Tag Archives: bollocks

What is apparently an email from Square Enix to potential translators for an NGP remake of Final Fantasy VII is doing the rounds. Read it and weep.

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PCWorld’s reporting that the CEA has issued a second press release on the subject of Nintendo exhibiting at CES in the New Year. Upshot: it isn’t.

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We’ve been around the block. We’re no strangers to hyperbole. But this is something quite special.

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Even awesomer. Not content with trademarking “Zii,” Nintendo’s gone the whole hog and grabbed Cii, Bii, Oii and Yii.

What’s left to say? Nothing. So we won’t.

Via Engadget and GoNintendo.

Remember the story knocking about over the weekend about Blizzard sending out StarCraft II invites?

It’s not true.

“This is FAKE, and is Photoshopped,” said a Blizzard rep on the official forums.

“We will let you know when beta starts and when invites go out- still some waiting to do unfortunately.”

So there you are. Just goes to show.

Thanks, StarCraftWire.

2K’s put a stop on BioShock 2 rumours dragged of its own forums today, saying they’re simply wrong.

“Please do not believe everything you read on the internet,” said a community manager.

“This rumor circulating is not true. Grab the Game Informer magazine. It’s shipped out and should be to subscribers and on store shelves really soon.”

Talk – spotted by CVG – emerged earlier apparently taken from GI subs issues, saying a Soviet submarine, co-op and more were involved in the game.

Just goes to show, really.

We’ll put this down to the enthusiasm of youth. We ran a story yesterday, crediting this PS3F piece, saying Famitsu had confirmed Level-5′s White Knight Story as a December 11 release in Japan. Long story short – it didn’t.

Read this Kotaku piece. And that’s that.

Square Enix has confirmed that yesterday’s story claiming Final Fantasy Versus XIII was on hold “are false”.

The company’s issued an official statement on the matter.

“Reports that development for Final Fantasy Versus XIII is on hold are false,” the note reads.

“The truth of the situation is that when free, some staff from the Versus team have been helping with the XIII team on development of Final Fantasy XIII. Development for both titles is continuing as originally scheduled.”

Take that, people that can read Japanese.

According to a report put together by Peggle publisher PopCap, banning internet use at work and stopping employees playing casual games, reading social networking sites and the like, could cost the British economy up to £4 billion per year.

Quite how anyone arrived at that figure is a bit of a mystery, but there we are. “E-breaks” are the future, apparently.

“Tea-breaks and fag breaks have long been the most common types of break within office culture but the report shows that e-breaks are fast becoming the most popular choice of break for British workers”, said Dr Chamorro-Premuzic. You know, Dr Chamorro-Premuzic?

“The report proves that a ten minute e-break a day can have significant benefits but, despite this, many bosses are banning them in the fear that they distract employees. By factoring in a dedicated slot for an e-break bosses are fostering a more trusting working environment, boosting productivity and ultimately increasing their profit which surely makes good business sense.”

Press release after the link.

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“Vietnam has ordered state officials to stop playing computer games at work and drinking alcohol at lunch,” said this frankly bizarre report from The Gulf Times. Like, that’s it. All we can think about now is crazed Vietnamese politicians getting battered on vodka and throwing up on their monitors during extended WoW sessions while they should be making laws and debating Vietnamese stuff. Quality journalism award of the day.

Whoops. The ELSPA story doing the round a few days ago concerning R4 carts and US DS piracy is, to be blunt, a load of old bollocks. The newspaper piece claimed that manager of ELSPA’s Intellectual Property Crime Unit, John Hillier, had said, “The implications are massive. In America it’s thought 90 percent of Nintendo users are playing pirated games because of R4s.”

The organisation spoke to GI today, claiming, “The quotes from The Sunday Post were ascribed to his name from another article which originates from a website in Singapore. This, it appears, is where The Sunday Post first found out about the supposed R4 situation and for some reason unknown to John have quoted him on what this article said.”

“[John] didn’t quote The Sunday Post on any figures whatsoever,” the spokesperson added.

