Arcania - Interview with JoWooD CEO Franz Rossler @Boerse-Express

Austrian investment site Boerse-Express sat down for a short interview with JoWooD CEO Franz Rossler. Of course the just released Arcania: Gothic 4 was one of the main topics.

Here are a couple of translated excerpts from Mr Rossler's answers:

On the Arcania release:

[...] We had 28.000 [Arcania] activations yesterday - I consider this a success.

JoWooD put 200.000 units on the shelf in Europe.

On the criticism in games forums:

The classic Gothic fan might be disappointed because the game no longer follows the classic Gothic approach. But we did this intentionally. We wanted to reach a broader audience, to make the game more marketable internationally. It's the old problem: I can't please everybody. It is clear, Arcania comes at the expense of Gothic's long time community [the German "Urgemeinde" is untranslatable; Ed.]. But the sales success seems to prove us right.

Arcania's budget is a "high one digit sum in millions". The PS3 conversion will come out next year, and a couple of add-ons too.

So it was no accident - Arcania was meant to be so casual.

200k sell-in for release on two platforms in Europe, for a game which cost ca. 8-9M EUR (ca. 11-12.5M $US) to make? Interesting concept.