Not to pick on Reuters because as far as I can tell they are typical of many other “news” services but since their technology news is part of my internet home page I see them more. I used to have a lot of respect for them but I’ve noticed something and that is that a lot of their news is actually PR BS that they’re spoon fed and don’t bother to check.
Example, remember when the Microsoft spin doctors put out that non-news release about how they had “won” the console war by being the first to reach 10M in NA sales and that traditionally (not any tradition I’ve heard about) whoever gets there first “wins”. Down in the fine print you might, if you were a very observant reader notice that they had a full year’s head start and still hardly had time to get out the press release before the Wii blew by them. This was a total non-event, non-news, PR spin that should never have been printed but it certainly was. It was a headline story, verbatim of the MS release.
Xbox 360 sales surpass Wii, PS3
Thu May 15, 2008 8:15am EDT
SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) said on Wednesday its Xbox 360 game machine beat Nintendo Co Ltd's (7974.OS: Quote, Profile, Research) Wii and Sony Corp's (6758.T: Quote, Profile, Research) PlayStation 3 to reach 10 million units in U.S. sales."History has shown us that the first company to reach 10 million in console sales wins the generation battle," Don Mattrick, a Microsoft senior vice president who heads the company's Xbox business, said in a statement.
The Xbox 360 was the first of this latest generation of game machines to launch in the United States when it was released in November 2005. The PS3 and Wii were launched in the United States a year later.The Wii is closing in on the Xbox 360, with 8.8 million units sold as of the end of March, while Sony has totaled 4.1 million PS3 units sold, according to market research firm NPD.
Microsoft also said global membership of its Xbox Live online service reached 12 million members
Now that a real event has occurred and Nintendo has taken the lead in every region including NA without a head start, is there a mention? Even on page 12? NADA! Meaning that they have no one actual watching and reporting at all; they must sit around on their fat butts waiting for some corporate mouth piece to write the news for them.
This is not the Reuters I used to respect.
