Braid creator Jonathan Blow’s latest puzzle game, The Witness, has only been out for one week but have sold in well over 100,000 units already.
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However, that success rate is being hampered by The Witness being top of a “certain” torrent website.
Whether he is going to do anything about this is unclear as yet, but it’s certainly a frightful way to make sure that Blow’s profits are limited. “Neither of these platforms dominates our sales; PC is very strong for us, and PSN is very strong for us”, he added. Not only did “The Witness” have a higher revenue than “Braid”, due in part to the higher price, it sold more units than Blow’s beloved first title.
The Witness is now available for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. This is great because as price goes up, naturally the number of units sold goes down.
While $5 million is a fair chunk of change, Blow said that the seven-year development cycle of The Witness meant that the game’s budget was yet to be recouped in full. By number of units, the first week of each individual platform handily beats Braid’s first week of sales.
That success has also allowed Thekla to reconsider the possibility of bringing The Witness to other platforms as well. Blow is also considering releasing the game on iOS, Android, Xbox One, and Mac OS X. “We were trying to build a attractive / interesting / intricate thing, first and foremost”, he wrote.
“I want to make clear that we did not make this game in order to make money”, he said.
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While The Witness has been getting phenomenal reviews since it launched recently, the game’s developer had noted recently that piracy was hurting the chances of there being another game from him on a similar scale. In our opinion “The Witness” is one of the most visually appealing game we have ever seen.
