PSPricing

Man, it's easy to write headlines with PS in them.



Anyway, GameJournalism.com seems to have beat me to the punch with a write-up about recently circulated reports citing a $349 price point for the PSP. Game Journalism takes a skeptical stance and shows the whole affair to be a simple hoax propagated by speed-of-light Internet journalism.



Well, lots of folks fell for it, and it illustrates how "news" can travel around the Internet without ever being checked. It's important to note that it's not only gaming sites that are susceptible to this; supposedly "mainstream" media have made the same mistake. A nugget of information appears in an obscure corner of the Internet, and begins to circulate and build buzz, appearing on additional blogs and news aggregators. As the item moves up the food chain, the source appears increasingly credible. Before you know it, it's a news story on GCAdvanced.



I've covered similar hoaxes on this blog in the past, and I don't have much to add this time that can't be found in those posts or in Rich's GJ post.



I will say, though, that the same Internet technology that allows these rumors to spread maks it easy to follow the document trails and check the facts when hoaxes like these come up. Whether or not the truth is able to get a foothold once the lie has been publicized there is another matter entirely.