Listen to the show, if you haven't. I just did to get clarification. Peer is very confident about hardware but he doesn't know exactly what type of hardware. Otero told him to chill and not get carried away with what he was hearing. I assume one guy hearing about some non-descript hardware from an old ex-Nintendo employee and a third-party acquaintance isn't enough for a story. If Peer knew exactly what was gonna be shown instead and his sources were current Nintendo employees IGN might run the story.
I'm not assuming his statement was confirmation of a new 3DS, Wii U, or some new console. He was just saying new hardware. That would be some sort of QoL device, or a new controller, or something totally different; it's not really relevant what the hardware is. It's the statement that hardware was called "absolute," but is now evidently not actually reliable.
It's a conversation, and sometimes we get carried away. Peer did make the above argument, but we also framed the discussion around the context that we weren't sure. Unfortunately, the author made no effort to convey that in his news story.
If we believed what we'd heard, you wouldn't have found out about it on another site. We would have run that story ourselves. Just food for thought.
It may well have been a conversation, and that's fine. However, the statement, "They're absolutely going to show new hardware this year," isn't an argument, and it certainly doesn't sound like there's any uncertainty in it. If you believe in context this still should have been understood as speculation, that's fine. However, it's difficult to imagine a more certain statement than, "They're absolutely going to show new hardware this year." I don't think you can blame people for taking a statement like that and running with it.
Edit: For the record, all I'm really saying is that if people don't want to be quoted, they should be careful with what they say.
