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The Witcher 3 dev: The market is afraid of badly-polished games
When CD Projekt RED delayed The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt to May 19, 2015 earlier this week, the developer said it saw "many details that need to be corrected" in the game before it was ready to launch. The group's President and Joint CEO Adam Kicinski added to that statement, telling Polish financial journalists (as translated by Eurogamer) that the studio's fans "took our decision very well. [The] market is afraid of badly polished games on next-gen platforms." While Kicinski did not name any games or developers in particular, games such as Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed: Unity, Sony's DriveClub and Microsoft's Halo: The Master Chief Collection encountered varying, severe issues at their respective launches on PS4 and Xbox One this year. The CD Projekt head also said the developer wants "to disarm the opinion that [The Witcher 3] doesn't exist. It will be closed by the end of the year in line with the schedule." Kicinski said there are "a lot of small errors" in the game, which are "the only reason behind the delay," and that the company doesn't want to "release the game with bugs that undermine the gameplay." CD Projekt admitted it "set the release date too hastily" when it aimed for February 2015, which itself was a delay from The Witcher 3's previous 2014 launch window. [Image: WBIE]
Namco Bandai files suit over Witcher 2's European publishing
Okay, this is going to get confusing. Namco Bandai is suing Optimus SA, parent company of CD Projekt Red, over the European console publishing rights for The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings. It claims that Optimus failed to meet its commitment with Namco Bandai when it gave THQ the rights to distribute the Xbox version of the game in some parts of Europe. What does Namco Bandai have to do with The Witcher? Namco Bandai actually owns the European distribution business of Atari (who will publish the console release in North America, and who published the PC version in Europe), after purchasing it in 2009. For its part, Optimus says that it only signed a distribution deal with N amco for the PC version, and had its choice of distributor for the console release. In addition, Namco Bandai claims CD Projekt Red violated its agreement when it spontaneously removed DRM from all versions of The Witcher 2. As a result, Namco is withholding payment of around €1.255 million ($1.8 million) -- a threat to which Optimus president Adam Kicinski blithely responded (as translated by Google): "Our liquidity situation is very good. Therefore, the lack of a few million does not have any leverage on current activities. Withholding of payments means only that for some time, our partner will have to give us the money with interest." He added that he was confident the case would be settled before it went to court -- or, if not, Optimus will win the case "and then the loser will pay for our lawyers." Wow.
