Steel_Wind, the Dragonlance Adventures project lead, has made a long post (http://vnboards.ign.com/site_news/b23044/96956379/p2) in the VN Boards thread (http://vnboards.ign.com/site_news/b23044/96956379/p1) inspired by our last news about Atari and NWN1 (http://www.sorcerers.net/index.php#001803). He explains what Atari gained from Digital Distribution and denies knowing any exact figures. Here's a snip:

The Premium Mods principally funded the Live Team's support of NWN1. So in that sense, Atari paid nothing for further support of NWN. It was all generated in house at BioWare from premium mod sales.

In terms of the situation right now and under the prior plan for this summer - technically Atari would have made money off of premium mods in the sense of a reduction of a liability on their accounts payable - but in terms of cashflow? My analysis says: Nothing. Zip. Nada.

He also reiterates that Atari is indeed in very serious trouble (not like this is something new to us). It even looks like the secured creditors are becoming uneasy, which means some real problems. Here's more:

As I have been saying repeatedly for a good while now, Atari is in a financial crisis and appears to be unable to meet all of its liabilities as they become due. Their principal line of credit has been cancelled and their secured lenders are turning hostile (When the secured creditors are girding for battle - you know it's bad).

At the same time, many of their unsecured creditors are going unpaid. This means they have not paid most of their developers the royalties owing to them on published skus Atari has sold in previous quarters. "Most", presumably, includes a failure to pay BioWare royalties on retail product from the latter part of 2005.

Next, he explains why Atari gets no cash out of Digital Distribution or, basically, from BioWare, which is because Atari isn't paying bills on time. Here:

Accordingly, any money which would be owed to Atari from premium mod sales would most likely be offset by BioWare against monies Atari owes to BioWare. Remember - BioWare controls the BioWare store and they get the money first; they ain't sending Atari a cheque when Atari is not returning the favor. Atari would have been effectively forced to pay one of their accounts payable by way of set-off. So, in that sense, a liability is reduced on Atari's balance sheet - but Atari gets no cashflow out of it because Atari just isn't paying their bills as they should.

And, according to him, it also looks like NWN2 isn't exactly going to be a finished product upon release, which is likely not be fixed post-release, either:

That "whatever it is we have to do, we do" approach includes, imo, forcing NWN2 to ship in September whether it's ready or not - and I expect will also probably include Atari refusing to pay for bug fixes if they are costly to fix post-ship. Obsidian has to be expecting they will get sweet FA in terms of royalties from Atari, given its present state, too.

Not paying royalties; no money to pay for bug-fixes; secured creditors eyeing them narrowly; Stock in the penny range and about to be de-listed on August 30.

You don't need to be able to read the entrails of sheep to know where this is going.

Put that all together and there is every reason - *every reason* - to expect that NWN2 will turn out to be ToEE all over again despite Obsidian's best efforts. The stench in the air is palpable.

Looks like a series of bad decisions hitting back and leading to even worse decisions... and even more trouble. And the stock is falling. We'll see in September.

[ May 27, 2006, 23:55: Message edited by: Taluntain ]

I knew Atari wasn't doing well financially, but I hadn't realised things were so bad. I feel bad for the Obsidian people - having the company suffer the same fate as Troika at the hand of the same distributor and for similar reasons seems like too much irony.

HI :)

I too, fear, for the Obsidian's fate - as Atari seems to be pushing NWN2 out in stores before it is finished.

I will hope, however, that people will buy NWN2 when it comes out in sept. as the good folks from Obsidian should not have to suffer any financial troubles - because of Atari's actions.

bye

Obsidian is working on Knights of the Old Republic 3 and probably also some other games, according to my information, so Atari going down won't be a killing blow by any means, even if it might be a strong kick on the rear. ;)

You have to keep in mind that NWN1 was also a rushed product. I "beta" tested it (this was shortly before the release), and the general consensus among the majority of the beta testers was that the game should not be released in the state it was in. We've found dozens of bugs and problems in a matter of days.

NWN1 shipped on time Atari set anyway, with all of the bugs we've reported still present. So if the same happens with NWN2, it won't be anything new.

The problem is support in the months and years after the release. BioWare has been patching NWN1 for 4 years, and there are still dozens of known bugs that haven't been fixed at all, or only half way. But most of them are relatively minor, and the game overall, with the latest patch, probably has far less bugs left than most other PC games released at this point.

But with NWN2, I doubt that Atari is going to pay for patches to fix anything but the most dire of bugs - just as with ToEE. 3 patches released for ToEE have barely brought it to a playable state. Everything beyond that is still being fixed by the Circle of Eight modding team.

I fear that the situation with NWN2 is going to be the same, and that the community will have to make its own fixes. Unfortunately, given that NWN2 will be a much more complex (and multiplayer) title, the bugs that the community will be able to fix will most likely only be minor. And you can imagine the confusion in the community if patches will start coming from random modding groups, which will be fixing things their own way, inevitably making multiplayer a mess if people will be playing with different unofficial fixes.

Or worse - the game will remain buggy forever, because no official patches will be coming, and tinkering with fixes will be too complex or impossible due to encrypted files.

BioWare has been patching NWN1 for so long because they had long-term plans for it. 2 expansions, as well as premium modules. Once Obsidian is done with NWN2, unless they go the way of Oblivion's payable mods, the only fixes we're likely to see will probably come with the inevitable NWN2 expansion(s), apart from maybe one or two patches to fix the biggest bugs.