Soylent: It's about the MONEY, that's why. Not to sound like a troll or conspiracy theorist, but look at the numbers.
Console games outsell PC games by a large margin.
Console games have a much larger market.
Console games are much more difficult to pirate.
Creating two versions of the same game is expensive and time consuming.

Don't get me wrong, I do agree with you that lately games are created first for console, second for PC. I can add to your list too- no native DIrectX 11 (the Xbox is DX9), the pop-up screen to select weapons and magic, the weird keyboard and mouse mappings...

But if you were a developer, and you're going to write a new game engine, why limit yourself to a small market of PC gamers? Why not make it available to the hundreds of millions of console gamers as well?
Unfortunately for PC gamers, the PC has far passed the current generation consoles in performance, so we're stuck with whatever the console can support. This will change once the next generation of consoles comes out, but even then, those will last another 10+ years and the PC will quickly pass that generation of consoles as well.

MADPADDY: Console games only outsell pc games in retail stores they have only just started to take PC digital sales into account and the figures where a shock,if you Google PC digital sales figures or something similar you will find it.The PC market is actually VERY much alive and kicking they have just moved from retail to sitting in there comfy home and buying them online.

Coflash: Compare all the Witcher 1 screens, to the third of TW2 here.

http://steamcommunity.com/id/coflash/screenshots/

He's very different, as I said, after 40 or so hours of TW1 it is immediately obvious.Coflash: It is on hard, and I did play it, want my save game for both TW1 and 2?

How is it trolling? It's all based on fact, it's not as if coming here I didn't expect to face people such as yourself, but show me where I've trolled exactly when it's all based on evidence even you can see.

Teknoir: Make no mistake, Witcher 2 is a console game on PC.
I do not say this in a derogatory way. It just follows that style of game-making.
There is nothing wrong with that.
The OP is correct on his statements except for this part I quoted above.

Witcher 1 has an incredibly weak skeleton of a combat system.
The three styles are implemented in the worst way possible.
They are so binary that they cannot add any depth.
Witcher 2 on the other hand specifially ADDS depth in the shape of movement and physicality to combat gameplay.
Witcher 2 is head and shoulders above Witcher 1 when the combat systems are compared.

Witcher 2 could have improved its combat further but the lack of CDP Red's console experience shows in the form of many small flaws scattered across the combat system.
Witcher 2, as a whole, is still a great game and the combat system is immensely better designed than the "I use 4 buttons to launch 3 attacks" Pavlov Dog of Witcher 1.

I cannot say anything against personal preference one might have to one school of game style, however one cannot objectively deny the massive improvement CDP Red made to the combat gameplay.

MADPADDY: Sure it's about money, they're a company. But let's take that out of the equation for a second and think of developers as already rich people who love making games. If you made a game solely for that reason, wouldn't your priority still be to reach as many people as possible? If, and I don't think TW2 in its current state is one, they made a console port that doesn't betray THEIR vision of the game, in what single fucking way is that a bad thing?


I just don't see how this became demonized so badly. How multiplatform is automatically associated with "selling out". If I made a product, my first priority would be to reach as many people as possible. Money is great, but if you want to amass lots of it you don't go into game development, there's far more profitable fields you can be in as a programmer / artist / animator / designer. No, people who are in the industry love games, do the best they can and want as many people as possible to see their game. And people who don't consider those intentions need to step into the real world... although I do believe that it's mostly the youngins screaming into their pillows and hammering away at forums. It's the vocal minority anyway, so, whatever.


(This isn't necessarily directed at you specifically, but you provided a good point of entry.)

Soylent: All good points. Most developers love games and don't necessarily do it just for the money.

However... publishers, on the other hand, love money. They sell, and that's it. That's why they are publishers, not developers. In this case, Atari dictates where the game is sold, when, for how much, and whether it's going to be sold at all.

The only situation where a publisher does not control the development of the game is if the company publishes its own games. If CDProjekt had only used GOG (their own company), we would certainly see the price of the game higher, and available in fewer locations and formats. There wouldn't even be a retail box. That's why they needed Atari or Steam.

cloud8521: they are the publishers. Atari only does the North american release.

Soylent: Who publishes the retail box in Europe or Australia?

cloud8521: they are the publishers. Atari only does the North american release.

Coflash: Why Geralt now looks like any other generic next-gen hero character? His odd looks were refreshing, does he *really* need to be more handsome to appeal to the 10 - 15 year olds this game will inevitibly try to satisfy? He's gone from looking european to an american with the squarest of jaws.

cloud8521: CDproject red does

Soylent: I'd be interested in seeing sales figures (if they ever release them) comparing NA and EU sales. Then we could see which market they were aiming for.

One thing is for certain, I haven't seen any advertisements near me, in the US. I regularly saw Dragon Age 2 and Portal 2 ads on billboards and TV, but nothing about the Witcher.
That is Atari's fail. Clearly they don't see any need to invest in advertising here.