GI goes as far as to say the report is “completely false”. That’s that settled, then.

It’ll make the tea as well. According to this, a “particularly well-informed insider” reckons Sony’s planning a slimline PS3 for launch this autumn, which could be the home of the now much-rumoured 160Gb hard drive SKU. The report uses the logic that both PS2 and PSP were slimmed down to support itself.

This new rumour appears to be an extension of the entire debacle surrounding the supposed cancellation of the US 80Gb PS3 SKU and its replacement with a bundle with a bigger hard drive and DualShock 3.

This could go on forever. And probably will.

Yet more in the 80Gb US PS3 cancellation saga, this time in the form of a story that Sony hasn’t actually made its mind up what to do about the whole issue. Heavy rumour’s been pointing to a 120Gb package to replace the 80Gb machine, but if this is to be believed, it’s all a load of hooey.

“GameDaily BIZ has learned, however, from a very reliable source close to Sony that the company has yet to actually decide on what the next SKU configuration will be. Apparently the executive teams and product strategists have been meeting this week in Japan. ‘There are a lot of different strategies under consideration, but nothing is final yet. They are considering ways to put some relevant distance between the two PS3 SKUs, but it’s unclear how that will roll out,’ our source indicated.”

Lots, lots, lots more on this to come before the inevitable announcement. GDC seems a likely place to us.

A scientist asked to come up with a “dangerous idea” has hypothesised that the reason alien species haven’t managed to reach earth is because they’re all doing what we’re doing: wasting our lives achieving nothing.

“Basically, I think the aliens don’t blow themselves up,” said Geoffrey Miller, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of New Mexico, in the annual The Best American Nonrequired Reading book. “They just get addicted to computer games. They forget to send radio signals or colonize space because they’re too busy with runaway consumerism and virtual-reality narcissism. They don’t need Sentinels to enslave them in a Matrix; they do it themselves, just as we are doing today.”

Read it all here. It’s awesome.

“When they finally achieve Contact, it will not be a meeting of novel-readers and game-players. It will be a meeting of dead-serious super-parents who congratulate each other on surviving not just the Bomb, but the Xbox. They will toast each other not in a soft-porn Holodeck, but in a sacred nursery.”

Spot of WoW, anyone?

Double uh oh. Videogamer.com reckons the recent Sith Gamer interview with Robbie Bach, which detailed some of what Microsoft is expected to show at GDC next month, is “entirely fictional”.

The interview, which claimed Alan Wake and Halo Wars would be shown at the California developer conference, was picked up all over the web, with a showing of Alan Wake now a truth in the mind of the internet. We’re not just talking about small sites here, either.

“It now turns out that all this teased info has come from the mind of the blogger, Microsoft informing VideoGamer.com that this interview is entirely fictional,” said Videogamer.com’s report.

Well, if this story’s correct there are going to be alot of red faces in the morning. Thanks to Videogamer.com for what has to be the funniest story of the week so far.

This almost isn’t worth the internet it’s written on, but 3DRealms reckons it’s “polishing” Duke Nukem Forever at the moment, which means you man see the shooter sometime before you’re dead.

“We’re doing a lot of polishing of set pieces, environments, and characters,” said art director Tramell Isaac.

Duke Nukem Forever has been in development for since 1997. It’s just depressing. It’s not like we even care. Just release it, let the internet tear it apart and move on, Tramell. It’s like pulling off a Band Aid.

Incredibly, pills marketed at FPS players looking to improve reaction times have been debunked as hokum, according to this. Despite the maker of FPSBrain claiming its products provides a “remarkable increase in perception and reaction capacities”, MTV called in a dietitian who begged to differ:

“In addition to caffeine, most…[energy] drinks contain a high sugar content,” said nutrition expert Danielle Marzano. “In combination these ingredients can cause a rush that will eventually come crashing down. Those sensitive to caffeine may even become dizzy and shaky. Taking this pill with an energy drink or taking more than the recommended dosage may cause these effects.”

Turns out FPSBrain is just like an “energy drink” in solid form. Without as much caffeine. Sounds wicked.