A title like that is something that grabs the attention of people and many will assume that it means, Microsoft pays off Kotaku to write pro posts while bashing their competition. Now sure, I can go write a fairly anti Microsoft and Kotaku post and just briefly mention the fact that by paid off, I could simply have meant the fact that Microsoft puts up paid advertisement on Kotaku, but if you run a site that gets thousands and thousands of hits per day, the damage would have been done by the deceitful article headline.

That seems to be the problem with Kotaku. I’m really at the end of the day not sure if its the fact that they are indeed paid by Microsoft, poor journalist, a site thats lacking for more attention or personal biast but I’ll let you be the judge of it.  As of today, out of the 10 posts that were mentioned on their websites main page(and I’ve stated this before, I hate to cover gaming content because there are so many websites that do it, but I couldn’t help but write something about this), 4 of these titles read as “Lost & Damned “Outsells Killzone 2”, Gives Us Sales Ballpark”. “So, How Many People Have Used PlayStation Home?”, “Sony Want Profits, Not Market Share” and “Publishers Unhappy With PlayStation Network Bandwidth Fees”. Of course, one would maybe say that its been a bad news day for Sony and all companies have ups and downs but in fact, its been a no news day. Better yet, this is not an anomaly, but how Kotaku tends to write on a daily bases, because after looking at those headlines, if I were Sony, i’d start to question myself too.

But to truly get to the heart of this matter, we need to look deeper into these headlines to see the angle that Kotaku comes from. In the article titled “Lost & Damned “Outsells Killzone 2”, Gives Us Sales Ballpark”, it seems very clear that this is aimed at slandering Sonys big gun for the PS3, Killzone 2. Now 60% of this article is a quote from Microsoft’s Aaron Greenberg, stating that  that GTA4 expansion is “the most successful game addon content we’ve ever launched” – saying “If that content was sold at retail, it would be one of the best sellers across all platforms. It would have outsold Killzone 2”. So with a read, this leads to the assumption that wow, Microsoft is indeed holding it’s own against the big launch of Sony and that maybe Killzone 2 didn’t deliver what it was intending on doing. Now, Kotaku does atleast come out and point that Lost & Damned came out 2 weeks into February while Killzone 2 only came out the last 2 days of February, but thats conveniently left to the very end of the article. Again, after that headline and 60% of the article, devoted to an exec from Microsoft, damage is done. But, funny how they also forget to mention that Killzone 2 happens to carry a $60 price tag that we all know, but that Lost and Damned is only a $20 title. I wonder if that plays into the equation?

Hit the MagicGate to read the rest of the article.

This so far is just one example of an article that is designed to bash and or de-leverage the PlayStation 3. From there, Kotaku goes on to another article titled “Publishers Unhappy With PlayStation Network Bandwidth Fees”. Again, just from that headline, we go to the fact that wow, many Publishers are not happy with how Sony is handling PSN. Maybe this means that we wont see as much content on Sonys system and thats exactly how Kotaku finishes off their article by stating “keep an eye on what DLC shows up on the PlayStation Network, and hope publishers don’t start holding things back in response to the unpopular new policy.” Again, doom! For the PlayStation 3. Now, the gist of the article is that Sony charges 16cents per gigabyte for content that developers put on their network and some developers think that this fee is too high. We are of course, given a quote from the developer . “It definitely makes us think about how we view the distribution of content related to our games when it is free for us to do it on the web, on Xbox Live, or any other way – including broadcast – than on Sony’s platform,” one publishing source said. “It’s a new thing we have to budget. It’s not cool. It sucks.”

So what’s wrong with the following article? Well, as stated before, the title really does the real damage right there. A blow to Sony. But, funny how the article claims publishers, plural, meaning, more then one, yet we have just a quote to go by. So is it then just 1 publisher? Or are many upset at this policy. Who is this publisher because it’s one thing for EA or Activision to be upset, versus just a smaller, one time publishers because at the end of the day, you cant keep everybody happy is the truth. But from there, the article also never goes to point out, who this publisher is. But further from there, ok, Sony charges the publisher 16 cents per Gigabyte, but what does Microsoft charge? If Microsoft dosent charge, anything, what are the fee’s associated with keeping content on Live? Does MS pull the plug, pending popularity, how much profit does MS take on each sale versus Sony? These are all fair questions to pose because everybody is out here to make a buck and thats how the system works. Heck, Apple takes 30% of all profits from their App Store but nobody is really complaining because then Apple grants them access to millions of iPhone and iPod Touch users. And thats the last problem with the given article. The PS3 may indeed be behind in units sold, compared to the 360, but, every single PS3 has the capability to connect to PSN for free versus the $60 Microsoft charges for live and also, every single PS3 comes with a hard drive, meaning they can actually download content where from day one, all the lower end 360 models, to this day, do not have a hard drive and cannot download stuff, making them useless to publishers. Also, we have to keep in mind that every single PSP can access PSN again for free and download content. Your telling me that this, somehow dosen’t make PSN more attractive then Live? Did we mention PSN does not give developers a size limit while Live does?

So in the end, Kotaku is more and more seeming like the Fox News of the gaming world. Taking headlines and quotes to promote and or gain attention to their cause and agenda, instead of taking a minute to note that it’s readers are smarter then that and deserve better then that.