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The Witness Costs $40, No Pre-Orders On PSN
Jonathan Blow has announced the pricing for his long in development puzzle game, The Witness. The developer’s website is currently overloaded, but we were able to confirm how much it will cost you.
The Witness is priced at $39.99 on both PlayStation 4 and PC. In a brief statement on the game’s website, Blow explains the decision.
A lot of people have been asking about the price, so: The price of the game on both Steam and PSN will be $39.99 / €36.99 / £29.99.
A lot of people have been asking about preorders too. Preorders will go live on Steam and the Humble Store (and on this web site) today at noon PST. Unfortunately we won’t have preorders on PSN, because apparently developers have to set those up months in advance and we didn’t know that!
The preorders are regular price! They contain an amazing bonus pack-in: the warm fuzzy feeling that you have pre-ordered the game. (And that’s all). So it’s exactly the same as buying the game at launch, except earlier.
Blow also says that purchasing from the Humble Store will allocate 10 percent of the purchase price to charity. Each copy of The Witness bought through that storefront will support the Against Malaria Foundation.
Recently, Blow stated that The Witness will take players 80 to 100 hours for a complete playthrough. Those who prefer to take a more direct route to the end can plan to spend significantly less time.
[Source: The Witness (cache)]
Our Take
$40 is going to raise some eyebrows given current download-only pricing on consoles. Whether players are willing to pay that price right away without the motivation of a pre-order discount remains to be seen.
I suspect the price tag won’t scare everyone away, but there are those who had a significantly lower amount stuck in their minds. That has nothing to do with quality and everything to do with expectations set by the marketplace.
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