Wolfull’s Rumblings

Yesterday I made a post about Braid being released as one of the more ‘expensive’ Xbox Live Arcade games, and sadly a lot of gamers have had a negative reaction to the pricing.

I know from the demo that it will be a decent game, but pushing the price from the standard XBLA price of 800 points up to 1200 makes a huge psychological cost barrier for many gamers. The extra points is only equivalent to $5 bucks (the cost of a decent cup of coffee) yet for some reason a lot of gamers can’t push themselves to pay that extra amount.

On the official Braid website the creator has posted regarding this issue…

…I had to look at the low end too — I have no idea how many people will buy Braid even at $10 (it is the least popular of the Summer of Arcade games, with the least publicity).

What I had to guard against is the Space Giraffe problem. Jeff Minter priced Space Giraffe (which is the best game on XBLA) at $5 because he wanted a lot of people to be able to afford it, and really wanted to give something to the fans at a low price. Well, that bit him in the ass because he only sold 19k copies; depending on how big his testing+localization advance was, maybe he has barely made any money from Space Giraffe at all, and just lost a lot of money (due to the time spent in development). I don’t know exactly. I’m pretty sure, though, he didn’t even make back his cost of living.

If I could ensure my ability to keep making games without publisher interference, and release Braid at $0, I would do that. But I had to guard against the Space Giraffe problem. Like Space Giraffe, Braid is a non-mainstream game, very different from the other things on XBLA, without much publicity. And Jeff Minter had a built-in audience from his previous games, waiting to play SG the minute it came out; Braid doesn’t even have that.

There is a significant possibility that Braid would have been the next Psychonauts or Beyond Good and Evil (critically acclaimed but nobody played it), even at $10. If that happens at $10 then I am in debt and have to get a job and can’t make games any more. If that happens at $15, maybe I can still make games. That is the difference.

While I agree 100% with him that it’s the bottom line that counts, I believe the amount of sales lost will out weigh the increase in the profit margin. Only time will tell how it will go, but with 10/10 reviews coming in at least it will go better then most.

Nonetheless I’ll be purchasing it tomorrow when it gets released.

You can read more of his comments here