It still doesn't make sense as you are making several questionable assumptions.
The first is that DOS 2 was selling for 59.99 on all platforms for all six years, which is easily debunked as there are sales, games come down in price if your name is not Nintendo, and on the Switch it was 49.99 and IpadOS it sold for 24.99 on their releases. Mac App store 44.99 and by that release there was a sale for 29.24 on Steam. https://www.macrumors.com/2019/01/31/divinity-original-sin-2-definitive-edition-for-mac/
The second is, again, that it would sell more at the 59.99 price point on each successive platform release than it did on PC each following year. The price point we can already dismiss due to the former argument and the second is highly unlikely because by your own source, it sold over 10% of it's total sales in the first two months. For reference, you are claiming DOS 2 made almost as much for Larian Studios as The Witcher 3 did for CD Projekct the year after its release, EACH YEAR. https://www.cdprojekt.com/en/investors/financial-summary-report/ PLN to Dollar is 132 mill in 2016 following The Witcher 3 May 2015 release. And that game sold roughly 50 million copies in 5 years which is 2.5 million more each year than DOS 2's total estimated sales of it's lifetime.
Secondly, which number is it exactly? 450 mil or 600 mil? And no source for that warchest of 400 mil?
I am not sure why you don't see a good reason for avoiding Starfield. Games and movies released too close to other ones can hurt their sales; see the Honor Among Thieves DnD movie getting squished in the box office by the Mario movie. Blizzard's Overwatch 1 open beta singehandedly merc'd Battleborn. This is proven and as you said, they worked hard to meet the date as is already. Why not stick with the date they originally had? That wouldn't have caught review outlets with their pants down as it was confirmed that review copies were sent late in relation to the new launch date, preventing reviews or preloads until release.
Sure, you are welcome to speculate, that is what this is about.
- You mentioned the review situation a few times. I always thought the reason was obvious for doing that. If they are being forced to release an unfinished build, and they know Act 3 is where the holes are then slowing down the reviewers is a strategy for getting ahead of that. Seems to have worked but I don't know why it's relevant, I don't think anyone here is arguing that Act 3 isn't unfinished.
- I don't have data on Starfields demographics or Bg3's demographics - but that is where I would start to make a point that Starfield was a threat to the release of BG3. I am betting the marketing team at Larian would know if this was the case. I only saw Starfield as the last possible contender for GOTY based on multi-platform, long development time, huge resource pool and a company that had made games that won GOTY in the past.
- One of the things I am trying to get at here is showing there was motive, and leverage for Hasbro to be the one to insist on the accelerated release date and that Larian may not be happy with the relationship between them or at least the licensing agreement.
- At this point whether we see another FR game from Larian is going to depend on Chris Cocks being able to sit down with Larian and work out a better agreement.
- The other thing I was trying to show is that Larian has a lot of leverage right now. Hasbro needs Larian more than the reverse. This is GOOD news because it could result in the kind of changes that would allow Larian to develop the platform along the pathways they want. A licensing agreement is a contract that can contain all kinds of restrictions when it comes to development of the property. Larian really wanted that IP and I think that put Hasbro in a superior negotiating position when they first made the agreement.
- Hasbro has clearly struggled to monetize the D&D IP much to their frustration. Explains a lot about how TSR behaved.
