Blunder shames ‘professional’ games site

Reports surfacing overnight claiming that Sony’s Howard Stringer had offered details of the looming PlayStation 3 have turned out to be totally false. The result of a failure to check facts by some web sites resulted claims that PlayStation 3, complete with media-enabled add-on packs, had been announced and priced by the Sony boss. The reports were ficticious, exposing a worrying lack of integrity at some publications.

Some sites repeated verbatim elements of a piece published on CNN yesterday without citing the source, nor checking its accuracy. One news site reported, “PS3 to launch at under $400; will ship with media bundle,” a tantalising headline indeed. It goes on to detail a Fortune Magazine report making no reference to the fact that all the information, which it transpired was completely false, was lifted from CNN. “Sony CEO Howard Stringer has given the clearest indication yet of the company's launch plans for PlayStation 3, stating that the next-gen system will enter the market at between $300 and $400 when it arrives in mid-2006,” reported the writer.

We were beaten to the punch in exposing the dupe by Christian Svensson of Next-Gen who noted, “…the reporting offered a dubious lack of quotes given that the news was sprung from an 'interview'. Next Generation picked up a copy of the 650 word interview in the December 5th issue of Fortune. The PS3 is only mentioned one time, and in reference to a question of how Sony will be generating top-line growth in the face of competition from Samsung and Apple.”

And there’s a final twist, one described to us by one industry watcher as “So utterly transparent it verges on being nauseating.” The games industry writer posted a follow up piece, claiming “CNN drops PS3 price story as Stringer comments are confuted.” Inside it reads, “Comments published in a CNN article yesterday purporting to be from Sony CEO Howard Stringer regarding the planned pricing for PlayStation 3 have been removed after it emerged that he had not said anything on the question.”

The writer then seeks to pin the blame for his journalistic blunder on CNN, rather than his own shameless plagiarism and lack of fact-checking.

“So where did the information come from, then? The culprit appears to be a Hollywood Reporter article on another interview with Stringer, which appeared a few weeks ago and also appeared to attribute pricing and availability information to the Sony CEO. However, on closer inspection, the article was actually citing an anonymous source within Sony.”