article a lot!

The first point it emphasized was how Wii's approached "[opened] up gaming for people who wouldn't normally play videogames." Message To Indies: THAT'S HOW THEY DO IT DOWNTOWN. The guys holding the purses expect you to make your case, and the best cases are the ones made for opening up new markets.

I loved the part where Forbes pointed out how gamers "don't care how realistically blood splatters; they want to play great games" and how "PC games are going to grow in importance, especially for older, more educated gamers."

The stuff about the social networks…I don't know. The stuff about political forces…I don't know either, but I think maybe is a little scary.

600,000 is still only poor/average sales when compared to console games that can sell up to multiple millions?

2007
1. 360 Halo 3 -- 4.82 million
2. Wii Play -- 4.12 million
3. 360 Call of Duty 4 -- 3.04 million
4. PS2 Guitar Hero III -- 2.72 million
5. Wii Super Mario Galaxy -- 2.52 million
6. NDS Pokemon Diamond -- 2.48 million
7. PS2 Madden NFL 08 -- 1.90 million
8. PS2 Guitar Hero II -- 1.89 million
9. 360 Assassin's Creed -- 1.87 million
10. Wii Mario Party 8 -- 1.82 million

Assasins creed - a game that is all about flashy graphics - on 360 sold three times more (and those are just US sales numbers) on a shorter period of time than witcher. :(

Some RPGs that have sold millions:

PS2
Final Fantasy X (6.6 million)
Kingdom Hearts (4.29 million approximately,
Final Fantasy XII (4.1 million approximately
Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King (3.6 million in Japan
Final Fantasy X-2 (3 million)
Final Fantasy VII (PS1 – 9.8 million,

xbox360
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (1.49 million in US)[15]

PC
Computer role-playing game – Diablo II (4 million)

Best selling rpg:
Pokémon Red, Blue, and Green (Game Boy – 20.08 million approximately, 10.23 million in Japan,[35] 9.85 million in US)[15]

Best selling rpg franchises:
-Final Fantasy (80 million)
-The Legend of Zelda (52 million)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of…ng_video_games

Scary exists all over the place, if you've managed to survive till now… I wouldn't worry about scary.

600000 is not bad and it's the kind of game I think will sell for awhile - it's more than PS:T did at around 400000 or so.

He might be projecting far more into the future than "normal" people do.

I think he might be right at one point, seriously, but that would take 10-20 years minimum, to develop such a spirit, so to say.

Its an interesting idea certainly. The Chineese government has always been wary of groups it doesnt control (cf Falun Gong) and if the guilds evolve as social networks outside the aproved governement system they could well become something more. What I don't see currently is an issue to politicise them - but then who can predict how the technology and politics will evolve, did anyone think file sharers would be a political movement in Sweden ten years ago?

You need to put that into perspective. All console games require a fee paid to the platform holder, which reduces their margin. EA paid the NFL a rumoured $300M for the license rights to make Madden -- it simply has to be a megahit to pay that money back. Wii Play is bought by many people because it is a cheap way to get a second controller. How established is Final Fantasy and Zelda? I'd say Zelda is a pop culture icon - I think it's possible my 77 year old mother would have heard of it or seen a TV ad. I'm not diminishing the achievements of these games but The Witcher was never competing on that scale and doesn't have to.

For a first-time project from a Polish studio, M-rated with limited promotion from Atari, in a niche-genre on the PC and with a licensed property (Sapkowski) that noone in the western world has heard of - this is an excellent result.

Even if you don't consider Poland and Czech Republic part of the western world, excluding Germany, France and Spain from it is a bit too much. :) Especially in Spain Sapkowski is pretty popular.

600k is excellent, as Dhruin explained. Also worth mentioning is that they´re still early in the game´s sales lifecycle. Most of the 600k are full price or mid price sales. Furthermore CD Projekt is self-publishing in certain countries and co-publishing in the rest of the world.

All this means that a significant share of the money went to CD Projekt.

The developers just add that fee to the cost of the game. Console games cost around 10-15€ more than PC ones. The developers propably profit the same per game on both console and PC.

Thats no different from PC. PC has licenced games too (including madden) and known game series. Diablo 2 is the best selling RPG on PC. Even then console games dont need any of that. Assasins creed sold three times more and they didnt have any fancy licenses or other tricks. I doubt the PC version will sell even quarter of that.

From the perspective of companies who sell the games 600k is propably a suprise coming from an indie but still its nothing more than average sales at best when compared to normal console games.

Isn't your comparison very off?

Your comparing games with various time since they were first on sale. Oblivion has been on sale since march 2006. Diablo has been on sale since 2000.

The point of the anouncement was that 600.000 copies for sold for in the first quarter is very good. Especially considering Atari is the publisher.

In comparison Overlord (2007) was released 4 months prior to The Witcher and has generated sales of 800.000. Those numbers are considered good enough for a sequel. And by the way, Overlord was multiplatform (PC/Xbox360), but The Witcher seems to have outsold them (600.000 for 4 months vs 800.000 for 8 months of sales).

