2012 was truly the year of the independent game developer, and Polytron’s Fez was one of the poster children of the industry. Phil Fish’s labor of love, in production for nearly five years and one of the subjects in Indie Game: The Movie, finally hit Xbox 360 in the spring of last year and racked up accolades from players across the world. At the time, Fish said his game was built to be a console game and would stay that way, but hinted at the end of the year that Fez would indeed come to other platforms. On Monday, it became official: Fez is coming to Steam.
“It’s coming!” Fish said during a question and answer session on Reddit, “We’re doing PC first, but Mac will eventually follow. We don’t have any date for that yet, though.”
Already up on Steam, the page for Fez’s PC release confirms the game will be available for download on May 1.
After making the jump to PC, will Fez make it onto other game consoles or handhelds? While the game won’t be making the jump to Nintendo 3DS—Fish said that while some people think the game’s a natural fit, he doesn’t think it’s suited for stereoscopic 3D—he did say that there’s hope for an appearance on Sony’s troubled PS Vita. “I can’t really 100-percent confirm that yet, but I’m working with Sony trying to figure something out.”
While still developing Fez, Fish vehemently defended his decision to make it a console exclusive. “Fez is a console game, not a PC game,” Fish told Now Gamer, “It’s made to be played with a controller, on a couch, on a Saturday morning. To me, that matters; that’s part of the medium.”
Multiple Reddit users pointed to that quote during the Q&A session, and Fish’s answer as to why he was jumping to other platforms was simple: “For profit.”
The financial realities of working on Microsoft’s Xbox Live Arcade have been a problem for Fez since it came out. Though it was quickly discovered that a bug in the game could completely wipe out a save file, Fish said in June that Fez would not be patched because he couldn’t afford it. “Why not? Because Microsoft would charge us tens of thousands of dollars to re-certify the game,” said Fish. Patching a game released on Steam, however, is totally free.
