There was a big stink earlier today over a rumor regarding the supposed prices of upcoming XBLA titles Braid and Castle Crashers, found on several Japanese blogs including Xbox Japan. The internet has been on fire over the high prices ever since. I'm sure I'll catch flak for it, but I don't consider $22.50 to be a ridiculous price to pay for Castle Crashers, a game I would have happily forked over $50 for.

Anyway, enough about what I think: apparently Microsoft has had direct contact with Shacknews and clarified that the aforementioned prices are incorrect for both international and domestic markets. The official prices will be announced the Monday before each game's release, which slates those announcements for August 4th and 25th.

Back to my soapbox. If downloadable content didn't exist, and these games were $15 and $22.50 in the store, you think of them as "budget" titles and think you were getting off cheap. You're not getting another $27 worth of content out of a box and a manual, believe me. I'm glad the prices aren't right, but consider what you are getting out of these types of games before you start launching the hate mail.

[Update -- The Behemoth has updated their dev blog to reflect their update on the situation.]