So far i have really enjoyed the game. The story and graphic style are really sharp. I find that the gameplay is quite inovative. Oh and i love the music. But, once i got to world 4 my brain exploded. Anyone else experience this phenom? What are your thoughts on the game?

i'm absolutly loving it as well it makes you think and its really cool how in the beginning you imediatly start playing and you dont go through any menus and stuff. also i like how everything is a mini puzzle it may just be my fav XBLA game.. if it wasn't 15$!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i would have bought my fav XBLA game

I love this game. I think it's one of the best things to come to Live in a long time. But I still think it's going to hurt itself, a lot, with that $15 price tag. At $10, they'd get a LOT more people on board. At $15, the game is overpriced, even though the experience is great.

The other problem is that the game is SHORT, with only five worlds total. Mix that with the price tag, and you get a lot of bad word of mouth.

I love Braid. I bought it because I want to support the developer and because I like the game. But I am disappointed that MS decided on a 1,200 price point. I would like to see how well the game sells after the first few weeks.

I ended up buying the game last night. I like platformers and really wanted to like this game. It took me two play thrus of the trial and watching the In Brief thing on the game at xbox360fanboy to finally figure it out. I think a lot of people will try the demo and just not get it. If you just treat it as a platformer, the demo level is pretty boring.

I have a feeling this game is not going to sell well at all. My guess is it will be down to $10 by the end of the year. It will probably be too late for the game then as people will have forgotten about it.

the pricetag is a bit high... it's well worth money for me, but I think like you said jay, it's success will be hindered by it.

I don't understand why people are complaing about the price tag with the length of the game. I haven't played it yet, (been really busy) but if you get 3 - 4 hours of gameplay for $15. Lets look at some full retail games and there cost/gameplay length. Call of Duty 4, which is one of my favorite games. Took me about 7 hours on veteran. Most reports had it 4 - 6 hours on normal. Yes it does have a rather robust online play but considering there are 20 million xbox 360 and only about 10 million connected to live (and who know if that is gold only account or gold and silver accounts) less then 1/2 of the potential buyers of the game will be able to enjoy the online play. How about Kameo, that took me roughly 8 hours getting a decent amount of achievements. It is a platformer. It cost me roughly $7.50 per hour of gameplay. Now if this platformer is going to last me 3 hours, it will get me roughly $5 per hour of gameplay.

Looking at the arcade in general, the $5 games have come and gone as most of them were ports of old arcade games. So the price range of most arcade games going forward is going to be in the $10 - $15 range. A sam and max episode costs $15. Penny arcades short rpg games cost a fair amount of money. So why do so many people complain about the cost/length of the game when there are a ton of games that aren't giving you better cost per hour of gameplay

Furio, it has a lot to do (in my mind anyway) with the precedent it sets. If we all rush online and buy the $15 game than eventually the $5 game disappears. Its simple supply and demand. Look at gas prices in the states, people reduced their consumption 2% and prices go down. In a capitalist society one of the most powerful things an individual can do is vote with their wallet.

As far as Kameo goes, the game had stunning production values for a launch title, whereas braid has beautiful backgrounds with SNES sprites on top of it.
COD4? Well were I not online there is no way I would have payed $60 for it. No offense but conjecture about what type of user may have bought a particular game does not a point make. Although I am impressed that you cleared veteran in 7 hours, good on ya.

Well as I said, I haven't played it and I don't intend too. I am not a big platformer fan. I did play kameo, and yes the colors were brilliant but the gameplay was bland/poor. I was not comparing the games directly to braid, I was just breaking it down per hour of gameplay and cost. Is $15 too high for this game, most likely. Is $15 too much for a sam and max episode? I was just arguing that most likely your cost per hour of gameplay is in line with most full retail games. There have been very few games breaking past 10 hours of single player gameplay this gen. There are exceptions, but not many of them. If you assume all single player games are 10 hours, that is $6 per hour of gameplay. This game is 2 - 4 hours of gameplay. Lets assume 3 hours. It breaks down to $5 per hour. At 2 hours it is $7.50. That is still in line with full retail games, because most of them aren't at the 10 hours of single player gameplay.

According to the ign 3 red lights podcast, msft has talked a lot in the past of having arcade games at the $15 price point be the norm. I wouldn't say this game is setting the precendent, but more that msft is using this game to get us use to paying that much for a game.

As for your gas reference, there were a lot of other factors. Namely the Dollar has increased in value. I would assume china's purchase of oil has dropped off some, as the olympics are starting this week and it would be too late to place the order for oil to help run olympics.

Braid is selling at the price point Sony announced for the Ratchet and Clank downloadable content, with roughly the same length. One might argue that R&C will have greatly superior graphics, but also consider that this is like additional levels. There really was not, from what I've heard, a lot of work necessary for the R&C download apart from making levels.

Braid on the other hand is a new game with innovative gameplay. Graphics may not be in the "wow I'm impressed" COD4 category, but they're not in the "gee this looks bad" category either. Of course, I wish the game was cheaper. But these days I can say that about a lot of things, especially tickets to sporting events.

I loved the demo and will be buying Braid today. The price tag will hurt sales as it hurt me, but I think that this game's worth it. Someone said up above that there is only 5 worlds which makes me mad. I thought that there would be many more.

I can't pass up an experience like this though. The storytelling, graphics (even though they are in a painting type), and gameplay are all superb and innovative. I would recommend the demo to anyone who is on the fence.

This is not one of my favorite XBLA titles.

This is one of my favorite games. PERIOD.

A mature platformer with beautiful graphics and stellar gameplay, this WILL be on my top five games of the year. The price point does (please pardon my language) suck my ass, but it's ultimately worth it for a more intellectually-skewed entry into a genre that's typically reserved for crummy movie spin-off games. As a straight platformer, the homages to other entries in the genre are a hoot, but figuring out how to use the time-shifting to traverse the landscape and collect all the puzzle pieces is where this title shines.

Super Mario Bros. for adults. That's what I would call it. A game with no condescention that plays directly to its intended audience. This is a game that will attain acclaim with those willing to take the plunge and go down as the cult hit of the year. I LOVE THIS GAME!

If the 1st Geometry Wars wasn't 5$, 2 would have been 15$ also. Here's the xbla model nowadays:

5$ = probably a complete waste of time
10$ = probably worth 5$ but check trial before dismissing
15$ = overpriced but would be a must buy for 5 or 10 bucks