Jonathan Blow Wanted Braid’s Premium Theme to be Free. Microsoft Said No.

You know something that sucks? Corporate whoring of nice things to get a few extra pennies from the already cash-strapped public. Being killed by a jelly-fish on fire would also probably suck quite a bit.

Writing on the Braid dev blog, the game’s creator, Jonathan Blow, said that he and the other developers of the game wanted the new Braid premium theme for the Xbox 360 to be free, but MS said that they have to charge for it.

Unfortunately, we had to charge the standard Premium Theme price of 250 Microsoft Points (which is about $3.10 in American money). We want to make it free, but Microsoft doesn’t like giving things out for free. But if you do buy it, you can be secure in the knowledge that you own one of the few Premium Themes that is not an advertisement ‘” there is no text in the Braid theme anywhere. (Seriously, Microsoft, what is with the Subway: Eat Fresh Theme?)

Once again highlighting that the systems MS have engineered give no room for generosity. Worse still is that they have actually taken a step backwards. It used to be the case (pre-NXE) that devs could create free themes, sadly, those days seem all but over.

Talking in the comments section, Blow further emphasized their motivation for creating the theme, or more the point, that the motivation is not financial.

[...]Really, the main reason we do these things is just to give something extra as a thanks to people who like the game.

That’s part of why I would have wanted to give it out for free ‘” I would rather have a lot of people enjoying the things that we made, than earn a negligible amount of money from a smaller number of people.

He also mentioned that all the items that you have to pay for on the 360, are freely available on the PC.

It seems whenever MS seem to be opening up their door to invite some originality or genuinely great community spirited stuff, they always have to find some way to get money. Still, as long as they push some of the money back into PR, nobody will notice.

Via: Destructoid