Can you believe the rumours?
Since the turn of the year, the next-gen stories have been coming at you thick and fast. The question is, can you believe anything you read about machines that have yet to make it into production? After all, neither Sony or Microsoft have even announced their new hardware, let alone revealed the technical specifications. How can you trust the information you are reading? Perhaps we should assess the quality of the data we have available and explain why we have confidence in it.
From our perspective we see three different unique sources of information all saying much the same thing. Firstly, and most importantly, there are our own contacts in the games business, some of whom are working on next-gen console titles as we speak. Then there's the online "rumour network", where developers and ex-developers spill their secrets on online forums or share information privately where it eventually leaks onto the same message boards, often introducing inaccuracies or misinterpretations. Such sources need to be treated with caution, often influenced by wish fulfilment.
And finally there's the wild card - SuperDAE, arch-leaker extraordinaire, undeniably in possession of early dev kits and the crucial documentation that goes with them. From talking with him directly in order to verify his leaks, we know his information - typically posted on vgleaks.com - is entirely accurate, the only question being how old it is, and whether the hardware has improved since he received his data. He also has - somehow - hands-on access to non-final next-gen dev kits and his pictures of an older Durango dev kit having been verified by trusted sources.
In the case of the brush-strokes of the Durango and Orbis specs, not only do we have double-sourced information of our own, but we also have an extra form of backup in the form of these other leaks. Therefore, our belief is that the specs we are discussing are not only accurate, but very, very close - if not identical - to the make-up of the final hardware.