Inaccuracy of Cross System Title Information

Have you ever wondered how a gaming site actually recieves all its information, video clips and screen shots. I have never really given it much thought but after finding the truth behind a release that comes out today between the Wii and the XBox 360 and the differences between them, it really makes me wonder. Onechanbara: Bikini Zombie Slayers for Wii and its prequel Onechanbara: Bikini Samuri Squad for the XBox 360 have had the same screen shots, if not more or less, and the same preview clips all over the internet. This also includes strictly gaming sites. I have been trained to believe that the Wii graphics will suffer in any game thats 'also on' but to learn that there is less content is crazy. I've been feeding off everything I've heard about collecting items, customization of characters and even 5 characters instead of one and now I come to find out its all been added to XBox and not the Wii. Granted game play may be the same but to have less levels and less of a variety of levels. that sucks.

Let's face it. Part of this game is sex appeal. Sure I'm a guy and I'm a pervert for saying this but I want all the dirty extra costumes for the girls and I want the extra levels and characters and the sexy cut scenes! I know I am just one person but it all comes down to one thing. When information is passed onto a gaming site such as this**I am in no way blaming gamespot for this but it may occur on this site too** from a game developer, is it bunch as one file or is each game separated. Someone crosses the information and thus a gamer like me is given false information about the game and now when Bikini Zombie Slayer's comes in the mail tomorrow, I have no clue what I spent my money on. In these hard economic times, us gamers have to be careful with our gaming funds.

What is everyone elses take on the mixing up of information between games like the Onechanbara games and has anyone been screwed over like this? Share your story if you have one. Also, do you think there should be a new more accurate way of getting game preview data to us gamers?

This is the content of GameSpot's latest press release for Bikini Zombie Slayers:

Onechanbara: Bikini Zombie Slayers is the ultimate sword wielding battle between beauties and beasts! Available exclusively for the Wii, it features the return of Aya and Saki, sexy samurai sisters who are the last hope against a killer zombie onslaught!

Features

• Sword-swinging action optimized for the Wii-mote and nunchuck
• Deep combat system on the ground and air with combos, upgrades, and an adrenaline filled rage mode
• Exploration across a vast city complete filled with zombies and killer boss battles
• 2-player split-screen multiplayer

It's pretty clear that this press release refers specifically to the Wii version, and does not make reference to features not present in that game.

The screenshots make it pretty clear that they're different games too.

Wii screenshot:

Xbox 360 screenshot:

EBgames says my copy just shipped (Yay!)

but, to answer your question. At least with the screenshots, I'd say it's more on the publisher/developer. Take Assassin's Creed. I think it was the first E3 AC appeared, in the Sony booths, those demos were actually run on 360 hardware (or so I was told later on from someone at Ubi). See, the game had been designed on the 360 initially, but there was a period where Ubisoft and Sony were working on a possible exclusivety deal - of course that fell through. But there were probably a few media entities that capped some screens on that footage and posted as the PS3 visuals. Not their fault; I don't think they would have known.

Also, I don't know how they do it now, but when I used to write for a website, we'd get a "press pass" from the publisher that would let us access an area of the site that held offical press releases and screenshots. This is why a lot of places have the same screenshots, because it's the publisher that makes them available, then a site would grab them, typically watermark them, and post them for the public. But we were all drawing from the same well, for the most part. We weren't a huge site, and I imagine that bigger sites like this might have been getting a little more from the publishers...but, I'd put it on the publishers. They're the ones that make the info available and most certainly they are opportunistic about it. This is why I would suggest ignoring anything short of hands-on impressions when looking at a preview. So many times you find stuff released about a game and it never materializes.