Before you start reading, I want to point out this thread shall be nuked, if it turns out to be inappropriate. Please point out, if you found some research-related mistakes. Garratt, feel free to respond.
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So here we go.
sigh. Update:
Why is that crap?
There are plenty of sites, of a more professional nature that have contributors that display shocking displays of bias in all sorts of directions.
Maybe I was harsh in so much as VGLeaks is big news at the moment but singling out one site for this effort can be taken as someone who does not agree with that bias / agenda settling a score.
Not this "other do it too" crap again. Its not a reason to shut your mouth up, its a reason to say something. If you have a problem with people getting called out, while others are not... you know what... than call them out!
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In the
"VG247: Have the tides turned on Microsoft?" thread, now re-titled "VG247 writer with long-term agenda, sketchy at best credibility: "Xbox is doomed!!!"", we all can read how convinced Patrick Garratt, creator of VG247 and writer for Eurogamer and Huffington Post, is, that PS4 will succeed and furthermore, how much in trouble the upcoming Xbox already is. A little bit early you may think or how Stumpokapow put it:
yeah this is a really premature and hyperbolic editorial
Later in the thread, Currygan pointed out that Patrick Garratt already his very special Sony articles track-record. That caught my interest and was start of my research. Well, how right he was.
First:
His article about the X360 reveal. Under the headline " Xbox 360 fails to convince in LA " (pretty similiar to the headline he produced now, isn´t it?) he summed his feelings up.
Positive pundits will obviously say that the announcement is significant. The more cynical will say that Square merely wants to make more money and why on earth would Sony care about FFXI appearing on Live now? It means nothing, they'll say. If they'd made this announcement when they launched Live, that would have been significant, they'll say. Wada showed a real-time tech demo to pep things up a little, of an ornate pier at sunset, a dragon flying over a lake. Very pretty, but not mind-blowing.
Which is a shame, because Sony's PlayStation 3 announcement this afternoon certainly was. The machine's spec has left experts watchers stunned. Read this and this and this. Xbox 360 was on the back foot before the Microsoft conference even started, and considering what Sony showed, Microsoft's new beast suddenly looks flat, from a games sense at least. The Live stuff, as we've said, looked brilliant. But the games simply didn't give the air of being truly "next gen".
Bach rounded up saying 360 will reach "new markets across the world," not millions of users but tens of millions. "We will truly redefine what it means to have fun."
From where we were sitting, the reality isn't matching the dream. Microsoft got on stage tonight and promised nothing short of entertainment revolution, games and concept far beyond anything yet conceived. Maybe they just don't have what it takes to create what they see in their mind's eye. Maybe no one does. Or, Microsoft's worst cased scenario, maybe Sony does.
You may think, yeah its fanboyism, but how should he know how wrong he is. It was pre-release. True that. But...
He was even wrong, when he had to face the obvious truth.
Second:
One of his, pardon me, dumbest articles, was
PS Vita shines as Tokyo Game Show's star, but Nintendo's 3DS has already gone supernova
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In this article, he was reporting about the TGS shows of Nintendo and Sony.
One excerpt:
Iwata's TGS trump was confirmation that the next in the Monster Hunter series - an 18 million unit-selling handheld phenomenon in Japan traditionally played on Sony's PSP, will release apparently exclusively on 3DS.
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If there was ever a clear indication that 3DS's time has already passed, it was that the crowd refused to even applaud Iwata until the Monster Hunter announcement.
Silly isn´t it?
Gamer @ Heart take on it:
He reports on a conference in japan. Ignorant of Japanese culture, confuses lack of applause for audience disdain, ignores reveals of high profile japanese sellers. Some how forgets that they clapped because Nintendo secured THE BIGGEST GAMING PHENOM IN THE COUNTRY right now.
We are done. We need to close this thread before people start to take it seriously and discuss this....again.
Patrick Garratt summarized his feelings with the following lines:
3DS imploding, Vita burning bright: expect Sony to confirm western launch details in the coming months.
Fun fact: While he was writing this, 3DS sales went high due to announced games and price drop, while Vita dropped under 10 000.
Another country, but the reality twisting remained. In the article "UK charts: Vita takes one and two with Uncharted and FIFA" he suggested that
Uncharted: Golden Abyss has overtaken UFC Undisputed 3 as number one in the UK charts, signaling a strong start for PlayStation Vita in the UK.
In the comment section he went even further:
Im really pleased. Very positive. I hope the hardware figures are good.
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Just been told Vitas sales figures for the UK. Strong. I cant publish them because theyre owned by Chart-track, but its good.
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Its comparable to 3DS. Be interesting to see what Sony announces, because the Chart-track figure and the figure Nintendo finally announced for 3DS was very different.
It bombed hard.
Update:
Oh yeah, I remember that crap he posted about Vita's UK launch sales. I emailed him to ask about the discrepancy between his comments and what PocketGamer was reporting, and he refused to provide any explanation.
Didn't realize at the time that this was part of what looks like a fairly blatant pattern of fanboy bias. No doubt he and Sam Bishop would get along swimmingly.
What makes this whole thing so extra-bitter, is that Garratt was responsible for "
Doritosgate after the storm, lets clean ourselves up".
No flights or hotels. Well no longer accept flights and payment for hotels from third-parties.
No hospitality. No more free bars. I mean, Im sure therell be free bars. But our employees wont be drinking at them. This rule also includes food. As of now, VG247 staff will buy their own vittles when theyre in the field wherever possible. If, for whatever reason, a VG247 staffer eats or drinks at the expense of a publisher, itll be disclosed.
Any gift over £50 disclosed. We regularly get sent promotional materials by games publishers. From now on, all swag will be either given away on the site or through social media, or donated to charity. This doesnt include games, or at least it doesnt include all of them. We need to play games a lot, and the only way we can keep up is through promos.
No engagement in publisher-held competitions. VG247 staff will never again enter a competition hosted by a publisher or platform-holder.
Any coverage resulting from press trips to be disclosed. Self-explanatory. If we do decide that were going to pay our own way to attend a publisher promo event, well clearly say so in any resulting copy.
Writers will never report on companies or products in which they have financial interest, or on companies which employ family members or close friends. Most games journalists have friendly relationships with some publisher PR. As of now, those friendships will prevent staff members from writing about any related companys products. Similarly, our staff will now not write about products and companies in which they have a vested interest: this includes any crowd-sourced projects they may have backed.
We will always protect the identity of our sources. VG247′s sources will never be disclosed it they speak to us under condition of anonymity. Its normal that VG247 journalists sources arent even divulged internally.
A note on advertising. VG247 is always likely to be primarily funded by video games advertising, for reasons I hope are blatantly obvious. We will never carry advertorial. Our ads our sold by Eurogamer Networks sales team, which is based in Brighton, UK, and is independent to VG247′s editorial staff.
You may wonder why I highlighted this part. Well, back in the day, this happened:
The best example of a guy making junk up was on CVG.com. That guy Pat Garratt wrote a story about a game conference in Japan that featured Hideo Kojima. Anyway, Garratt wrote it in the first-person and claimed to have actually attended the conference.
As it turns out, Garratt didn't attend the event because it didn't happen. When confronted by this news by Daily Radar (of all places) as well as some other sites, Garratt explained it all away as a translation error.
