Briefly: Jonathan Blow’s next puzzle game, The Witness, arrives January 26, and he’s announced it will cost you $US40 ($58) on PS4 and PC. While a game’s pricing is not usually noteworthy — and Blow has been raising expectations on The Witness for a while now — I suspect this may come as a surprise for some people. Heads up!
Comments
15 responses to “The Witness Will Cost You $58”
That seems expensive for a walk em up type game
Yeah nah!
Will buy it once it inevitably drops in price to say….$20
Will play this eventually for sure, but not likely on launch. Can’t wait to mosey around that island. 🙂
Considering the amount of time this game has taken to develop, the alleged time investment to complete it (not a measure for price, but that’s a whole other talk) and the apparent amount of polish on this title, I’m not really that surprised.
It’s interesting how we’ve all come to assume that “indie” games are small cheap games. Let’s be clear – The Witness is a full ass game. Just because it doesn’t have combat doesn’t mean it’s not worth full price. And if it’s time that you’re worried about, an 8 hour shooter doesn’t even compare to the 80 hours this game apparently takes (see above).
For someone like Blow, he’s high profile enough to be close to AAA in his work – with a bigger dev team and a massive game like this, it’s much closer to a “big game” than it is a “small indie title”. I mean, how do we divide these lines? Money? Marketing? A publisher?
… Holy shit. Blow’s already starting the discussion before the game is even out. Well played.
It’s also worth noting that it’s still cheaper than Portal 2 was on launch, which is a very similar game in that, it’s mainly a puzzle game with no real combat, and mainly just involves walking around and thinking, but with some comedy thrown in, but all up lasted maybe 12 hours max, on a single playthrough. But because it was Valve, and a AAA title, nobody batted an eye. Since the witness is an indie game, it’s like suddenly nobody is allowed to charge more than $20 USD. It’s a ridiculous assumption and unfair, because the amount of work that had to go into the game I think justifies the price. It’s the exact same price that The Talos Principle launched for, and while it was pricy, the game had a bunch of content, and nobody cried out about overpricing, because it was at least made by a indie studio, rather than mainly a single person.
I think Blow just blew all his money…
Interesting- I think this is a broader push to raise the price of downloadable titles – remember when XBLA was first out games were like $5, then the $10 games started appearing like Pac Man CE or Splosion Man, by the end of the generation most downloadable titles had settled on a $15 price point and this generation $20 ($27 AUD) is already the new normal.
This raises an interesting question- is there a price ceiling for downloadable games? The numbers of people buying ARK kinda suggest there isn’t but then other indie games languish as people have been trained to expect them for free (on their consoles) or next to nothing (on Steam)
How on earth can people be claiming that it’s too expensive or damaging to potential sales without having played, or even read a review of the game. Give the poor guy a chance. He didn’t disappoint last time, so have a little faith.
Damn are we already at almost 1.5 USD? Hopefully it will go back down in our lifetime because I do not plan to be paying that much more for entertainment.
Sold.
Assuming it’s half as awesome as it’s premise.
Up there with No Man’s Sky for most interesting looking game of 2016.
I just got the talos principle during the xmas sale on ps4 and had been meaning to buy it since day one. I’ve absolutely loved the crap out of it and have put in over 20 hours. The witness is supposed to be equally as big so it seems to more than justify this price tag. If it was over $90 then we might have a problem, otherwise stick to your $1.99 mobile games people! You get what you pay for….Most of the time….
It’ll be $60-$70, things around 40 USD are generally in that price range on the AUS PSN.
or they’ll rort us and charge $100, just because they can.
That is also common.
And the latest Homeworld, with arguably less design work required since it has borrowed SOOOO much from its predecessors, will be even more.
This may seem like a lot for an indie game, but for me, this is the guy behind Braid (an excellent game), who has spent 8 years working on this game, which he has stated has about 250 hours of gameplay for people wanting to fully complete it. A lot more thought and effort has been put into this game as compared to the AAA games that get crapped out each year. I feel the price is worth it (that being said, I’m yet to play it)