No prophets without profits

First of all, I am still waiting to hear from my source and bring you some exclusive news. Please be patient for a few more days.

In the meantime, I would like to write about the self-declared prophets that just get far too much attention. Aries sent everyone haywire, Osoko Tanaka is now giving interviews to game magazines and Team Beta will dish out "more information (...) as we are given permission to release it."

And people believe them without hesitation. But why would these prophets risk their careers only to be able to share top secret info with us? Because they simply are not who they claim to be. Why do they do it then? To get attention and feel wanted, most likely. Every prophet is in it for a profit. They don´t just do this for the love of god, they have an agenda. Also, consider that no developer and no exec in their right mind would ever divulge any sensitive information because they would be violating non-disclosure agreements that entail hefty penalties.

The newest breed is different, though. These prophets claim to be just ordinary guys like us who have, apparently, stumbled on something big. There´s a guy calling himself INMHS trying to resurrect the so-called N-game on this blog.

Now, for those who don´t know: the N-game was a hunt for clues which started on the now infamous Moz La Punk blog. The idea behind it was that Nintendo was giving us clues that would eventually lead to discovering the Revolution´s secret. In technical terms, it´s a viral marketing campaign. Microsoft has done it with the Xbox360 - and it was quite a successful campaign. They put some dead-hard riddles out that, if answered correctly, allowed people a sneak peek of the console.

Is Nintendo doing just that? Fair enough, there are some weird clues out there. On Nintendo´s E3 page, there is a banner reading ´Drooling is good. Napkins available now.´ And in this Nintendo article, NOA_Matt wrote:

Word has it a secret alcove can be found deeper within the creature which houses the precious Nintendo Revolution. But gaining access to the Shangri-la of tomorrow's video game generation is to remain an electronic dream.

Right, that´s weird. Nintendo is toying with us here. They are teasing us. I don´t doubt that for a minute. But for a full-blown viral marketing campaign, there is just not enough there. The funny thing about the N-game is that thousands of people were pretending to play for over a month, but noone got anywhere. Even the Moz La Punk people recently declared it dead and a huge waste of time.

Now, this guy is trying to tell us that a new N-game is on and that he is pretty much in charge.

I got lucky, I suppose, in having people near to me who had information abou the videogameing industry. So, I and a few other people worked on this 'game'. We toiled through tech specs and rumours, patents and the chat rooms, and we came to a conclusion. We told a few people, and then we left it, satisfied in the knowledge of what we found. We had found it.
And then they found us.

We got contacted by people, whose names are quite familiar to many. We talked, and they started the first 'game'. They gave us clues, gave us hints. They helped us take our knowledge and turn it upside down, inside out, until we figured it out. The Revolution. It was confirmed to us. Our contact/s were happy, they had done their jobs. It was their game and we finished it.

But then luck truely smiled upon me. I was told something that the others weren't. I was told about a game, one that would probably never be confirmed or denied. It was to take place soon, in the year when people were most expecting a Revolution. 2005.

So, this game has started. It might not be backed by Nintendo, it might be. But what we are all playing is a game. And it is my turn to become part of that game. This 'N-game' is real. Everything you have seen is real, because it is part of the game. Parts might not be real in the sense that it is the Revolution, but it is real in the game. And that is what is important, the games we play. I consider myself part of the game, but my part is unique.

(...) I can't back up everything I say. I can't, because no one would believe me if I did. But when I said I was contacted, I was. No lie. But it wasn't anyone famous like Reggie or Miyamoto. Sorry if I led you to beleive that. But I was contacted by people who work on the technology that the Revolution uses for various things. Like the controller. I guess the only thing I can say to back it all up is that the technology is all...intertwined. So to get all the parts working, even the smallest tech provider has to know alot about the console. So that is all I can say.

So there´s this ordinary guy who, initially, stumbled upon information by means of research and then got contacted by a company working on the Revolution together with Nintendo. Why do people believe that nonsense? Why would a company that has been contracted by Nintendo to supply some hardware spend its time on PR campaigns for them? Noone has any vested interest, let alone resources, in running such campaigns for Nintendo, other than Nintendo itself.

Additionally, I think I have a pretty good idea about what kind of people are in on Nintendo´s surprise at this moment in time - and there aren´t many. After all, they seriously are concerned with competitors copying their idea. So they are telling next to noone. I just got back from a Capcom event today, at which Tatsuya Minami (producer for Resident Evil Zero and vice chairman of Capcom´s research & development committee) was present. Hardly any third party company is as close to Nintendo as Capcom is - and even they don´t seem to know yet. But, of course, some kids somewhere in the United States have been told. Like Seriousgamer007 on this thread in the Nintendo forums:

SERIOUSGAMER007 wrote:
Specs of Nintendo Revolution are as follows

A quad core IBM 2.7 G5 processor. IBM and NEC worked on the system LSI
512 megabits of Mosys Ram developed in conjunction with NEC
System Performance of 2 teraflops.
Graphics Chip: Developed by ATI. The team working on the Graphics chip use to work at ARTX who use to be employed by Silicon Graphics.

Lauch Date is March 2006
System Price is 249.00
System with Visor and Metroid 3: 349.00
Games at Launch Metroid, Zelda
Mario 128 will follow in the Summer

What is Revolutionary about console:

(...) The secret is a new form of bump mapping that will enable many textures on one polygon. The Jurassic Park Dinosaur T-Rex was composed of only 40000 polygons yet had many hundreds of textures on it. Until now there was no way of providing that level of realism in a game realtime. Nintendo has finally found a way.

(...) If you are wondering about a visor. Well it is true. However it is an Accessory that will be in the same category as the U-Force, PowerGlove, Superscope etc. It is designed for just First Person Shooters and is not necessary/required to play any game on the Console. It is designed just for a more immersive feel and has been developed by Emagin. It will be available as a Bundle for the Console to include the game Metroid 3. This will be available for Launch.

Great! Care to upload the official box art, too? Maybe this guy already sells the consoles? His claims are just silly, his motivation probably very sad. What I don´t hack is that some people do take attention-seeking kids like this serious. This is the same guy who´s been seeking attention on the Nintendo forums for years. He also posted quite the opposite to the above only two weeks beforehand here:

Listen not one of us truly has an idea of what Nintendo is going to release. Everything is speculation until it comes out. No one knows what the Revolution is going to be whether it a visor,gyroscopic controller, make your own breakfast wafflemaker, or a UFO.

He even simply pasted a release date into Nintendo´s financial report in this thread. Whatever their particular reason to do this, whatever their agenda, whatever profit they are after: These guys are sad, sad people. Don´t believe a word they write.

Blogs like mine or this one by Phalanx try to separate facts from fiction and we don´t get thousands of clicks or comments for that. However, if we pretended to be a Japanese third party exec with a hobby of dishing out trade secrets to the world, blogspot.com would probably have to buy a few extra servers to accomodate the subsequent traffic.