Braid: tearing up Metacritic; one of the top XBLA launches

Jonathan Blow's Braid is drowning in critical acclaim, just now hitting an average of 93 on Metacritic and becoming the 8th highest-rated Xbox 360 game on the console. The official Braid Blog takes the opportunity to point out that indie developers don't need to make cheap PopCap clones to be successful; if they do something different, their work can be recognized. Yeah? Well, this industry is all about sales so ... how's the game selling on XBLA?

Blow cites VGChartz's ballpark figure of 28.5k copies sold and estimates that the number "seems to be in the right neighborhood" as of last Saturday. Does that mean his struggle with the game's pricing has paid off in a big way? Apparently not. Blow contends that Braid will need to sell a lot more to be profitable but "things are looking promising now." We'll say! Let's put that estimate up against the top XBLA launch figures in a thoroughly unscientific breakdown*:

Braid, ~28.5k units
Rez HD, 25k units
Ikaruga, 22.5k units
Penny Arcade Adventures Episode 1, 16.5k units
N+, 13k units

*(Figures represent sales gathered from the first three days of availability. Blow's ballpark figure was posted on Saturday, three days after Braid's Wednesday launch).

Reader Comments (62)

Braidstiq.

I'm not buying braid b/c Blow sounds like an arrogant son of a @$&!? . Besides I'd beat it, get the achievements then delete it. I kind of don't tthink it's worth it to buy a game with no replay value, and yes I know it's a masterpiece bla bla bla blaaaa blaa

I really wish Braid was 800 points. Because then I would be playing it. Call me what you will, but no matter how good the game is, it has pretty much no replay value and I'm not going to pay $15 for a game with no replay value. I'm not mad at Jonathan Blow, I'm mad at Microsoft for so obviously using his game as a guinea pig to see how far they can push the pricing envelope and gouge 360 owners.

Go to Target. They have MS point cards on sale. $20 worth of points for $15. Oops, Braid's now $10. There goes the price argument.

Yeah, I actually did go to Target and pick up a few of those cards this weekend. But say I buy Braid and then a month from now I want to buy something else but I'm 400 points short. How much are those extra 400 points going to cost me? $5.

I'm really getting tired of this Blow guy whining about how he can't make any money. Even if he just makes $1 off each Braid, he's made over $25,000. STFU

Jesus, what is up with this game and bringing out the retard in people.
If you had to spend 200,000 dollars on something to sell it, you don't profit out of selling it 20,000 times with a profit of 5 dollar each. You spent 4 years of your life and lost 100,000 dollars out of the deal. That time alone means even if he profited 100,000 dollars at the end only made 25,000 dollars a year (minus taxes). Which means, he's making far less than the under-payed teachers of the usa. And for what? For sacrificing himself to make something wonderful.
Consumers and their entitlement. Yeah, Jonathon Blow owes you all something for nothing. He doesn't deserve to profit off of things that he makes. Who does he think he is!?

@Jfk: Oh, yes, Jonathan Blow, what a hero, what a martyr! Sacrificing himself to deliver a great game to us poor starved consumers. If he was such a martyr, you think he'd be trumpeting the fact that he's in debt all the time?

If he truly wanted to make this game and didn't care about profit, he wouldn't be talking about that part. And if he DOES care about profit (which makes sense) and he is still in debt even after all these sales, then he planned everything poorly financially from the beginning.

I don't expect something for nothing, but he seems to expect a lot from consumers for what he delivered.

Its all bullshit thought, MS doesnt even tell the developer how many games are sold on xbla. they are just making numbers out of their ass

So - With a show of hands;

Who's in the "I bought it, played it, loved it but now I just feel soooo dirty" camp?

I felt dirty after buying a wii for 250 bucks and playing it for a week. Can't say I feel bad buying one of the best games I've played in years for a mere 15 freggin bucks.

My God; are these the sorts of sales figures that XBL arcade games can hope for? That's appalling. They get about 30% of the profits, so that's roughly $5 per copy. Add that up and that's 150K. How long did it take, and how many people in the team? That's not a particularly huge hourly rate I imagine. Remember tax needs to come off that.

Braid: tearing up Metacritic; one of the top XBLA launches

Reader Comments (62)

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