If we're comparing the Xbox 360 sales of Oblivion to the PC sales of The Witcher I still see that The Witcher has done good.

CD Projekt is not an indie. It's a major game publisher in Central Europe.

600 000 seems fairly good given the marketing. Compare to Oblivion which even had ads in Nature it's not shabby at all for a game from an unknown company without ties to an established franchise (Final Fantasy for instance has an edge there).

The majority of the sales were actually in countries where the Witcher franchise is established (Poland, Russia, Czech Republic, where Sapkowski's books are very well known).

I overlooked that, and just Poland+Russia is in deed a sizeable market. But isnt piracy a relatively large issue in those countries?

I've seen Michal Kicinski (IIRC) cite 100k shipped in Poland - but that was at a time when they were saying around 1M copies had shipped worldwide. Since the actual sales are 60% of that total, I'm not sure where that leaves Poland's actual sales. Do you have figures to claim the majority out of Poland, Czech Republic and Russia? I guess you do, so what are they?

And if so, doesn't that validate my point about Sapkowski? If Poland, Czech Republic and Russia account for the majority of 600k, that leaves some pretty ordinary results in Germany, France, US, UK, Australia and so on.

Relatively, sure, but it's still a large market. But Russia would surely be a more attractive market if piracy weren't like 90% of all game movement.

Also, Ausir: I get the feeling you never sleep. Is that correct?

My point is that according to the source diablo seems to be the only rpg (if you can call it at that) on PC that has *ever* sold millions. You might include som mmorpgs into that too but I dont know any other PC rpg that sold that much (ultima?).

My bad I meant "newcomer". Witcher was their first game.

As said Assasins Creed - a mediocre game with flashy graphics - sold 1.870.000 copies in just few months (3-4) and thats US sales ONLY.

As for the majority of sales coming from countries where Sapkowski is well known, I've read that the game has sold 100k in Poland and 200k in Russia, so that would make a half of the sales. If you add to that any sales in Czech Republic in Spain, where Sapkowski is also popular, it will give you the majority of sales.

No, I was genetically engineered not to require sleep. Ever read "Beggars in Spain" by Nancy Kress?

All Bioware, NWN 2 maybe, Sacred, many Bethesda games.

And how big was its budget? Can we agree on 5 times what The Witcher cost, including marketing? Assassin´s Creed was Ubi´s biggest game this year. That´s a completely different league. The only RPG you can compare this to is Oblivion.

600k units * ca. 18$ profit = 10.8M $

Your guess that 600k are "nothing more than average sales at best" doesn´t sound convincing. That number sounds way too big. Can you explain what makes you think so?
Especially smaller publishers would be printing money if they could collect ca. 10M with a decent but rather average game.

No, I need time to sleep and hence have no time to read Nancy Kress

For a cross-platform mainstream publisher it is, because an AAA console title in the US costs 20 million to produce, so it needs at least 1.5-2 million just to break even. That's your average Oblivion, Fallout 3, BioShock, Call of Duty 4, etc. etc.

Once you factor in that this isn't an AAA NA title it all becomes clearer. Let's be honest here, relative to the invested cost this is probably more profitable than Madden.

Yeah atleast bioware is true. In all those years its games sold as much as assasins creed did in few months:

-Baldur's Gate (2 million)[170]
-Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn (2 million)[170]
-Neverwinter Nights (2 million)

I guess bioware is one of the rare exceptions. I didnt find any oblivion numbers but its possible it sold millions too.

Thats true but if big developers start to pump out new rpgs they need to sell atleast 2-3 times the amount witcher did. So the sale of 600k doesnt automatically mean that making rpgs is profitable again.

Instead risking it they could make other proven games like new assasins creeds (pretty action game) because its a fact allready that games like it sell millions. Why take risks if there is no need?

Oblivion sold about 4 million. It also has a budget of 20-25 million, as opposed to the the 5 million of the Witcher.

What…per definition?

As you allready said - to break even.

I also said "North American AAA console title"

I don't know if you noticed, but not every game has to be a North American AAA console title.

You said cross-platform. I doubt any mainstream publisher would start to develop PC only games nowadays.

You mean Atari magically transformed into not a mainstream publisher?

The Witcher sold that much in 4 months, the figures you quoted for other games are for much longer.

Most mainstream games don't have long shelf-lives, though. I wouldn't be surprised if most AAA titles sell at least half their copies in the first 6 months.

Reminds me of THQ's policy to dump everything that's … I'd guess 1 year old.

It is *really* hard to find informations and patches for older games.

They seem to erase their memory completely after 2 years.

I expect CD Projekt's patching policy to be more like Blizzard's than like THQ's.

I wouldn't be surprised. They put so much effort in it.

I am not surprised games like Gothics, the witcher don't sell too well here in the US. The average gamer here doesn't have that kind of long attention span. 10hrs shooter game seems like a magic formular.