Xbox is planning to show X, Y and Z at the Gaming Convention Awards
Why does Xbox always leak? From games like Avowed having pre-Alpha footage, to Hellblade II at the Game Awards, to Kojima + Xbox possibly being a thing when it was still in it’s infancy as an agreement.
We have Project Dragon and other games that have leaked way ahead of time.
Why is Xbox so damn leaky?
Nintendo and Sony go to the ends of the Earth to stop or minimize leaks, yet it seems every week something about Xbox leaks out.
How does Sony keep this shit on lockdown with things like Wolverine and yet the Grubbmesiter knows about a Kojima + Xbox game in it’s incredibly early infancy? How does Jez get PRE-ALPHA footage of a game in production when some people haven’t even seen stuff from Sony or Nintendo?
How can people know the ENTIRE E3 lineup weeks before E3 then continually tell people what will or will not be there?
I don’t know much about this so I can’t offer anything more than this: but I’ve heard that Microsoft has always done this even since the '90s with Windows.
I had read this a long time ago and I forget where I read it from. It was also painted as if it was a positive thing. As in, this was done in a fashion to generate hype or something.
Stuff like the Series S though, that seemed uncontrolled. It’s still generated more hype, it seems, when it was leaked in the fashion that it was.
I’d argue Xbox isn’t any more or less leaky than Sony
There’s stuff that gets kept under wraps with Sony, same way there’s stuff that gets kept under wraps with Xbox. I mean, you mention Wolverine and yet Jaffe clearly knew.
Even I got told there was something Marvel at Sony’s show, just didn’t know what it was.
Nintendo is probably the tightest ship, but even they still get plenty of leaks.
But a lot of it simply depends on who is leaking what and to whom. Also, who is trustworthy. Like, I’ve sat on stuff for months and months and months without seeing it leak out. Which would suggest not many know and for that reason, I’m told not to say.
If there’s one thing I see a lot, it’s that when a source tells me something, they tell me to hold off until “more people know” so it avoids tracing back to them or their source.
I found the leak that Jez and Brad found for the Series S and X pricing and it was legit anyone could find it lol that was a big oof and that’s why they both leaked it because sooner or later someone else would and steal the scoop.
Like, I was told some info about the Last of Us 2 Multiplayer in April of LAST year. I’ve still said nothing about it and as far as I’m aware, the info has changed repeatedly since, so luckily I didn’t say anything.
For me it’s not the patience, it’s more excitement(?). Like the vast majority of stuff I have is what I would consider “Good” or “Exciting” stuff. It’s stuff I wanna share because it’s good.
The other side of it is watching people debate and speculate all the while knowing and not being able to say. It’s hard to resist the urge to debunk or confirm stuff that you see being spoken about.
I’m also in the unique situation where all my info is 100% reliant on other sources which comes via Discord or Twitter DMs. Jez, Klob h0x0d and a few others have more concrete stuff. They appear to have (or had) some kind of real access to documentation and such. I don’t. I just have my DMs. Sometimes stuff doesn’t pan out/changes or gets delayed.
I mean, I try to be as open as I’m allowed to be, to the point of even sometimes showing my DMs.
I’ve seen some what looks like throwaway twitter accounts posting stuff, but have been right on some things and wrong on a lot of other things so I’m not even sure if they know shit or not lol
The most common way for things to leak is by having people at the company be friends with people outside the company. The media and enthusiasts have a lot more friends inside American and European companies than they do Japanese companies - although Sony’s game division is increasingly an American dominated enterprise too.
I’d also say that a lot of good sources inside Microsoft must have been cultivated in the older times when corporate morale was generally lower.
I am assuming you have a punching bag in your house - for all the occasions where you see ppl debating, and it pains you not to enter the conversation and clear it up (and risk exposing info prematurely).
If PR is involved the amount of documentation in the leak might be higher.
But with Nick, it might be a case of – let us not expose who the source is. The DMs etc indicate that this is pretty much informal, and someone risking their identities.
I have maintained that if MS wants to be like Apple in terms of strictly secretive, they can do it. The difference is that a lot of people give Apple a pass for every nonsense they are doing nowadays
MS has been through this path during the heydays of the 90s, and they won’t want to do it. Some things like acquisitions will still be close to the chest. But for a large swathe of cases they will still have a laissez faire attitude to it, and allow things to take their own course.
I feel like the people who leaky leak leaks secretly want Xbox to never get out of its slump. These leaks always come across as helping the brand but also placing landmines in front of Xbox’s return to greatness. We should all want them to succeed but this isn’t helping, they need to do it themselves. #TheTruth#3AMThoughts
There is such a thing as a controlled leak, and while I don’t think all Xbox leaks are deliberate I have always suspected that some are.
A leak in a quiet news period can lead to Xbox dominating the news cycle with no effort or expense on Xbox marketing’s side. It can also be used to gauge audience reaction; they leak something and people react badly to it, they can course-correct and they never actually did it in the first place – it was just an unfounded rumour.
EDIT: look at the Jez/Awowed leak. MS aren’t ready to show Avowed footage publicly yet, but someone has given Jez a video of pre-Alpha footage. He agrees not to show it, but his story on it and has created a massive hype cycle for the game in an otherwise quiet news period.
I’m not suggesting that he received what he received directly from MS, but these things can be done in such a way that MS could instigate him receiving it. Risk on MS’ part: 0. Publicity: massive.
Hard to imagine people inside Xbox are gnashing their teeth at the Jez article. Sarah Bond even replied to his tweet on it.
