After their bad experience with jowood they have a bad taste in their mouth about publishers...

Although their next game is rumoured to be Risen 3, should they crowd fund the next gothic and do it the way they want to do it - not rushed and true to the franchise? Wishful thinking but probably their best bet... :P

The quality of PB's work has been all over the place (and even on their games that were ultimately very good they tended to be very buggy to start with), so I'm not sure fans would have enough confidence in them to give them a significant amount of money up front.

Why Gothic 5? There is no 4th Gothic.
But I think, they will never produce a new Gothic. To high expectations from hard-core-fans.

Agree; besides that, it is just too difficult to keep coming up with good sequels even without such high expectations. Maybe out of pure greed. They'd do better at coming up with a similar but different bunch of characters and a new story line and setting.

I think there was a Gothic IV, though - just not by PB and not at all well received.
http://www.arcania-game.com/

Yeah i won't consider Arcania a gothic game either but technically speaking it was branded as a 4th instalment. If shows when a game sequel is not maybe by the original dev... i dunno if they branded it as sequel either but point is it shows it's not PB's work...

You got a point about the expectations tho... although if they try to go back to their roots... maybe a HD re-release of gothic 1 and 2? With bonus content and buncha new good stuff in the gothic spirit? That might be cool. Will keep old fans pleased and will lure many new young ones as well :P

PB holding the rights of "gothic", "xardas" and other brands. There was an agreement with jowood about the using of this brand for a limited time. There is no need to get the rights back, because they never lost the rights.

about arcania: In early development it was called "Gothic4: arcania". On releas it was named "arcania: a gothic tale".
Now it will only named "arcania" (published by "new jowood" nordic games).
Once again: There is no "Gothic 4"

Barring a Risen 3 happening I'd expect Piranha Bytes to use a new name for their next game, probably with various allusions to the previous games.

It would be interesting to have a game set in the Unknown Land referred to in Gothic 3. That would allow a lot of freedom while giving the option of returning to the Gothic world in a later game. The precise order was Gothic 4: Genesis → Gothic 4: Arcania → Arcania: A Gothic Tale → Arcania: Gothic 4 (the release name)... and now they've renamed it post-release to Arcania. That's a lot of changes. :)

Answers on all your questions ----> http://www.worldofgames.ro/sascha-henrichs-interview/

Thanks for the link, very interesting.

I'm afraid that is wishful thinking. Even the official website calls it Gothic 4. It IS Gothic 4, whether we liked it or not. It may have been a poor use of the license, and considered non-canon by PB, but it is game 4 in the series nonetheless.

Not going to hold my breath on it to many people would want it to be like Gothic 1&2 and would be fearful of screwing up and losing everything they have, if however a gothic 4 was to be made it should be a prequel to Gothic 1 about the war and explore the kingdom during its time of crisis.

Oh my... the expectations would be so damn high.
Diablo III? GTA V? Duke Nukem Forever?
Jokes compared to the amount of hype a new game would produce. Man, fans would commit suicide if it is not exactly this (probably awful) Gothic-II-NotR-with-a-new-stroy. They just cannot succeed, they have to piss of some of the old fans, like me, or make a game no one besides them would like to play (although I am of course just guessing here).

So, I personally would not like to see a Gothic IV, or Gothic V, or Gothic what-the-hell-do-I-care-for-the-name, but rather something completely different with the same potential the games back then had (perhaps without the bugs).
Sadly, this most likely will not happen. I am going to enjoy the games we already have.

And yes, I enjoyed Risen.

I wouldn't mind a new Gothic game. My first Gothic game was Gothic 3 and I really enjoyed it for the most part, and recently I've also purchased and played Gothic 1 and Gothic 2. I haven't played much of Gothic 2 yet, but Gothic 1 is really clunky and for lack of a better phrase "it gets in it's own way". I've also played Risen and while I can sort of understand the hype, ultimately I found it boring and lost interest in it around Chapter 2 I believe. I know most "true Gothic fans" don't really like Gothic 3, but so far it's my favorite Gothic and I would definitely be up for a new Gothic game if it was a less buggy/glitchy spiritual sequel to Gothic 3's overall style (well, hopefully with less fetch/escort quests).

I don't think that they are the only owners of the "gothic" games anymore :/