The Witness Sells More in One Week Than Braid’s First Year

Yet it wasn’t just that The Witness made hand over first more than Braid; it sold doubly as many units in its first week. He’s run through puzzle games like Portal 2 and The Talos Principle in the past, so The Witness was right up his alley. First and foremost, he said, he wanted to create something “beautiful”, “interesting”, and “intricate”.

The Witness grossed more than $5 million United States dollars in revenue-and sold “substantially more” than 100,000 units-over its first week across all platforms, developer Jonathan Blow announced today.

He also notes that, despite the game’s success, the studio has yet to recoup the game’s development costs.

The Witness is available now for PC and PS4.

Overall, The Witness is “doing great”, Blow said. However, Blow is optimistic that, as time goes on, “we should break even and make a comfortable safety margin on top of that, which will allow us to make more nice games in the future – unless some kind of world economic disaster happens”. The money earned, however, is essential in keeping the company alive to make new games.

Likely pleasing players from other platforms, ports to Xbox One, OS X, iOS, and Android are all “under serious consideration”.

GameSpot scored The Witness a 9/10. “I just saw a streamer with 3 million views”. “But the hints are there”. While The Witness is meant to be played without any help from others, those who are stuck can peruse the already countless puzzle guides, like this one for The Witness’ Symmetry Laser, should they find any one problem a little too unforgiving.