Andromeda cost 40 million, TW3 cost 32 million... What went wrong?

The witcher 3 was made for five dollars by a handful of slavs in a garage using only one pc.

I know for a fact that Guerilla developped chunks of Horizon Zero Dawn in China for precisely the reason of lower costs.

Talented programmers in Eastern Europe make a lot more money than not so talented programmers in Eastern Europe. They make a really good living in Eastern Europe. But compared to Western developpers they make a lot less.

I know quite a few people btw that work in Poland and Bulgaria. They do simple call center jobs there, for Dutch companies. They earn a Dutch minimum wage, or slightly above. But they can live really comfortable lives in those countries, because the Dutch minimum wage is more than the average Polish or Bulgarian person wage. They pay a lot less money for food, rent and other basis living expenses too, making their minimum Dutch wage in Poland or Bulgaria a really good salary.

White knights?

So Bioware is a female being harassed by thirsty men and we're trying to save her?

I got a 10€ discount on top of that, given I owned both TW1 &2 on GOG, so yup best gaming + pre-ordering experience in the last 20 years. 

Remeber CDPR had to finish their in-house RED Engine 2.0 during the development of TW3?  BW has DICE's frostbite, EA's marketing and distribution channel, more development time, larger fanbase yet complaining... 

Are you comparing call center jobs with AAA development?

I will repeat myself, cost of living has nothing to do with it. Cost of living just means that 5k$ a month in Eastern Europe is a godly amount compared to what your average bloke is doing. It doesn't mean software developers work for less, it means they're considered pretty rich by most.

I have a friend who works in a call center for 1k euro a month, I also have a friend who is a software developer with many years of experience, that makes 5 times that and that's not even close to what the top guys are making.

I can't speak for China, but quality software development here is definitely not cheap. And if it was feasible, major publishers already would have opened a bunch of studios to hire these skilled software engineers for cheap.

such salt... here have a Witcher Screenshot 

K.

So is MEA. 

Witcher 3 does not use the frostbite engine, Witcher 3 follows an established lore that has had years worth of books and two previous games behind it, and Geralt is already a well established character, along with Yen, Triss, etc. 

While the Frostbite engine was used by the Dragon Age team, we have no way of knowing how many resources were 'transferable', so to speak. 

Andromeda has established lore, but the original trilogy focused very much on the Reapers/Protheans, which Bioware are obviously trying to move away from, so while the base (the basic tech, species, etc.) is the same as the original trilogy, you could almost consider Andromeda a new IP on its own. 

It's fine to say Bioware could've done this and that better, and yes, it's fine to say Witcher 3 handled certain aspects better (side quests for example), but trying to put Witcher 3 on this untouchable pedestal which Bioware should've CLEARLY been able to reach is not the answer when the playing field is not the same.

What went wrong? A large proportion of the "fan base" are arseholes.