To say that The Witness was long in the making is a bit of an understatement. While it was initially announced in 2009, Jonathan Blow’s follow-up to the hit indie game Braid was just released last week.
It seems that the time Blow spent carefully crafting the mysterious puzzle game was worth it, however. “It’s hard to talk about numbers without breaking NDAs, but The Witness is on track to sell more in a week than Braid sold in its first year,” Blow said in a tweet over the weekend. He later clarified that he was talking about revenue, not units sold, but it’s still an impressive feat.
Though he wouldn’t go into specifics, Blow also said that the number of copies of The Witness sold would also outpace Braid. Considering the game is currently only available on the PC and PlayStation 4 and is priced higher than many indie games, this seems enough to qualify the game as a success.
https://twitter.com/Jonathan_Blow/status/693668210499977216
This news comes right on the heels of reports of widespread piracy of The Witness. Some blamed the $40 price tag, but Braid was also heavily pirated. Blow said that despite his dislike of DRM, he might have to use it for his next game to keep the pirates at bay.
The high sales despite piracy is good news for fans of Blow’s work, as any future games depend on how well The Witness does. “we’ll be able to make the next game at a comparable budget level (maybe bigger, we’ll see!)” Blow said in a follow-up tweet.
Last month an ESRB rating surfaced for an Xbox One version of The Witness, causing many to hope the game would be coming to that platform, but Blow had previously said there are no plans to bring the game to the Xbox One. There is one more platform on the way, however, as an iOS version of the game is coming.
If you haven’t yet played The Witness and you’re curious, make sure to check out our review.
