I had the same issue. Do you have a multi monitor setup by any chance? As soon as I deactivated my other 2 monitors and just left the center one, the game launched (in fullscreen of course).

Anyways, I'm more and more convinced that CDPR has chickened out when they discovered a couple days before the release of the game that there were installation and game breaking bugs which would cause a shitstorm in the official forums - with consequent bad press, so they closed the site down for "manteinance" - manteinance which will prolly last untill they release a patch or two which will fix the basic bugs. Then the forums will return back online all happy and smiling lol.
Unfortunately the said shitstorm has started to steer towards GOG.com. If I was the honch at CDPR I'd prolly start to fire everybody eccept the development team ;)

What game breaking bugs? I have encountered no such thing. Are are you merely trying to stir the pot, so to speak?

Hehe... I'm not sure what all this arguing is about. I am playing TW2 on my 27inch screen with a resolution 2560x1440 (dual core 3.06 and "ONLY" HD 4850 with 512mb) and the game runs smoothly as hell on high settings :)

I believe the way your machine was built matters. Not its guts (well, at least to a degree).

Truth is yes. Couldn't resist, sorry. But it's obvious I'm a lousy troll ;)

It's not just an ATI problem. I use a 2560x1440 Apple LED Cinema Display with an nVidia GTX 260. The game won't launch unless I lower my desktop resolution, which imho isn't very acceptable. Not trying to hate on the developers or anything, hopefully there will be a patch ASAP.

Ah well good to know its more common than just ATI, more chance of it being fixed sooner. I can understand all of the people in the thread saying its day 1/2/3 and we cant expect perfection, which I can agree to an extent. But larger higher res monitors are creeping in and would it have really been that hard to sit there and check each resolution in the scale. Probably would have taken a tester about 10 minutes to realise it wouldnt launch at that res.

Nope, just one 30" monitor. When I win the lottery, I'll add 2 more for an eyefinity setup + buy a new house to put the system in :P

Interesting to know that the game can't launch in a multi monitor setup either... At what resolutions are your screens running?
So this is a resolution problem, not a GPU driver issue!

A bug like this would definitely be easier to test! But it looks like CDProjekt didn't have enough money for high res LCDs in their test lab, which should be a thing of the past with Witcher 2's release, I hope ;)

Guys, I dropped my monitor resolution to 1920 x 1200 and the game launched, then played at my full 2560 x 1600.

The extra step required to launch the game is a fairly minor annoyance and I feel that it should be an easy fix for the devs to implement. I just want to get the information out there so people are aware that it's not a gpu issue just high resolution.

@Blackbeard how is the FPS?

FPS is fine, averages around 40fps for me. For my settings I have 2xAA, everything maxed out except for ubersampling, motion blur, and my shadows are set to medium. I'm also running the newest Nvidia beta drivers. Love the game so far, just annoyed at the launch procedure.

I'm seriously wondering how many people think that $1300 monitors are commonplace enough to be indignant about lack of support. I personally can't justify that when I put my system together for a paultry $900 (and I get 40+ frames on W2 ultra details)

@thachmai
i don't see why you're so fired up about such a minor issue. not to mention that one HD6970 isn't enough for a 2560x1440 resolution; at least not if you want decent FPS with high or max settings. i should know, because i also have 1xHD6970, with a phenom II X6 and 16 GB DDR3 (and have no problems playing the game). the only downside i see, is the fact that TW2 only recognizes 8 GB of ram (but i never expected it to use the whole amount in the first place).
i wouldn't play it at that resolution even if i had a 30" monitor; i would rather play it at a lower res with high visual settings, because it will look and run better.
also, Blackbeard mentioned a temporary fix for this. the truth is, this issue applies to many games, however most of them also come with a bucket load of other issues on release day, unlike TW2, which is pretty stable. one other example is DA2, which for me, always started in window mode (no matter what settings i applied). i had to access video options and activate and deactivate window mode for the game to go to full screen (every time i launched the game). the issue still applies to this day. was kind of annoying ? sure. but it wasn't that much of a big deal either.
oh, and you're pretty "quick" if you deice to waste time with reinstalling the game before trying out other graphic settings (which would've taken considerably less time).

Even if it doesn't run on that resolution TW2 seems to optimized with High-End systems in mind... a patch or an ATi driver will fix your problems, but won't fix it for the majority...

On the other hand - does suck it was made mainly on system with nVidia cards... sicne ATi is not a major competitor for nVidia - even hold the crown in last years, both in performance and sales... ignoring system with ATi cards was kinda fail move on their part.

Edit