Source: An article on The Inquirer, citing a person sitting next to the author on a flight to Japan.

　　The official story: Sony representatives had not returned requests for comment as of press time.

　　What we heard: Glancing through the Inquirer article, there are a number of inflammatory passages sure to fuel message board flare-ups between PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 system loyalists, starting with the headline: "PS3 hardware slow and broken." From there, the article says the PS3's RSX graphics chip "appears to be limited to setting up 275 million triangles/second," while saying the Xbox 360 can handle more than 500 million triangles per second.

　　The other big focus of the article is a picture of a slide said to be from a Sony presentation to developers on the PS3's abilities. The slide lists the speeds at which the Cell processor and the RSX processor can read from and write to the system's main memory, and the "local memory," which appears to be the RSX chip's memory. The Inquirer article draws attention to the listed 16MB per second speed at which the Cell reads from the local memory, calling that stat "the bomb from hell." By the end of the article, the author is ready to raise the white flag on Sony's behalf, saying, "Someone screwed up so badly it looks like it will relegate the console to second place behind the 360."

　　The Inquirer story has not gone unnoticed. This morning, Friedman, Billings, Ramsey & Co. analyst Shawn Milne tried to set investors straight on the article. "Yesterday, an online media source indicated that there were significant problems with PS3 development and, specifically, the memory capability of its RSX graphic processor (supplied by Nvidia)," Milne wrote. "Importantly, according to our industry sources, we believe the data cited by the source was taken out of context and incorrectly stated that processing speeds were slower than expected."

　　Even so, analysts aren't always right. So GameSpot turned to developers working on games for both the Xbox 360 and PS3 to help clarify matters.

　　"From the way that article was written, you can tell that the person doesn't do any PS3 development, as he isn't talking at all about the other smaller processors which surround the Cell," one developer said. "I am not sure if the final development kits are out yet (maybe to just a few developers), so I don't know what he is benchmarking against. Also, he is doing a lot of bashing, so it is hard to take him seriously. Basically, if what they say is correct, then the PS3 would be good with games like Fight Night, where you have a small environment with just a couple characters, but with big open area games, like Grand Theft Auto, it will have problems."

　　Another developer working on a game for a different publisher questioned the "sky is falling" tone of the original article, saying that the writer makes the situation appear more dire than it actually is. However, the developers' comments seemed to indicate that neither knows exactly what to expect from the final PS3 hardware. And five months from launch, that is a concern all its own...

　　Bogus or not bogus?: Semibogus. Nothing is for certain until the final hardware is released, but the situation will almost certainly not be the doomsday scenario outlined by the The Inquirer.