The Witcher, arguably the best PC RPG of the past five years or so (my own personal favorite since the Baldur’s Gate games), is now in console development for a release on PS3 and Xbox 360 in Fall 2009, Atari and CD Projekt RED announced today. The Witcher: Rise of the White Wolf, as the new console edition has been dubbed, is far more than a simple port. The team at CD Projekt, with help from Widescreen Games, is rebuilding the game from the ground up with an all-new game engine and combat system specifically tailored to console gaming. The only part of the game being left untouched in the PC to console translation is the storyline.
“Console gamers don’t want to be treated like kids; they’re ready for deep story-driven games, and we think we’re delivering one of the deepest console RPGs ever with The Witcher: Rise of the White Wolf,” said Adam Kicinski, CEO of CD Projekt RED. “The only thing we’re taking directly from The Witcher is the story; everything else is being created from scratch or significantly reworked to get us to our end goal of delivering the ultimate console RPG.”
“We’re not about to dumb down our games for anyone. We want to give players the best games, regardless of platform,” added Michal Kicinski, co-founder of CD Projekt. “It’s important to us that each game plays to the platform’s strengths while treating our players with respect. That was our development philosophy with The Witcher and it’s our philosophy on all three of the games in development at CD Projekt RED, including Rise of the White Wolf. Anyone concerned that we’re going to somehow offer a shallow RPG or abandon the PC platform simply because we’re working on consoles can stop worrying.”
The Witcher has already sold over a million copies, which is pretty remarkable for a PC game in today’s age of piracy. The game deserves all the success its achieved thus far and more, and hopefully with a more mainstream console release CD Projekt can rack up even more sales and be properly rewarded for their excellent work. I just hope they get the console versions right the first time around, unlike the PC version which needed an enhanced edition a year after its original release to get it polished up to the quality it should’ve been in the first place.
The Witcher: Rise of the White Wolf Announced [The Witcher Official Website]
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I think this is great news – and am annoyed at how many PC folks I see whining about it! I mean, there have been so many console -> PC ports (KotOR, Mass Effect, Jade Empire, etc) that why should they NOT do this?
Seriously, why would any PC gamer be upset about this? It doesn’t affect them in any way. The game has already seen two releases on PC, and now it’s getting remade for consoles so even more people can see how brilliant it is. How can that be anything but a good thing!? It’s not as if the console version is some brand new storyline that the PC audience won’t get.
I know … I know …
It has created a nice counter-argument, and I think that some folks have just shown that they are blindly anti-console for no good reason.
That’s just silly fanboy behavior I suppose. Same type of people who got all pissy about FFXIII losing PS3 exclusivity.