The Cost of Braid

[teljam]

I downloaded the demo of this excellent game. The game is really unique, and seems worthy of the high praise being published all over the internets. I still haven't bought it yet though - 1200 Microsoft Space Dollars seems a lot, considering some of the great games that exist at the 800 price point.

The developer - Jonathan Blow has made some interesting comments in his blog, which give an interesting insight into just how much it takes to make some money making a quality game title as a lone developer.

Specifically, he says that - "It’s just economy of scale; if only 60,000 people buy a game, and it costs $10, not enough money ends up in the developer’s hands to justify anything but making shovelware."

So I thought - ok, lets look at that - In NZ$ 1200 Microsoft points is approximately $19.80 - and @ 60,000 sales = $1,188,000.

Now I would have automatically bought this game for 800 points, as that to me represents the premium XBLA game price point. And - I'm going to assume if would buy it for 800 points, so would heaps of others - Let's say twice the amount of people would have bought this top rated XBLA arcade title.

So again in NZ$ 800 Microsoft points is approximately $13.20 - and @ 120,000 sales = $1,584,000.

Don't get me wrong, Braid is an awesome game, and probably worth every one of the 1200 points, but by differentiating himself away from the pack of other good games which cost 800 points, I think is a risk - I wonder just how much more Mr Blow would have made if he priced it in line with the accepted price point. Like he said "It's just economy of scale..."