Okay, this is hilarious. No, this is one of the funniest and saddest things in video-game journalism. No, this further proves that most triple-A gaming websites – sometimes, not always – are not doing their job well. Half a month ago, a Reddit user created a fake logo for the next-Xbox. Obviously, that Reddit user was having fun with this image, however most of the gaming websites did not get the meaning behind C-Ron’s post.
But let’s take things from the beginning. Fifteen days ago, C-Ron posted a fake image that was supposedly representing the logo of the next-Xbox. C-Ron posted this image in order to troll everyone, something that is even indicated by the title of his post. C-Ron was almost certain that a number of small blogs would borrow his image, as the same thing has already happened with other stories that were based on fake information.
What really surprised everyone though was the fact that big gaming websites (Eurogamer, Gamespot, ibtimes, etc.) have included this image in their latest X720 rumor posts, suggesting that this could very well be the logo of the next-Xbox. Not only that, but these websites claim that this logo was leaked on Reddit. Leaked? Well… not exactly.
Now this story is similar to the X-Surface troll story; a fake story that has been posted by most major gaming websites. Back in January, a user decided to troll everyone and sent a fake email to all the ‘big’ gaming websites. After a couple of hours, that fake story was featured on VG247, VideoGamer, VentureBeat… and pretty much everywhere.
Before continuing, let us tell you that we are not attacking the aforementioned websites. No no no. We are simply stating the facts here. Now that we got this out of our way, let’s move on.
Naturally, when most websites found out that this information was fake, they started publishing stories about gaming journalism and that it went downhill. Yet here we are today, almost three months after that hilarious moment, with most gaming sites falling into the very same mistake.
And sadly, this won’t change anytime soon. You see, it’s better posting something tagged as a rumor (and getting lots of hits thanks to that rumor story) than not posting anything at all. Yes, this sucks for the reader. However, it is true that gaming sites want to either attract more viewers no matter what or post something really ‘big’ before anyone else. And since they are in a hurry, they are bound to make mistakes.
And that’s why gaming journalism will remain the same for all eternity!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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