Halo DS: It's a hoax, kids

January 7th, 2007, 19:09 Posted By: wraggster

via haloinformer

So, for the past couple days, the web has been abuzz about Halo for DS. According to Matt Casamassina at IGN, Halo was once being ported to the DS. (You can read his blog entry here) Not entirely unbelievable, as Microsoft isn't competing in the handheld market, and a few other Microsoft properties have come to Nintendo handhelds. (A few Rareware games for the GBA come immediately to mind.) However, I'm calling BS on this one.

1) Post date. January 4th? 1/4? Turn it around and it not-so-suprisingly becomes 4/1, or April 1st. Not exactly proof, but for a story this unbelievable, well...

2) If this was actually in development, and IGN editors had copies of this to play, you can bet they would have not had second thoughts about breaking this story. It would have been (quite literally) one of the biggest stories of the year. The fact that it has only now come to be mentioned, after its supposed 'cancellation,' and on a editors blog no less, gives it away even more.

However, are we to rule it out as a simple prank, or a test? I've actually never paid attention to Matt at IGN before, so I'm not sure how the guy acts on IGN, but I wouldn't be suprised if it was a publicity test to see how much people actually want to see Halo on DS.

In fact, I wouldn't be suprised if there actually were talks to put Halo on DS. But an actual playable preview release, but no major story or preview on IGN? A massive scoop, but they don't post anything about it. Especially considering how publishers don't send preview code for games that are cancelled. I'm calling bull. Especially considering Matt posted a fake mock-up. Certainly, you'd think there would be at least one camera in IGN's offices.

Oh, by the way folks, Matt is on vacation. Hrm. Havn't we seen this before?


Update: Just wanted to point a few things out that I didn't emphasize on enough. Perhaps I should have put the entire thing in bold, but people don't read, apparently.

- Nowhere does it state MS will never put it on DS, nor does it state they are against putting anything on DS. In fact, read the first sentence of the second-to-last paragraph up there. Or the second portion of the first paragraph.
- Matt has apparently had other editors post pranks on his account before. In fact, I think I also pointed that out above.
- Of course it is speculation.
- The focus of the article isn't "Matt is a lying *insert insult here*" but rather why it is a safe bet this playable code never existed. Had there been any sort of hands-on play of this game, it would have been all-over IGN. And had the game been cancelled before it was supposedly played, it wouldn't have been played because PR reps don't mail out previewable code for cancelled games. I don't know how much more bluntly I can state that.

Dumbasses, I swear.

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