Dear Reader:
Braid on DS is 'probably not going to happen'
A portion of a Joystiq interview with Jonathan Blow, creator of Braid…
J: I know your stance on a PS3 or Wii release of Braid, but have you ever considered putting it on a portable console?
JB: I have thought about it, but there are a lot of technical and design challenges and maybe it’s not worth it. For the DS the game would have to be completely re-created from the ground up, and I won’t do that (I would rather be working on my next game), and I don’t know anyone I would trust to do a high-quality job on that. So it is probably not going to happen. PSP might be more feasible if it’s a downloadable game (so that it doesn’t have to run off the UMD, because the music streaming stuff in Braid would not work off a UMD), but the direct-download-to-PSP market isn’t really there yet, and again there would be a substantial investment in making the game run at a high quality level there, and I’m not sure who I trust to do it (though it would probably be easier to find someone to do a good job there than on the DS). The iPhone is capable of doing Braid well, both in terms of graphics and storage, but there is no way to control the game — the touchscreen just won’t work for Braid.
I am hoping that next year someone announces a next-generation handheld that is a better fit — but I don’t know what the chances of that are.