Thursday, November 15th 2018

Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales Falls Short of Initial Sales Expectations

The latest game set in the The Witcher universe has been met with slower initial sales than CD Projekt Red expected. According to the company's CEO Adam Kicinski, who spoke in the last earnings call, the slower uptake was the reason for the game's offering on Steam (it was initially launched as a GOG exclusive, but quickly made its way to the much more ubiquitous Steam store.)

As it is the latest game set in The Witcher universe, community interest and excitement surrounding the title increased the sales forecast, but perhaps the "slightly" different take on a Witcher game has turned some buyers' excitement to other pastures. Thronebreaker: the Witcher Tales is a single-player, story-driven adventure with card mechanics, a far cry from the third-person goodness of the now legendary The Witcher 3. Of course, the game now has a long time to rake in funds through continued sales, and it's unlikely the developer will leave The Witcher world behind even if it flops - which it definitely won't, at least not in the long run.
Adam Kicinski had this to say regarding sales and the decision to sell the game on the Steam store so early after release:
"The game appealed to the community, which drove up our expectations regarding sales. Unfortunately, as yet, these expectations have not been fulfilled. Still, we remain optimistic … We expect to continue to sell Thronebreaker for many years to come, even though the initial period may not have lived up to our initial expectations. The game appeared on GOG first for fairly straightforward reasons. GOG is our priority platform and we wanted to release the game there first to gamers who support us there. However, the reach of GOG is incomparably smaller than that of Steam. We know that there's a large Witcher fan community on Steam and that's why we also released the game there."

Adam Kicinski, CD Projekt Red CEO
Source: DSO Gaming
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28 Comments on Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales Falls Short of Initial Sales Expectations

#26
Valantar
FordGT90ConceptThat's like 99% of the gameplay. It's unforgiving, not "janky." Think Dark Souls but more sane.


That's not a problem unique to Witcher. It's an engine issue involving step size, clipping and limiting the player to the game world. I don't recall running into that issue in Witcher but even if it is present, it's a bug, not a gameplay feature.


The crossbow only exists for one reason in that game: make flying enemies land.


It was that too but remember the original Witcher game was a market failure because the gameplay sucked (long load times, bad translations, poor animations, etc.). They had to create the Enhanced Edition (fixing or improving just about everything) in order to make the game profitable.
Gameplay and narrative are intrinsically linked, and can't be separated no matter how much people like to try to do so. Either has the power to break immersion, make flow impossible, and ruin the feeling of play, which is why both need a minimum level of quality for the game to work (that doesn't mean they need to be equal, of course, as great gameplay can make you forget a clichéd story or a great story can make you forgive janky gameplay - but if one is shit, the other suffers for it).

The link lies in the game world - the game world is fictional, and thus a narrative element (as in: it tells us a lot about the game and its setting, and changing it would fundamentally change the feel of the game), and the world is what provides the player with the potential for agency, without which there would be no game. In other words, even on the most fundamental level you can't separate narrative/fiction from gameplay. In games, they're part of the same whole.


Personally, I found TW3 to have an engaging and beautifully rendered world, a clichéd but okay story (but with horribly boring characters), and somewhat janky gameplay. Thanks to nothing being terrible, it stayed on the "good" side, but that was in large part due to world-building and neither concrete narrative nor gameplay.
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#27
Fx
Razrback16I don't think they're milking this or anything - I mean it's been 3.5 years since the last game in the series. I just think the lower sales are two-fold - a.) it was on GOG initially and not Steam which limited the # of people who even knew it was out there and b.) the style of game isn't going to be as exciting as W2 or W3, so some people are probably turned off by that. I'll pick it up on Steam once I finish some other games I have in progress.
I firmly fall under point #2 and because of that, I have zero interest in this title.

I am all for sequels, prequels, spin-offs, inspired by, based, on etc etc titles, but the game looks like bunk.
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#28
Unregistered
FxI firmly fall under point #2 and because of that, I have zero interest in this title.

I am all for sequels, prequels, spin-offs, inspired by, based, on etc etc titles, but the game looks like bunk.
I will find out in a month or so. :) I've read it has good RPG elements and story - my expectations aren't high when it comes to graphics, etc. I know it's a card type game. I'm still hopeful that they'll do another Witcher game that's like W3, just with a new character.
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