I noticed it in the PSN store. Hadn't bothered downloading it yet though, as I imagine it'll quickly become "pay to win" as I'm guessing it'll have micro transactions to get more/good cards.
I haven't played it yet because these card games aren't one of my favorite genres. I did play quite a bit of Hearthstone and had a good time with it though. Since Hearthstone is the most popular video game in this genre I would hope that CD Projekt is going to follow their example. Hearthstone doled out gold fast enough that I could buy a new card pack basically every other time I played if I did the daily challenges without spending any real money.
What I preferred to do was use my gold to enter the arena instead of buying card packs. A card pack is 100 gold while entering the arena is 150 gold. When you enter the arena you stay there until you lose 3 games. You are guaranteed a card pack every time you enter the arena but you also get rewards for every game you win before you get your 3 losses and are kicked out. These rewards are typically more cards or crafting materials to make a card. You are basically betting on your skills and if you are able to win a few games you will end up with quite a bit more for your gold. Even if you lose the first 3 games you still get a card pack. You just lost more gold than you would have if you just bought a pack.
Hearthstone never felt pay to win to me even as someone who never spent any money on the game. Sure, other players can have significantly more cards than me by purchasing them for $3.00 per pack or entering the the arena for $2.00 per run instead of using the in game gold but I got card packs often enough that I always felt like I could compete without having to spend money.
I doubt they're looking to compete directly with them. I don't know enough about HS vs Gwent to note how they are different, but I'm guessing Gwent will be different enough to provide a separate experience than what HS delivers.
I won't be playing either way because if I'm getting into a CDP game its going to be the Witcher 3. I'm going to try and get into that this summer.
They are completely different games. Gwent is not just a rip off of Hearthstone even though it easily could have been considering that it was designed as a mini game inside a huge open world game that many players will completely ignore. While they are very different games they are both card collecting battle games. I'd say that there is going to be some pretty significant overlap in the player base for both of these games because it's a pretty niche genre.
Hearthstone was PC only at first and it was still a successful product this way but the popularity really blew up when they ported the full game to iOS and Android. I personally played Hearthstone almost exclusively on my iPad while I was watching a football or baseball game.
The GOG Galaxy client is good but I'm pretty certain it's on a fraction of the number of PCs that Battle.net is on. The console versions of the game will help but this is going to be a harder sell than Hearthstone is simply because everyone who plays Diablo, Starcraft, Wold of Warcraft, Heroes of the Storm, and Overwatch isn't going to see the Gwent icon every day when they play one of those other games. Getting featured on the iOS and Android stores would put Gwent in front of millions of people who have never heard of GOG.
