And yes, I did mean to put the word “is” in the title in all caps, to stress it.

By now you know about the GT5 load time video that Kotaku ran with without checking the source or anything else (again) that SMG Gamers exposed perfectly. However, this is one of three stories that Kotaku has ran within the week about GT5, and none are stories that put the game in any good light. It does seem like Kotaku is doing something to sabotage the game’s cred. Even their attitude towards learning that the video was doctored shows some sight that they didn’t want to believe it. And this is after Brian Credente called the majority of their Sony coverage “positive”.

 The other two stories (which all one needs to do to find them is look on the sidebar of the page of the load time video story on Kotaku’s site):

• Europe’s GT5 Collector’s Edition Is Ridiculously Expensive (posted August 4, 2010 by Luke Plunkett)
• So Gran Turismo 5 Isn’t Done Yet (posted August 9, 2010 by Brian Ashcraft)

Only the latter had any positive comments in the story about it from the author (“The studio probably could work on GT5 forever, perfecting and polishing. At this year’s E3 gaming expo, the designer said that the game might have “too much” detail. GT fans wouldn’t have it any other way.”), and even THAT could be taken as a negative, depending on how you read it.

No one is saying that Kotaku CAN’T be a checks and balances to the game industry (after all, they swamped us with the Red Ring of Death stories when we first heard about the 360′s epidemic), and no one’s saying that Kotaku should just ignore something that Sony is legitimately doing wrong. But take into account their trashing of Hideo Kojima in the weeks prior to the release of Metal Gear Solid 4. And lest we forget about the Home debacle that we’ve heard so much about, and we hope no one ever forgets that Kotaku did. People keep bringing it up for a reason.

We also bring up, for a reason, the story that I did back in September of 09, when Credente, when pushed by me to answer a question (I stand by and will defend the nature as to how I got those answers, by the way; I pushed Credente for a reason) that the majority of their PS3 Slim articles were “positive”, when I asked about the nature of their coverage about the PS3 as a whole.

And then we get these three stories from Kotaku, one by someone besides Ashcraft (thought this whole scheme was by just the usual suspect at Kotaku, did you?), the doctored video story having the words, “Update: Some readers have pointed out that this video may be slowed to give the appearance of longer load times. Make of it what you will!” Didn’t seem as though Kotaku didn’t want it to be fake.

I call on Credente to answer to this story, and he knows how to get in touch with me, because we all deserve an explanation as to why this had to be…AGAIN!

http://www.gamenewser.net/?p=122

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So is this just inaccurate journalism or is there something fishy going on!