Jerykk wrote on Jan 13, 2011, 03:44:
Agreed. If GOG wants to maintain consumer interest, they need to be releasing games on a much more consistent basis. At least twice a month. They've got RPGs pretty much covered but there are still tons of other classics that they don't yet have.

Honestly, we release games as we get them ready for release -- it takes a lot of work from our compatibility team to make sure they work on modern systems, so it's certainly not a quick "sign game, release game" cycle. When we sign with a publisher, it's for anywhere from one to, I dunno, 15 games... and we try to space things out a bit, so that there is new content coming every week. Other than the holiday season, that's been the case since we launched.

Prez - no, we have lots of games lined up. Remember, we had a big holiday promo, and the holiday season is typically quite dead in terms of web traffic. We've released a new game today, and did the same last week... and there are some big announcements coming.

NPD has also never really included Wal-Mart sales, which presumably make up a significant portion of units.

Yeah, it's probably important to note that NPD doesn't have sales data for most digital outlets. Not GOG.com, not GamersGate, and not Impulse as far as I know.

I'd say that it's more of another evolution for EUII. People who liked EUII should like it, but I'd think that anybody who hasn't played EUII but likes grand strategy should have fun, too. No bias, though!

Eh, I wouldn't blame the companies for it. The ratings board has fairly stringent guidelines about content -- if someone enters their age on the front page, they have to keep that info in a cookie, or else they'll have to ask for it on every video on the site.

This definitely flew under the radar, eh? I wasn't really aware that it was so close to release.

Smart move on Valve's part, and it does show that they care about addressing their community... but I do have to question the boycotters for actually taking the trip. It's not often you get invited to a dev studio, though, so I'm sure it would have been hard to resist.

Fredrik has always seemed like a good guy to me, so I'd chalk this up to him wanting to get the fan base excited -- as mentioned, Paradox has a very devoted fan community -- and giving them a friendly little competition.

boooooooooooooooo. I have to keep playing 09 for two more months?!

Just to be clear... this isn't another repackaging of The Witcher to get people to re-buy it. We wanted to give North American gamers the content that others around the world got... it's just taken a while to get to this point. So it's a patch for anyone who already has the game, and maybe for anyone on the fence this will be a good chance to finally pick it up.

This comment was edited on Jul 14, 2009, 17:30.

Cheaters!!!

I was having a lot of fun with EG last night... but man, there's a lot to manage. Good times, though.

Any chance we'll see bundle deals Tom?

Not sure about bundle deals yet. Not for a while, in any event.

Man, here we go ruining the abandonware movement again.

Probably worth noting that CD Projekt is not GOG. Yes they're under the same umbrella, but GOG operates on its own and doesn't make money from The Witcher, while CD Projekt RED doesn't earn any money from GOG.

And while I (and a lot of paying customers at GOG) disagree with your suggestion that we're doing something wrong by charging for these games, or that we're somehow damaging gamers by having to concede to publisher demands (i.e. royalty rates comparable or equal to those offered by other digital distributors)... we're still in start-up mode. When you're trying to get a business off the ground and striving to make it successful (which we think it is), you have to make some concessions. We can't play hardball with publishers when we're trying to get a great catalogue of games up. We can always revisit price points in the future, but for now our focus is to get as many games out there as we can for people who want to play them.

This comment was edited on Jun 11, 2009, 15:43.

We really don't have any control over pricing -- we can suggest prices, but that's about it. For sales... well, we have a certain royalty that has to be paid, we have overhead, etc... and on a $5.99 game, there's a certain price that you can't really drop below, or else you're losing money. And while it can occasionally be acceptable to lose money if it means you're gaining a lot of customers, that's really an exceptional situation.

Also... to suggest that publishers should be giving the games away instead of trying to sell them... well, it sounds great, but it's unrealistic. Right now the options to get a classic game are to get it illegally, hope that you miraculously find a copy at retail somewhere, or buy it at places like GOG or Steam or whatever. We're not going to tell a publisher, "no, we won't carry your game because we don't think $9.99 is a fair price" -- we'd let gamers decide not to buy them if they disagree with the price.

This comment was edited on Jun 11, 2009, 15:17.

They get an AP story for a damn fake protest?!? I have to do things I regret for AP stories.

Having recently finally discovered the magic of Krispy Kreme's "Hot Donuts Now" sign, I've become re-addicted to those doughy little rings. Unfortunately there aren't any Krispy Kremes up here in this part of Canadia. I'm weeping now.

Tom, how's GOG going? Meeting expectations? Exceeding them?

Any bombshell surprises coming to GOG soon?

Going well enough :). As for surprises... I can't say. But the deals that are currently in the early stages are awesome

Yeah, the 1.5 update will entirely remove the DRM.