Braid PC price rewound to $15

by Ludwig Kietzmann on Feb 18th 2009 4:13PM

Jonathan Blow has cast his reign on your Braid: The PC version of his acclaimed puzzle slash poem game will now cost $14.95, a full five cents cheaper than the Xbox Live Arcade edition. Initially priced at $20 by Stardock's Impulse distribution platform, Braid PC is due for release on March 31st. All pre-orders will reflect the new price.

Writing on his blog, Blow winds some of the controversy down, candidly explaining that the $20 tag seemed reasonable compared to similarly priced PC games, such as World of Goo and Crayon Physics Deluxe. Since the XBLA release was "nicely profitable," however, the designer has decided to shrug off the higher price -- which has proven to be "unpopular in certain areas of the Internets."

We feel kind of bad about sending those death threats now.

Source

Tags: Braid, Impulse, Jonathan-blow, PC, Stardock

Reader Comments (56)

Your rumored PS3 version will only come if JB decides to hire someone else to do the hard job of porting it to such a different architecture, a job he said he won't tackle personally.

I don't understand the furor over the common price point for indie PC games. If I weren't willing to pay $20 for Braid, I wouldn't pay $15 either. I'd pay either number, if I didn't already have it on XBLA.

Dude, do you even know what you're talking about? Do you really know how different the architecture is, or how different it is to program for the PS3 than the PC or 360? If you do, please correct me. Otherwise, I just find it funny when people act like they have a CompSci degree when all they did is read someone else's comment about how it's "so difficult to program for the PS3."

I do agree with your price comment though. Some people are saying they won't buy it at $15 but will buy it if it comes down to $10. It doesn't make sense to me. If a game is worth playing through, then it's worth buying, if it's not worth $15, it shouldn't even be worth $5.

@Levi: Blow has said any versions not on Windows, which was the game's original platform, and XBL will be done by third parties that he would pay to port because he doesn't know how, or doesn't want to spend the money, to port Braid to those platforms.

Specifically, he's said Linux's dev tools are inadequate, the WiiWare storage limit is insufficient for the art, and yes, the PS3 is too difficult a change in architecture and dev tools from the DirectX APIs. He's even railed on DirectX 11's implementation of Direct2D as a potential block to writing games for Windows 7.

Also, c0bra95 didn't say the PS3 was a hard-to-develop system. He said "porting it to such a different architecture," which is Blow's reasoning, and a very true statement - the PS3 is a very different architecture than Visual Studio and XBL/Windows.

Additionally, Blow confirmed today that he's in talks with Sony about bringing a version of Braid to PSN after significant demand for it, so the can he-can't he-will he-won't he development argument will soon be moot anyway.

That implies there was some area in which his inflated price was popular. Unless he posts to himself (which he probably does do), I somehow doubt that happened.