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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 8210187" data-attributes="member: 18">Er yeah no.This shows a serious misunderstanding of the economics involved, sorry.An AAA CRPG takes $40-100m to develop (Mass Effect 1/2/3/A all were around $40m, Skyrim/FO4 were around $100m, for example - Witcher 3 was $32-40m for the actual development, but made in Poland, if made in the US would have been about double that). And if it sells well, it'll make a number of times that. No TT RPG that isn't D&D makes anywhere near that much, no does it cost anywhere near that much to develop. D&D itself didn't make anything like that sort of money until very recently.The idea that they're creating an even $40m budget CRPG to launch a TT RPG which is unlikely to make $40m over it's entire lifespan, even if  it sells for decades, is fundamentally not tenable. It would be the tail wagging the dog.If they weren't making an AAA game, I think what you are saying could be plausible. Spending say, $5m on an "indie"-type game to essentially promote and give a strong aesthetic to a new TT RPG could make sense for a company like WotC. But they've explicitly and repeatedly specified AAA. And you can't make an AAA RPG in the US/Canada/Western Europe (and the studio is in Austin, Texas) for less than $40m in 2021 - you probably can't even make it for that little at all - the last AAA CRPG I heard of having a budget that low released in 2017.There absolutely is evidence that WotC, long-term, want to go digital. The evidence is extremely clear - not only have they explicitly rebranded to include digital (this announcement), but they have two AAA development studios now. To fund those AAA development studios, they're going need tens of millions, and it'll take years before they produce games, where they'll just be a drag to the tune of $10m+ per studio per year. That's a gigantic investment. It may be more than has ever been invested in D&D (almost certainly more than has been invested in any single edition of D&D). D&D is has been so low-priority for Hasbro/WotC that they haven't even been willing to splurge on artists (which is a relatively low investment), where they will for MtG. Maybe that's also changing - I hope so, maybe D&D will get more investment as a TT game too.But the idea that they're spending $40m+ on AAA CRPG which will take multiple years to launch (they're still at the point where they have about 15% as many people as they'll need to actually make the game, and they were formed like a year or more ago, pre-pandemic), just to launch what, a sci-fi alternative to D&D, which will, if TT RPG history is anything to go by, be at most a moderate success in no way comparable to D&D? Completely backwards.</blockquote>

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