The future is uncertain for game developer Jonathan Blow as his latest venture, Braid: Anniversary Edition, failed to meet goals. He never actually reveals its sales, but does mention it’s sold like “dogsh*t.”
Blow streams on Twitch quite a bit and has mentioned the sales performance of the redone version. Based on a video from Blow Fan (via VGC), which is a compilation of his takes on the game’s sales performance from the first mention of it mere days after its release, it’s clear the game has not sold like he expected it to.
Blow started off optimistic just days after release saying it was too early to say how sales are going before turning around a few months later in July to assert the game’s sales have been horrible and that the console versions of the game have been at a standstill, with Steam being the only platform that’s still selling.
He finally says the most damning thing about the game’s sales 74 days after launch; Thekla Inc. can’t afford to pay people when asked about how many of his devs are using his coding language, Jai.
It certainly feels like Blow’s studio is in shambles thanks to the not-so-great launch of Braid: Anniversary Edition. It’s not like this was a straight port, it added 40 new levels and a commentary track that’s over 15 hours.
Braid, as a whole, started life in 2008 as an indie platformer on the Xbox Live Arcade, marked as one of those big indies, it just made sense to remaster the game and bring it to a modern audience, but clearly people weren’t as charmed by the game as Blow had hoped people would be. We suspect this might be due to general different audiences, whereas back in 2008, competition for indie platformers was slim, now it’s a pretty big genre with interesting twists and turns.
Braid: Anniversary Edition is available on PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC.
