Prince of Persia leaps onto Wii?

August 4th, 2006, 15:14 Posted By: wraggster

Source: What appears to be a Ubisoft press release posted on French site Jeuxpo.com.

The official story: US Ubisoft reps directed inquires to the company's French representatives, who had not returned GameSpot's requests for comment (and were likely asleep, given the transatlantic time difference) as of press time. Attempts to contact Jeuxpo.com editors were also unsuccessful.

What we heard: Earlier today, a press release from Ubisoft went out to herald the company's commitment to releasing seven launch titles on the Nintendo Wii. However, it appears that not everyone received the same release.

French site Jeuxpo.com has posted a version of the press release en francais that mentions that a Prince of Persia game will be released for the Wii in March 2007. The Jeuxpo release is identical to the one on Ubisoft's official French-language Web site, with the exception of the Prince of Persia line in question. Instead of stating that the Prince of Persia franchise will appear on the Wii, it merely says that Ubisoft has other, unnamed games in development for the system. That's basically the same line used in the English-language release as well.

So what happened? The more paranoid theory is that Jeuxpo decided to fabricate mention of a Prince of Persia Wii game and slipped it into a Ubisoft press release. The other is that the information actually came from Ubi in an early draft of the release, which was revised at the last minute before hitting newswires.

Of the two, the latter scenario seems more plausible. Game-news outlets often get information under embargo about news that game companies will announce soon. The site agrees not to publish the news early so it can get the information and arrange to have its coverage ready to go when said embargo breaks. Sometimes the information is delivered in the form of press releases that aren't quite final and wind up being revised before the news is actually released. So it appears that Ubisoft released--and then retracted--the version of the announcement on Jeuxpo's site, or Jeuxpo had access to a copy that never was approved for release.

However, even if the news did come from Ubisoft, that doesn't necessarily mean it's accurate. The announcement and release date could have been omitted because the game's development status is in limbo. It seems unlikely that the existence of the game itself would be inaccurate, but its release date could very well be up in the air at the moment, enough so that the publisher wouldn't want to commit to a March launch.

Bogus or not bogus?: Though Jeuxpo's not a major game-news outlet, it seems unlikely that it would forge a press release, so this appears to be not bogus.

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