Anonymous Tipster Claims Next Xbox Will Be Called, Wait For It, “Xbox”

**mankind** · 01-23-2013

According to Pocket Lint, the next-generation Xbox console will be called exactly that: Xbox. Citing an anonymous source, the website says that the much rumoured Xbox 720 moniker is out of the window, with a return to the original console’s branding. Confusing? Yes, probably. Just look at Wii U.
The site also says that the Xbox will be the hub for multiple other “X” branded bits of hardware, including a gaming tablet called X-Surface. This tablet won’t have any apps of its own, it’ll just connect to the Xbox and play games. “It will not have a desktop as part of its operating system,” says the site, “rather be entirely focused on playing full console-quality games.”
That sounds lovely.
Pocket Lint also points out that there’s an internally running version of Watch Dogs at “55-60fps” on the Xbox, it’ll have AMD components and an 8-core 1.9GHz CPU.
What’s also emerged since, though, is that multiple sites were apparently sent all this information by the same tipster. We can’t verify that, because we weren’t sent anything, but if this is true then it suddenly puts all of the above in a slightly different light and makes believing Pocket Lint’s anonymous source a little trickier to stomach.
Nonsense? We’ll see soon enough.

http://www.thesixthaxis.com/2013/01/...t-for-it-xbox/

**Sylar** · 01-23-2013

madness

**radgamer420** · 01-23-2013

The hell you say. Who would have thought it?

**Blacksite** · 01-23-2013

Update: yep, nonsense. Amazing.

This is getting ridiculous.

**Yungstar 2006** · 01-23-2013

Don’t believe everything you read.

I am a gamer. I don’t work for Microsoft.

I, like most other gamers, am sick of seeing endless rumours and speculation citing “anonymous sources” or “insiders” with no evidence, no proof, no guarantee that they’ve been fact-checked or can be relied on.

The games industry is the only one I can think of that will quite happily publish guesswork as news. So-called ‘analysts’ are no different - they make money by guessing. They’re about as much use as a ‘source’ as I am.

So let’s see how easy it is to be a ‘source’.

At 1:41am GMT today I sent out an email to a bunch of gaming sites claiming to be a Microsoft employee working on the new Xbox.

I made up every single word of it along with a couple of specs copied from other rumours that have been appearing on the Internet.

This was a bit of an experiment to see just how easy it is to get a fake story taken seriously. And it is shockingly easy in the games industry.

By 9:58am GMT, it was already ‘in the news’.

Pocket-Lint.com were the first to run with the news, almost exactly one hour after saying “we have to make an effort to validate”; two hours before I got the chance to reply. It was posted with zero validation, no fact-checking, no source information. Just a simple email basically saying “I work for Microsoft - believe me?”.

I feel bad for lying, but it proves the point very well.

The spread begins.

And this is where we come to the most important part: it’s not just that it was easy to get a site to publish the non-news… it’s also the fact that every other site will then leech the information. As if linking to the original site absolves them of the need to check up on the sources.

Not to mention the Chinese whisper effect. I have listed below many different links to sites that took this news from Pocket-Lint.com: have a read through each one and play spot the difference. There is always at least one bit of information that was changed, mistranslated (even on English sites) or not mentioned at all.

This is no way to run a ‘news’ website. How would people react if they found out the BBC got all their news third-hand from a copied article that had been changed twice along the way? It is not reliable. No other industry works like this. Why do we accept it on gaming sites?

At the time of writing, my fake news is appearing on major sites such as:
Yahoo
CNET
Gizmodo
Venturebeat
Tech Digest
VG247
NowGamer

And many more. This Google search shows the global reach this non-news has been getting over the past 6 hours (at the time of writing).

This is not journalism.

Many games ‘journalists’ have no right calling themselves such things. The vast majority do nothing but copy & paste from other sites, and will willingly publish information without fact checking a single thing or attempting to verify the source.

It’s all about being first. To get such news out (whether you believe it or not) before any other publication does, will guarantee you page impressions, and that all-important advertising revenue. Gaming ‘journalism’ is completely broken.

By tagging a post with ‘rumour’, most writers/editors believe they can get away with spreading false information for their own benefits. They are the only ones to gain from such practices, whilst the gaming fans end up with speculation and, sometimes, outright lies.

TL;DR - Until Microsoft/Sony announce something: don’t believe even the most reputable gaming sites.

http://x-surface.tumblr.com/