The Witcher 2 – A Love-letter to Retail Release

Others could learn a thing or two from CD Projekt’s first console release

I’ve been eagerly waiting for The Witcher 2 to come out on Xbox since it’s PC release last year. Last night, I finally got my grubby little monster-killing hands on my copy. While I haven’t played the game long enough to make any intelligent comments on it, I do have to applaud it for one simple, but invaluable thing: presentation. The Witcher II‘s packaging is a love-letter to what retail release should be.

Picking up the game, the box felt like it weighed 80 lbs. That’s because I’ve grown used to empty plastic shells with not so much as a manual keeping the game-disk company inside. Instead, CD Projekt stuffed the sleeve with a full-page quest guide, while the case itself contains a fold-out, two-sided map, a manual, the two game disks, and a physical disk with the soundtrack.

It’s beautiful, and something I’ve come to expect to pay extra for. Yet it was all right there in the standard $60.00 box.

So thank you, CD Projekt, for remembering that opening a new game should be as magical as playing the game itself. You’ve saved Christmas, even if it is April.

Stay tuned for our first impressions and full review of the game itself.

Posted in Op Ed by Steve R Gibson on April 18, 2012