MISLEADING HEADLINE REVEALED! FULL DETAILS INSIDE!

Imagine my surprise when I visited Spong.com last Thursday (Sept. 25) to see this shocking headline:



"New Nintendo console revealed and named! Full details inside, first games announced"



I was shocked. I had assumed that Nintendo would wait until E3 to reveal any substantial information about their next console. Eager for more information on this possibly huge story, I scanned the sub-headline:



"Chinese move spawns new hardware"



This just baffled me further. What does China, usually a non-player in the video game market, have to do with the successor to the GameCube? I clicked the link...



Nintendo Japan has announced a new home console specifically designed for use in the piracy-riddled country of China."



As I continued to read about the announcement of the iQue -- a Chinese console based on N64 technology that is focused on preventing game piracy -- I wondered how anyone could write a headline that was so misleading.



While almost all other news outlets (both video-game-centric and conventional) managed to write headlines that were both informative and concise, Spong managed to craft a headline that is neither.



While the headline Spong wrote is technically accurate, no one without previous knowledge of the story is going to infer its intended meaning. When any sane, thoughtful person who follows video game news reads the words "New Nintendo console," they immediately start to think about the successor to Nintendo's GameCube. The author of this headline must have known this, just as they must have known that the real story here was Nintendo's move into China and not the fact that the "first games" for the system were going to be Chinese ports of old Super Mario Bros. titles.



Of course, the goal of this headline was probably not to provide clear information, but instead to get as many readers as possible to click the link without technically lying. And while Spong does get more adviews this way, they lose something more important in the long run: credibility. The next time I see a headline that seems to good to be true on Spong, I will probably click over to some other site that is less likely to inentionally skew the facts just to gain more readers.



A dishonorable mention goes to Gamerfeed for their story headlined "New Nintendo Console." Gamerfeed avoided winning the worst headline award by including a self-aware subhead -- "Click here to find out exactly why this title is misleading the reader!" -- and by posting a more clearly titled story -- "Nintendo's New Chinese Console Revealed" the next day. To be fair, Spong also had a follow-up story, but the headline "Nintendo's iQue, first hardware shots" fails to provide even basic information to someone who has not read the previous article.



Stuff I'm covering for the near future: FF7: Advent Children: How did some sites come to think this thing was a game and not a movie? Also, an overview of the coverage of GameCube's drop to $99 and a long overdue look at Gamerfeed's redesign in style and substance.