I lovez teh rumorz!

[gekko]

Matt responds: The "megaton" announcement. It's impossible to avoid it, quite frankly, as every other message on the boards is about it. Everyone has their own breakdown of what it could be, from some grand merger of companies to an announcement of ground-shaking new games, or even that Nintendo has some new technology in the works that will destroy the competition. There's even talk of Nintendo gaining rights to the PlayStation brand. Or something like that, anyway. The problem is, there's been no proof -- of any of it.

I'm fairly certain this "megaton" hype all stems from a single report in a less popular Japanese magazine. Later, some websites alleged that Famitsu confirmed that a big announcement was coming. Interestingly, though, our own guys in Japan said they couldn't find these confirmations anywhere in the magazines. So who knows? Surely not me.

I called NOA about it last week in hopes that perhaps it knew something, but it didn't. Which could, by the way, mean nothing, but it's not encouraging. I was told that no big announcements were planned before the end of the year. So go figure. NOA's Perrin Kaplan told me today: "There is no announcement that we're aware of."

I'd really like to believe that something huge is in the works. And all of these brilliant speculations about Nintendo canceling Space World so that it could instead drop the "megaton," so to speak, have me hoping there's some truth to it. But for now I'm going to remain the skeptic so that, if nothing happens by the end of the year, I won't be disappointed.

If I do hear anything, obviously readers will be the first to know.