One of the real highlights of the day for me was sitting down with Jason Ing, Group Product Manager for for Xbox LIVE Games. Jason's responsible for getting the word out on anything and everything that offers a complete gaming experience through LIVE, so I just had to ask him about the Braid pricing debacle that got under everybody's skin a few weeks back. I asked him point blank: Microsoft said one thing and did another. What happened?

To clarify, I mentioned exactly what was reported on ShackNews. Here's a refresher: "Microsoft has informed Shacknews that the reported $22.50 price point for Castle Crashers and $15 Braid price, believed to stem from a now-removed Microsoft Japan listing, are incorrect for both domestic and international markets." Here's what Jason Ing had to say;

We said that the information posted is incorrect from the standpoint that... it was incorrect that they posted, but we didn't say the price (was incorrect).

So was it simply just a misunderstanding on ShackNews part?

I'll be honest, it was messaged poorly. That's a problem. I was a little upset with my PR agency and how they messaged it because we meant to say "No no no, we're not announcing pricing yet." And when you use the word "incorrect", even when I think out loud, yeah, it could sound like (the information posted was wrong).

So there you have it. Somewhere between Microsoft, PR, and ShackNews the information got a little muddled. It's kind of like playing telephone, only this time hearing "purple monkey dishwasher" at the end instead of "we're not announcing pricing yet" gets a lot of gamers really pissed off.

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