Among the things that never fails to amuse me is the power of a corporation to play coy. Take this week at CES, for example, when Microsoft general manager Chris Satchell decided to try and cockblock the 360 HDMI rumors in an interview with Gamespot.

Gamespot: “What can you tell us about the HDMI-enabled Xbox 360 rumors that have been going around?”

Chris Satchell: “We’re always working on prototypes and new technologies and just playing with stuff in Redmond to see what’s interesting. I think at the moment we have the widest available connections on the system. If you want to get great HD, I think we’ve got a good solution for that. In the future it’s interesting to see where standards evolve to. I think one of the problems that the whole industry, us and entertainment, are facing at the moment is we’re in this world where standards are evolving very quickly.”

“At the moment, everything you might have seen is just looking at our experimentation back in Redmond, not really a product that we’re thinking about announcing.” (emphasis mine)

“Experimentation?” He makes it sound like a couple of Xbox devs got their hands on some screwdrivers and snuck into the shed out back when J Allard wasn’t looking one afternoon. This is not experimentation. Experimentation is what you did back in college with a couple tabs of ecstasy and another dude. When you produce enough HDMI-capable Xbox 360s that they can be safely leaked to the public from someone’s home, that’s called pre-market testing.

I understand that corporations need to keep these sorts of things secret until they can be unveiled. I’m no MBA and many of the subtle nuances are lost on me, but it’s not hard to imagine how leaks can tip competitors hands, affect stock prices, etc. To that end, being coy is always going to be a somewhat standard strategy. However, I think that attempting this level of deflection after full videos have already leaked onto the net makes you look a bit stupid. Reading Satchell’s comments, all I can think about is the song “It Wasn’t Me.” When a spouse or parent walks in on you when the bra is off and you’ve got a hand down her pants, the time for inventive excuses has already passed.

Here’s the thing, though: We’ve already got established language to handle these sorts of scenarios. When that mean, scary ol’ reporter looks you in the eye and asks you about the blatant, obviously true gossip, you fold your arms behind your back, stare down at the one toe that’s nervously scuffing the floor in front of you and say “We don’t comment on rumors.” Then we all wink and chuckle at each other and go on with business as usual. We’re not that fucking stupid, after all.

Oh. God. Yes. The 2D Worms games have been among some of my favorite ever, and now it looks like they’re making their way to XLA. Does this indicate the presence of an omnipotent, guiding hand? We can’t rule it out. Stolen shamelessly from Gaming 360:

“Actually, MS did contact us about this last year and there have been forward moving discussions. We do see it as a pivotal and perhaps ideal place for the series to land, a view shared by various XB360 Live Arcade planning folks.

However, for one reason and another (to be honest, mainly our obligations with PSP/DS) the development didn’t happen (actually we were on the XBLA dev list around E3 time) but now that we’ve experienced just how awesome XB Live is on 360, we’ve resurrected the conversations. I wouldn’t expect it anytime shortly (and it won’t be a quick port of Armageddon etc) but it is on the agenda.

Also, if it did make it, it’d be a 2D version with a lot of downloadable content - which is something Live Arcade is very cool about.”

Marvelous. What XLA needs now is some turtles. I was thinking mutant ones, preferably between the ages of 13 and 19. If there’s time left over, make them ninjas.

Dear Gaming News Media,

Please stop reporting it as news when an online retailer lists a release date or price point for a hot game or console before anything has been announced by the publisher. It’s not real, and they don’t know anything that you don’t know. I can assure you from personal experience that it is a freakishly rare event for game publishers to share any vital non-public information with retailers, and in most cases the media learns of it first anyway. The reason these websites sometimes have the information listed before anyone else is that they want the thing in their catalog as early as possible to start taking pre-orders, and frequently some lackey along the chain had to randomly invent a number to fill in a required database field.

EB Games doesn’t know when Halo 3 is being released. Amazon doesn’t know the price of the PS3. There is no game retailer secret information conspiracy, so please knock it the fuck off. Thanks.

Sincerely,
S. Monkey

Adventure gaming site adventuregamers.com (A gaming site about adventure games and, presumably, adventurous gamers), is now your shining beacon of light.

Telltale Games disclosed tonight what many adventure fans have been waiting to hear for over a year: Sam & Max is making a comeback.

I shouldn’t have to be the one to tell you this, but this is the most important thing of your life. I don’t care if you just witnessed your firstborn emerging from your/its mother’s womb (already hating you and demanding 20 bucks and the car keys). This is THE MOST IMPORTANT THING OF YOUR LIFE. Not this, not this, probably not this and definitely not this.

“Please, Sam - don’t ever use the word ‘acumen’ again…”

We’re going to call this strictly rumor at this point, and we’re running out of salt quick.

A “blog author,” has invented stolen come across a set of specs for the Revolution and was even kind enough to post them on his site. No way at present to confirm this, so we’ll just have to wait and see who complains and how loud, if at all.

Rumored Nintendo Revolution Specs:

2 G5 1.8GHZ CPUS

512K L2 Cache

1200 MHZ Front Side BUS

600MHz GPU with 12MB embedded 1T SRAM

128MB 1T SRAM MAIN MEMORY 600 MHz (L3 Cache to CPU and GPU)

256MB 400MHZ NEC design embedded DRAM

Embedded 16-BIT HD 7.1 Digital sound chip

Dedicated sound bandwidth with zero affect on CPU

6GB HD Dual Layer Panasonic Discs

When combined Rev CPUs equal 3.6 GHz.

A 3:1 balance ratio between CPU and RAM

1:1 balance ratio between GPU and RAM