AAA game development has been very disappointing in the past 12 months. There have been many hugely expensive and very well publicised games that have failed to work as intended upon launch - Halo: Master Chief Collection, Assassin's Creed Unity, Batman Arkham Knight among others - there have been games delayed for months at a time and games that fleece the audience with DLC - we're looking at you Evolve - and yet all of this happens so often, it almost feels par for the course.
And yet The Witcher III stands along as a shining example of how AAA games can be made and released without the usual issues. Yes it had a few problems around launch, but not many. It took four years to make, giving CD Projekt Red time to perfect it, rather than rushing for an annual release.
It was also single player only, not tacking on multiplayer because people asked for it or it was felt to be a nice cash grab. This gives it longevity and ensures it can be played years from now when servers are shut down and people move on to other things.
If you bought it through GoG too, it has no DRM and the DLC has been mostly free, with a couple of big expansions that add more content than most games come with in the first place.
To show their support, fans responded in a huge way, buying over six million copies of the game so far. Ok so it's not GTA V's 50 million+, but this is an RPG, based on Eastern European books by a Polish developer.
CDPR does everything right and people reward it, but it feels like a port in the storm of DLC and botched AAA launches. Long may it continue to be so.
