Source: A BBC News interview with Ubisoft head honcho Yves Guillemot, and the resulting Web flak.

　　The official story: "Ubisoft stands firmly behind the impeccable quality of Peter Jackson’s King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie on all platforms. Ubisoft is actively investigating isolated reports of resolution issues on specific plasma screens. Ubisoft believes that King Kong offers one of the best gaming experiences available on the Xbox 360 and encourages gamers to check it out for themselves."--Ubisoft representative.

　　What we heard: The so-called "HD Era" may have found its first casualty. Reports have hit the Web that the Xbox 360 version of Peter Jackson's King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie, published by Ubisoft, is "unplayable" on some monitors. The complaint stems not from gamers, but straight from the top of the Ubisoft food chain, CEO Yves Guillemot.

　　"We have a problem on the 360," Guillemot told BBC News. "The screen is dark on some TVs and it totally changes the experience. When it's dark, you don't see where you have to go. We are looking to see if we can fix the code. It is the beginning of the high-definition TV era for us. It's a shame, but it happens with new machines. I don't think we will have it anymore."

　　According to BBC News, the problem occurs when the Xbox 360 version of King Kong is played on standard-definition televisions. Apparently the developers at Ubisoft concentrated so hard on the high-definition presentation of the game that they neglected to pay ample attention to SD TVs.

　　The motivations for Guillemot's mea culpa seem unwarranted, not to mention untimely, given the film it is based on debuted in theaters today. In fact, he seems to steer people away from the 360 version altogether, recommending gamers play the PlayStation 2 and Xbox versions instead. "When you play on an Xbox or a PlayStation 2, you start to see that it is beautiful," he said.

　　The notion of a company discouraging people to buy a version of its game--especially one that costs $10 more than other versions--is highly unusual, particularly since the King Kong kommunity is pleased with the game's graphics. With King Kong having been on the market for three weeks, one would think that flame-happy gamers would have gang-tackled a technical problem like the one Guillemot describes. But no such outcry has occured, and both the HD and SD presentations of the game have received high praise from critics.

　　Said GameSpot's own Alex Navarro, "Fantastic lighting, improved level geometry and textures, better fire effects, scarier-looking dinosaurs and beasts, and of course, a better-looking Kong, all reside on the 360 version. Those improvements are noticeable even in standard definition, but HD is really where they shine."

　　So what's the truth behind King Kong's possible fall off the 360's throne? Several GameSpot editors have played the game in both SD and HD, with few gripes. To call the game "unplayable" would be too harsh, unless the same tag could be applied to gloomy titles such as Doom 3 and The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay.

　　One theory is that the problem could simply lie with the PAL version of the game (Guillemot was speaking to the British press), we'll do Ubisoft PR a favor and change the word "dark" into "spooky and atmospheric." It's Skull Island, after all. Not Candyland.

　　Bogus or not bogus?: Bogus. A gloriously modeled six-ton T-rex charging at your grill more than makes up for anything lost in a dark--pardon me--"spooky and atmospheric" cave any day.