New Witcher 3 PC Patch Adds Visual Upgrades

[Ragsnstitches]

snip.

Make no mistake, I have been making fun of overpriced to hell and back Hollywood Voice acted Western AAA drivel for years.

But no matter how you look at it, 200-250 people working for 4 years (if not 5) and making a 200 hour game for 15 million is EXTREMELY CHEAP...

Indie games usually have smaller dev studios, are smaller games and are made by fewer people.

We agree that it's not indie. Well, it can't be indie anyway because the studio is owned by a publisher (CDP).

Cost of production is not really a factor for AAA. AAA is a term that denotes as certain level of expectations (high quality) usually from an established studio with a solid portfolio. It's thrown around as a catch all term for EA and Ubisoft published games, but much of the shite they publish is not AAA standard and the studios who once had AAA status have lost or are losing the confidence of their fans.

With that in mind, I would say the industry can be split in a few different groups based on the size of the development teams and budgets.

1)_You have high tier or what is commonly known as AAA, usually with high costs and large teams but that doesn't necessarily have to be that way. Examples would be Bethesda softworks, Ubisoft Montreal, Bioware, Dice, Valve, TurtleRock, Irrational... etc.

2)_Next you have middle tier (some of this can be AAA). These have moderate costs and medium to large teams, but again it doesn't have to be that way. Examples would be Egosoft (X series), 4A games (Metro), GSC Gameworld (Stalker), Fromsoft (Dark Souls), Ironclad Games (Sins of a Solar Empire) and so on.

3)_The you have low tier, it's rare for these to be AAA but not impossible. A lot these are junk games, mobile apps or facebook apps, Shovelware titles on the Wii or "kids" games made with little effort or enthusiasm. These are made on tiny budgets and tiny development teams. Not all of these are garbage though. Games like Valiant Hearts or Grow Home (not GONE home) fall into low tier games.

4)_And lastly we have indie, which is full of gold and shite and golden shite depending on where you look. The only commonality is that they are made without a publisher backing them. These include games as good as the likes of Guns of Icarus and as shite as the many many Zombie Survival games that infest steam.

As far CDPr goes and their $15 million cost of production, you could argue it's middle tier AAA, but the studio is quite large and you need to account for the lower cost of living and consequently lower wages in Poland. A 250 manned studio in the states would be more expensive to run simply due to higher wage standards. I can guarantee you coders and designers in the states are paid more then they are in Poland... that's not a criticism mind you nor am I indicating some sort of mistreatment of the CDPr team. That's just how the 2 economies differ.

I would classify it as AAA with that in mind. It's a highly polished product from a highly respected team. Its budget would make it middle tier development by EA or Ubi standards but its team size is in the higher brackets. So somewhere in between middle and high tier development.

That's just me though.

 

[Las7]

Let me put this as delicately as possible......THIS IS NOT NEOGAF, nor is it Reddit, LoL or DotA. Replying to the first post in a thread, some 19 hours later, when that post has been discussed ad nauseum, and acting like a jerk, will get you nowhere here. While I'm sure you value your own opinion, it is in desperate need of a filter. If you do not use a filter, I guarantee one will be provided for you. This is not a threat, simply how things work here. A little politeness or actual discussion can carry you a long way. [link]http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/codeofconduct[/link]

On a side note, am I not the only one to wait until a game gets a few patches before I purchase, especially if it's on PC? Somehow people are finding this offensive and I have no idea why.

You can choose to ignore posts.

Personally I'm shocked a person who is into GAMING thinks this is a new development that has only happened to MMOs before.
Every single launch of a major OPEN WORLD GAME in the last few yeasr has not been smooth, some have been down right disasters.
Entitled people who take it out on one of the few studios that patches games, gives free dlc, has no DRM and has always tried to grow the community - should be called out.
If you don't like the Witcher in the state it's launched - move on and don't comment on the game. There is plenty of people who aren't graphic wh*** and will play the Witcher because of how well it's crafted.

If you don't like the heat get the hell out of the kitchen

 

[EternallyBored]

snip.

A part of it is also better planning. Not wasting money on old consoles. Not hiring expensive hollywood actors. Not doing massive campaigns and instead letting your fans do the marketing. Not investing too much in expensive one-shot tech like Mo-Cap.

That helps a LOT too.

I dont consider AAA to mean anything bar money and hype. Too often have big games (some from the devs you listed) been absolute drivel to me. So I associate it only with budget and maybe marketing hype.

Considering they spent something like $25 million on the marketing for this game, $10 million more than the total development cost, they certainly have the advertising budget of a AAA title, so roughly $40 million total budget.

Even just the development cost is only a couple million lower than many other AAA games, God of War III seems to clock in around 18-20 million ($44 Million including marketing). Halo 4, at the time goggled at for its incredible development cost clocks in at $60 million including marketing, which is only 1/3rd higher than Witcher 3 with its comparative $40 million.

However, things like Ubisoft's ridiculous bloated development cycle puts Watch dogs at about $68 million, don't know if that includes marketing, but Ubisoft seems to have insane development budgets from what I can find.

Ubisoft and Rockstar's monumentally bloated development costs and advertising budgets have kind of warped what we consider to be AAA costs, while Witcher 3 is on the lower end compared to the likes of Assassin's Creed, Battlefield, and Call of Duty, it's probably right around the range of many Activision, Ubisoft, and EA titles outside the handful of monolithic yearly installments and Rockstar's mega marketed extravagant releases.