A Big AAA publisher is questioning why they are putting games on Xbox, but we don't know who the publisher is or what game(s) they are talking about.

Indie developers are saying the "gold mine" that is (was?) Game Pass is drying up when it comes to funding. But again we don't know who these developers are, what games they can't get funding for or what they were even hoping for to begin with.

In the last month or so every single game in Xbox's first party library has seemingly been confirmed to be in development for rival PlayStation by everyone attempting to be an insider (yet only 4 have actually been confirmed....so far).

If you are exhausted reading all these speculation and rumours I've mentioned above, I get it. I hate it too. I built this site for gaming fans to see nothing but facts and not report on rumours. And yet I feel like I have to address all of these recent "news" stories.

People constantly say they want all the facts, yet when it comes to Xbox for whatever reason people are happy to run with stories that are so vague and have little to no facts. Why is that? I'm sure part of it is Xbox's own fault. They haven't been the best at communicating of late, and when they do it's usually words that could lead to 20 different conclusions depending on your interpretation.

It also doesn't help that they are stuck in third place, and their vast first party portfolio still isn't producing consistent, quality content. People won't focus on the noise as much when you are winning and producing quality games.

But that shouldn't make people blind to a lack of journalism just because they are unhappy with Xbox. Instead of people asking the right questions they simply run with the story which gets construed 100 different ways and is suddenly a wildfire of misinformation.

Just take today's "game pass isn't paying like it used to" drama as an example. At first glance your gut reaction was likely "that's not good" and some ran with that. But no one wants to dig a little deeper. First off, the story is second hand info. It wasn't a dev saying they can't get funding from Xbox, it was them saying "we're glad we're self funded because we heard from some other devs they can't get game pass money like they used to".

And while I have no doubt they were told this, and in many ways it makes sense (they have a ton of first party studios to invest in now) we are given zero context. Who was this dev? What game can't they get funded? Why can't they get funded? Are they asking too much money? Did their previous game launch on Game Pass and Xbox deemed it didn't do well enough to fund another project, or at least not as much?

We don't have a shred of information to paint a proper picture. We have someone bringing us a blank canvas with paint and saying "do what you want with this". And for whatever reason, when it comes to Xbox that is ok for most.

I can say the same thing for the AAA publisher story.

And I do understand people need to protect their sources. It doesn't do an industry leader like Chris Dring any good coming out and saying "here's what Ubisoft said!" Because it can damage his relationship with them. But now without saying that the story has turned into 100 new stories of misinformation, speculation on who it is etc etc. Are the clicks for saying a story with no substance worth it?

At the end of the day, instead of just running with a story, whether just talking on social media or actual journalists, we collectively need to do a better job of asking the tough questions, thinking for ourselves and looking for as much information as possible before jumping to conclusions.

And while that is an industry wide problem, for whatever reason it's an even bigger Xbox problem