Hello, PS Blog readers. It has been an exciting two weeks for us since we launched Journey on the PlayStation Store. We see the personal connection between our work and the players, which is the most real and priceless reward for us. For that, we thank you so much for your support, for spending time and money to play our game, and for spreading the word about Journey to your dear friends and family. Thanks to you all, Journey has officially broken PlayStation Network and PlayStation Store sales records, surpassing all games ever released on the PlayStation Network to become the fastest-selling game ever released on PlayStation Store, in both the SCEA and SCEE regions.

After we released Flower in 2009, players sent hundreds of emails about their experience with the game. They varied from a 9-year-old girl to a 65-year-old man, from a marine serving duty overseas, to a soldier returning from Iraq. There were even stories about a mother’s memory of her two children in the wheat fields, a surreal butterfly fantasy from someone’s grandmother who passed away, and a young man who spoke about his brother who has Down syndrome. Those kinds of letters are what drive us at TGC to keep working.

And now, the reaction to Journey has been even more overwhelming. We have received more letters from fans in the two weeks since Journey’s launch than we did for Flower over the past three years!

We owe a lot to our fans. In fact, the idea of forming the thatgamecompany team to create games with Sony Santa Monica originated from several dozen emails that players sent in after playing our first student game, Cloud, from our time at USC. It was the players who told us how moving the game was and how it was important that we keep making these types of games so that more people in the world will realize what video games can be, and can grow to love games through our work. To me, that was a life-changing moment. I knew making games was my life calling.

This art piece expresses our gratitude.

Lastly, a lot of you have seemed to really enjoy the music in the game, which was composed by Austin Wintory. And we’ve received a lot of requests to release the soundtrack of the game. Well, I’m happy to announce that the soundtrack will be hitting the PS Store and iTunes on April 11, and there will be a limited CD release in the near future as well.

Thanks, again, for all your support! We’ll see you online!

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It’s been a little over three years since we launched our last game, Flower. It was a difficult game to describe, but a game that we took great pride in. Many of you took a chance with it and were as moved by it as we hoped people would be. Now we’re here, three years later. We can’t wait to let you experience our latest PlayStation exclusive game, Journey.

It has been heartening to see the reactions from the press so far.We’ve had editors tell us how much the game moved them emotionally, or fundamentally changed the way they think about multiplayer in video games. Our goal was to change the impression players have towards each other over the network. We wanted to bring a thatgamecompany-style adventure to our players and create an emotional connection between them. And it’s been great to hear we might have achieved this goal.

We get very nervous before the reviews hit. With the early access for PlayStation Plus subscribers last week, we started getting reactions from the players. We couldn’t be more moved by what reviewers and players are saying about Journey on the web. Thank you for sharing your Journey experiences with us, they are what keep us going and make all of our hard work truly worthwhile.

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This is Jenova Chen, co-founder and creative director from thatgamecompany. As you may know from my recent tweet, the development of our latest PlayStation Network game, Journey, is finally complete. And today, we’re very excited to announce the official release date for Journey. You will be able to download it from PlayStation Store from March 14th, 2012.

With each game we create, we want to bring something truly unique and authentic to the user. We want our players to experience something they have never felt before. Our first game for PSN was flOw in 2007, a meditative zen video game haiku. We followed that in 2009 with Flower, our video game version of a poem about the tension between urban bustle and natural serenity. Journey, our third game, is an interactive parable, an anonymous online adventure to experience a person’s life passage and their intersections with others.

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This is Jenova Chen from thatgamecompany. First of all I would like to thank you for your support during the closed beta for our upcoming game Journey. It was a great success!

For the past few months, we kept getting asked about Journey’s release date. Yes, we haven’t said anything about our release in a while mainly because we really couldn’t tell. And we don’t want to throw out a date that we are not sure about, and later disappoint our players.

Fortunately, the online beta went very well, and our continued playtests have given us great feedback on the work we have left to complete. While there is still a ton of care and polish needed, we can’t wait to finally deliver Journey, TGC’s take on an online adventure game.

Like all our games, Journey is an experiment. In the end, it’s what you think that matters. We are happy to announce Journey will be released Spring 2012, so you can experience the adventure for yourself.

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