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Over the weekend several sites began reporting on an advert that appeared in last Friday’s MCV on page 17. The advert, for Little Big Planet PSP accessories, listed the PSP-4000 as being compatible. The PSP-4000 doesn’t exist. We gave the company behind the adverts, Accessories 4 Technology [Editor's note - the name of the company has been corrected], a ring to find out what’s going on.
A4T’s licence manager Angela Jones told Negative Gamer, after looking up the advert online, that it was a “mistake on our part” and that she wasn’t sure what had happened. She added that Sony weren’t, as far as she knew, releasing a new console.
Not that these words will squash the rampant rumour fires of the next PSP. What with Pachter saying it’s likely, developers chatting about it at TGS and Engadget’s reliable tipster. Sony, as with any big company, hasn’t admitted to a mistake and is instead telling any site that contacts them that they “don’t comment on rumour or speculation”.
Yesterday, during their record attempt for the slowest interview drip-feed, Gizmodo publish a short segment of their interview with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. During the short segment Ballmer said quite vaguely that “I don’t know if we need to put Blu-ray in there—you’ll be able to get Blu-ray drives as accessories.” Most people who watched the video, and know of Ballmer, realised he probably just said something silly. Like when he referred to a “new” Xbox coming, a statement he later said was a mix-up.
So, Blu-ray Xbox add-on is 100% confirmed. At least, that’s what Destructoid,1up, IGN, play.tm and a whole host of others reported. Annoyingly Major Nelson, spokesman for Xbox, seems to use a different definition of “confirmed” when he posted on his blog late yesterday when he said in no uncertain terms that “Steve was referring to Blu-Ray accessories for the PC. As we have said in the past, we have no plans to introduce a Blu-Ray drive for the Xbox 360.”
Who says internet news sources are unreliable?
With little change in demand for the console the most plausible reason for decreased stock is an upcoming price cut.
Many rumours claim that Sony are likely to announce a price cut and (possibly) the PS3 slim at Gamescom next week. Despite vast decreases in production costs Sony haven’t cut the price of the PS3 since 2007.
Anonymous spokesmen, representing two of the UK’s leading games retailers, have claimed not to expect new PS3s to replace the already drying up stock until September.
Sourcing PS3 stock has been a challenge for the last two to three weeks. There are obviously lots of rumours flying about as to why that might be. I don’t think it’s to do with demand, though. Sales are low at the moment and have been for a while. We’ve been told not to expect any further hardware deliveries until September.
1up are reporting a rumour that a new Xbox 360 console is set to launch along side Project Natal and will be released around Fall 2010. The new system won’t be the next generation of the Xbox but rather an upgraded 360. Old 360 games will still run on the system but they could take advantage of a possible graphical upgrade. Future 360 games could take advantage of this new hardware as well but obviously they won’t perform as well on the current console.
This could explain how Microsoft is going to deliver on the ten-year lifespan they have been bragging about recently. In my opinion, any graphical difference between the systems is a terrible idea. I don’t want to have to buy a new 360 so that I can play the games at their best, if that is indeed the case.
Before last month’s GDC, Playstation Insider posted a list of rumours regarding Sony’s upcoming announcements. One of these claimed that a remake of The Legend of Dragoon was under development pending a Japanese release later this year. Thankfully, Sony made no mention of the game at GDC, although if this remake is underway then there’s still plenty of time for an announcement to come.
Considering that Sony have lost exclusivity for upcoming Final Fantasy games, an exclusive PS3 JRPG would fill the gap left by Square-Enix’s withdrawal. This gives the rumour some degree of credibility, as a Japanese release later this year would create direct competition with Final Fantasy XIII. Whilst this makes sense from a business perspective, choosing to remake The Legend of Dragoon puzzles me. Read more →
Did you hear about Home being released the same day as the NXE (New Xbox Experience) on Nov 19th? I hadn’t either until I stumbled upon an article on PC Authority (via: n4g) written by the Associated Press which calmly states that “Sony’s ‘Home’ virtual world for the Playstation 3 will be released on November 19th, after its delay twice already.”
Could it be that Sony will be releasing Home the same day Microsoft unleashes their Avatars upon us all? Or did the AP, as is common with mainstream media outlets, not check their facts but happily re-publish articles?
As Joystiq points out, in an article for Yahoo published the day before, the AP states that “Sony Corp.’s twice delayed online “Home” virtual world for the Playstation 3 console will be available sometime later this year, while U.S. software maker Microsoft Corp., which competes with its Xbox 360, is starting “New Xbox Experience” worldwide Nov. 19.”
All the AP articles being published feature the same quotes from the same people, and appear to carry the same idea about how both consoles will be competing using “Second Life-style” features. So, and this is me purely speculating here, it’s looks like AP screwed up and don’t really have a clue what they’re talking about.
I half expect this kind of behaviour from some of the lesser respected gaming blogs out there. But this is the AP. An organisation whose news (according to Wikipedia) is “published and republished by more than 1,700 newspapers, in addition to more than 5,000 television and radio broadcasters.”
Now, an interesting experiment for you at home: Watch how your favourite blogs or other such gaming media outlets report on this apparently false news. Will they state it’s almost certainly wrong and try to find the truth? Will they simply not report on it, or wait until it’s cleared up? Or will they crudely stick “rumour” on the front and post regardless? It’s info like this which really does give us, the readers, a very interesting insight into our news sources.
Also, quick props to Joystiq for contacting Sony and AP for clarification. Good Journalisming.
Internet monolith Google were all set to announce earlier today that they would be buying Valve “any second now”, according to some “well placed sources” talking to The Inquirer.
It was argued that because of Valve’s highly successful digital distribution platform, Steam, Google would be all over them like butter on a muffin. Could it be that Google were entering the videogame industry after all?
A quick word between Kotaku and Valve’s marketing director Doug Lombardi (the man who had originally said that Valve were for sale) soon put a stop to all the nonsense. He said the whole thing is a work of fiction and just a rumour.
Take that internet rumour mill!
Yesterday, Patrick over on Ripten (where I also contribute) posted a rumour about Metal Gear Solid coming to XBLA. He then preceded to feel the wrath of every fanboy come down on him. It was very much like what happened on Destructoid a year or so ago when it was posted that MGS4 would eventually come to the Xbox.
Now, the tip(s) we got at Ripten basically gave us the following information:
A few quick searches and general knowledge gives us the following:
As soon as the article went live, claims of lies, no evidence and lack of integrity were quick to surface. The common issues people had were:
To address the legitimate concerns;
The size of the game isn’t actually much of an issue. Most of the space on the original was taken up with sound. The 360 has a lot of nifty compression to help with this. The game also came out on 1 CD at some point in time.
Not forgetting of course that MS have had exceptions for the XBLA size limit before, as well as having services such as Xbox Originals which are much bigger.
The people saying they have looked on PartnerNet for the game and not found it probably did a search for “Metal Gear Solid” and got nothing. As explained earlier, games which have not been annouced often go under fake names. Short of actively going through everything on PartnerNet, you’re not going to find it unless you know where to look.
See, it’s not that obsurd an idea now is it?
If you would like to see some examples of the rage ensuing, do a google search for “Metal Gear Solid”+XBLA.
(Also, sorry for the header being all exciting, but I just couldn’t help myself)
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