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Noted industry figure Dave Perry – you might know him as the guy who launched Earthworm Jim and about a hundred lesser-known movie-licensed games on the world – made giant waves in the gaming blogs yesterday with one little Twitter post that casually mentioned a late 2009 release date for the PSP2.  A PSP2 that will evidently be dropping Sony’s proprietary UMD technology in favor of digital distribution, delivery via magical unicorn farts, or some other undisclosed but decidedly non-physical media format.

The news itself isn’t all that stunning.  Presumably Sony, in some crazy scheme to turn a profit, will at some future point debut a successor to the PSP with enough shiny new features to make it necessary for gamers to upgrade from their old models.  And digital distribution of games is hardly groundbreaking news in a post-Steam/Xbox Live/Virtual Console world.  No, the real story is behind the story.

In what can only be described as a slow news day rush, the gaming news echo chamber breathlessly picked up the story and repeated them back and forth until a few lines in a Twitter post from a guy who claims to know somebody who can’t be named that works in Sony about the possibility of a new handheld console maybe coming out in late 2009 with a chance of no UMD suddenly became a cautious absolute certainty.  Sure, the blogs tried to play both sides by mentioning that it wasn’t confirmed, but just look at the way everything from Perry’s Tweet is repeated as being almost as good as gospel.

The real headline should have been “Earthworm Jim Developer Gets 15 More Minutes With Baseless Speculation and Self-Aggrandizement,” not “PSP2 Due Out Tomorrow (Perry Sez).”  Gaming news sites have long been in the habit of repeating speculation and gossip as hard news.  Hell, I’ve been the cause of a few of those echo chamber malfunctions in my day.  But all this excitement over what is nothing more than unverifiable hearsay is a bit extreme even by gaming news blog standards.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go have a long talk with John Romero about Sony’s marketing strategy for the Playstation 4 and then it’s off to golf with Richard Garriott where we’re slated to discuss the Wii2 that he totally swears his father’s brother’s son’s cousin’s former roommate from Japan claims is coming out yesterday.  Honest.

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So, when I wrote up the previous post about EGM closing, I had actually written it just as this whole situation started, but prior to the list of names of people getting fired spawned from the madness. I could drop a link to the article on UGO, but nah. I don’t really feel like linking to a “gaming news website” who’s idea of good content are Top 20 Hottest Video Game Babe lists.

But I will yank some snippits to comment on. Like this gem:

“First of all, let me come out and say that there is no other gaming site like 1UP. Unlike some of the lumbering, impersonal behemoths out there, 1UP is all about its personalities…” So, you decided to embrace those personalities by firing most of them? Hell, from the looks of things at least some of the people fired didn’t even know they were getting axed.

So what does this mean in the long run? Well, if you’re a fan of Jeremy Parish or Garnett Lee you’ll still have some small reason to check it out. If, however, you were more a fan of personalities like Nick Suttner, Phillip Kollar, Anthony Gallegos or anybody else in this huge list who got axed you’ll just have to wait. Rumors of a new podcast to take the place of 1Up FM are springing forth, claiming a name of Rebel FM and a release date of Thursday, January 8th.

If you’re like me, you didn’t want to deal with the massive explosion of everything in the 1Up Forums, and may have left in search of a more stable community. I invite all of the level-headed contributors to join Giant Bomb’s forums and IRC channel. It feels quite like home.

Also, make a point to check out Eat. Sleep. Game. over at their website of the same name. They look to be welcoming Suttner and Kollar into the fold — which means they’re one of my new favorite websites. From the look of things, the gears are freshly oiled and ready to go, so I expect a buttload of content to come from there in no time.

To everybody who suddenly found themselves without a job because of this UGO thing — you have my sympathy, but I hope you all were writing for the same reason I write — because it’s what you love to do. I’m sure it’ll all work out in the end.

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Well, it looks like it’s official. Electronic Gaming Monthly has come to an end.

“You may have heard the rumors in the past, but today the announcement we’ve all been waiting for has officially come: UGO Entertainment and parent Hearst Corporation have acquired 1UP and its associated sites GameVideos.com, MyCheats.com, and GameTab.com. 1UP and its sites now join UGO’s network of gaming properties that will reach over 40 million monthly unique visitors. UGO and 1UP representatives commented on the deal:

“Since we started UGO 11 years ago, we have served the gamer community and built a world-class online publishing platform,” said J Moses, CEO of UGO Entertainment. “The acquisition of 1UP, with its authentic voice, tenured editorial personalities and bustling user community, allows us to expand our base of quality content and represents a major step forward in UGO’s mission to become the leader in the games space.”

“We are extremely excited to join the UGO team,” said Sam Kennedy, editorial director and creator of 1UP. “Relying on UGO’s publishing platform will allow us to focus on what we do best?creating great content and ‘owning the conversation’ among gamers through our unique, authentic and definitive voice and community.”

Obviously, there are sure to be many questions as to what this deal means for the day to day of 1UP and its sites. To those, we can only say that we’ll continue to produce the very best gaming content and support the very best gaming community as we always have, only now we’ll have the backing of a fantastic publisher like UGO. Please join with us in celebrating this major news for 1UP.“*

Rumors of EGM closing have been circulating for a long while, based on Ziff Davis offering subscriptions to the magazine for $1/issue. Now it appears that UGO is purchasing most of the online properties excluding FileFront.com, and EGM isn’t part of the deal.

So long, Electronic Gaming Monthly. It’s been a good run.

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