Gothic 4 - JoWood working on Gothic 4

Well, as Moriendor mentioned in another thread, PB themselves were in pretty serious financial trouble, and JW actually saved them first. As good as the Gothic series is, it is a very niche market, and sales have never been all that great.

Still, you make a valid point Ghan... it's JW's flagship product. So again, the whole idea of not supporting the patch for G3 doesn't make any sense.
 
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I do think that Jowood is willing to make a patch for Gothic 3, but there may or may not be some legaties involved in Jowood making the patch. Hopefully, this will be resolved quickly so that people can get back to playing G3...

EDIT:
It really doesn't make any sense at all if Jowood doesn't at least allow PB to publish their (finished) patch for Gothic 3. Especially, since by Jowood's own admission The Gothic series is their flagship. And who in their right minds would let one's flagship sink to the bottom of the sea?
 
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As good as the Gothic series is, it is a very niche market, and sales have never been all that great.

Yes, that's true for the international versions but Gothic is and has been a HUGE success in Germany. The German video game market is different from the UK/US and other European markets though. Germany is still going comparatively strong in the PC sales area. About 50% of all video game purchases in Germany are PC products while the international PC market share is more like 25% - 30% average (source: Analysis of the JoWood corporation by the Euro Invest Bank ).
That's one of the reasons. The others are (IMHO) that Gothic is a very "Germanic" game and that Germans generally like to support domestic, home-made products. There are certainly more factors but I think those are the major ones.
 
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Yes, it's huge in Germany. Not least because the original game was coming after a real bad slump in German game making, after the demise of the traditional trading simulation games, there was hardly anything noteworthy coming out of Germany.
 
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Yes, I was referring to the worldwide sales as a whole. I have no idea how many gamers there are in Germany, but I do know it is a really popular game there. The problem is, in the USA, if you lined up 20 gamers outside of this circle and asked them about Gothic, 19 of them wouldn't have a clue what you're talking about. Conversely, all 20 would know about Morrowind and Oblivion, even if RPG's are the furthest thing off their list of likes.

Now there are a million and one reasons why this is the case, and I have no desire to explore them, but the fact remains... Gothic never truly "made it big."

As far as the Gothic series being a money-maker? I'm not sitting here doing the math, but think about it. 20 guys on PB's team, drawing necessary living expenses, for 3+ years while the game is in development without a single Euro in return. Sure they had funding, but still... all that dough eats away at the profit margin. Now, 6 months after the game has been released, the sales have peaked and are pretty much done, and the devs are working on the same title everyday (bug-fixing we would hope). 6 months rent and living expenses has now been spent for 20 guys, and they are now 6 months further behind on making any profit on the next project. That's.... yep, I am gonna do the math.... let's see, I live in one of the lowest cost of living areas in the United States, and monthly rent/ house payment around here, for a decent, modest place, is around $850 - $900. $850 X 20 guys = $17,000 per month. That does not include any additional necessary living expenses, which will be close to, if not more than the cost of rent. $17,000 X 6 months = $102,000. So just to pay the PB staffs' rent for this six months of bug-fixing, they would have to sell (at $50.00 per copy) 2,040 copies of Gothic 3.

Yes, this is purely hypothetical, but the math's real... any wonder that PB didn't make any money on G3? And any more wonder why there's probably not going to be a patch? :-/ :'(
 
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It really doesn't make any sense at all if Jowood doesn't at least allow PB to publish their (finished) patch for Gothic 3.

Did it ever occure to you... that perhaps this patch is nowhere near finished? and it is the reason Jowood lost their patience... cause the patch never got finished?
 
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Yes exactly. I think the whole idea about the patch already being done was thrown out there earlier (possibly in another thread) and is PURE speculation. We have no concrete reason to believe that the patch is done, and exactly the point I was making in my previous post. - PB has no money to continue working on the patch, and JW doesn't want to shell anymore out, because they won't get a return on it.
(That's all pure speculation too of course! ;) )
 
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I agree completely. I don't believe the patch is done. I don't believe PB can afford to continue working on it either. They probably tried to get $ from JoWood to continue development of the patch and get working on an Add-On, but JoWood probably insisted that PB fund the patch on their own and refused to authorize work to begin on the Add-On until the Original G3 was patched (after all, who wants a buggy Add-On?).

And since PB picked the new engine (which seems to be the root of their patch difficulties). JoWood probably figures that PB should already have developed a good enough toolset to be able to fix the problems that need addressing (after all, they did pay them to develop G3).

It's a nasty situation and I believe both PB and JoWood have to share the blame. It seems that PB definately made a poor decision on what game engine to use, but we don't know that for sure. Did JoWood perhaps pressure them too much on how quickly they chose the engine? Did they not allow PB the time they needed to fully analyze the engines available? When they started having problems with the new engine did PB tell JoWood that they might be looking at a major delay, or even the need to pick a new engine and start over? If so, were they told to just plod ahead and do the best they could?

Too many questions that we'll probably never know the answers to. All we know is the sad conclusion to the series.
 
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Yes, this is purely hypothetical, but the math's real... any wonder that PB didn't make any money on G3? And any more wonder why there's probably not going to be a patch? :-/ :'(

In the tech industry, general rule of thumb is $100K to $150K US dollars per person, per year, for all expenses: salary/wages, benefits, rent on office space, computer + software, etc. Personal income only accounts for somewhere around 2/3 of the total expense of each head on the payroll.

That's for the US. Midwest is cheapest, east/west coasts are most expensive. Things work differently in Germany since workers earn less in wages, while much more gets paid to government/benefits. It's been explained to me, but I wasn't expecting a quiz, so I can't recall the details very well. Maybe one of the helpful German posters can add more.

But assume that PB falls at least around the $100K per year level. 20 people for 6 months adds up to $1 million (what's that in eros? 600K?). Even a "small" tech company is expensive to run.

If JoWood shifts development from Germany to eastern Europe or deep into Russia, they can significantly reduce the cost-per-head of development. Something we like to call "outsourcing".
 
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