Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 9265924" data-attributes="member: 18">First is true, second is completely untrue.There's no developer in the world who could create an AAA RPG with even half the scope of Baldur's Gate 3 in "2-3 years". If you think there is one, name them, and let's have a look at how long it takes them to develop games from scratch. Historically, involving multiple studios doesn't make things faster, it just costs vastly more and makes a bigger mess.Let's look at some RPGs of the last few years, and how long it took to develop them:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Starfield - In planning/pre-production for about 4 years, in active development for 7 years.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Cyberpunk 2077 - In planning/pre-production for 4 years, in active development for 4 years.*</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Baldur's Gate 3 - In active development for 6 years.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Elden Ring - In active development for 5 years.</li> </ul>If you made a sequel in the same engine, using some of the same assets, and using the same team to make it, with broadly similar mechanics, you could probably hit 3 to 4 years. You could not hit 2-3. To put out a CRPG in 2-3 years you have to scale down to AA levels, like Owlcat or Obsidian (though Avowed may be a lower-end AAA, we shall see if that MS money has been used), and even then it's not guaranteed. And no Owlcat-style CRPG is going to do the insane numbers BG3 is doing or even a large fraction of them, as much as it may charm niche gamers. BG3 has made WotC $90m - that's nuts - even if WotC had a 5% cut of gross revenue (which would be huge), that would mean BG3 had made $1.8bn. That's not something you can replicate easily.* = But it definitely released too early - it needed at least another year of solid development and that impacted sales, especially longer-term sales. They had to spend another three years on basically fixing the game and getting it to where it should have been,</blockquote>

Verification