Silent Hills PlayStation 4 PS4 Xbox One Exclusive

Alright, seeing as IGN is reporting on this one, we'll take the bait: Silent Hills is not going to be announced as an Xbox One exclusive at E3 2015 next month. Well, theoretically it could be, but this brand new rumour which emerged on Rooster Teeth and is popping up all over the web has so many holes in it that it seems incredibly, incredibly unlikely.

The channel – citing an anonymous source – claims that Microsoft is currently in talks to snap up the project. This part we can believe – after all, you'd have to assume that Sony, Nintendo, and various other third-party publishers have made similar inquiries following the project's high-profile cancellation a few weeks back. Even an idiot could see the potential in that title – well, Konami aside.

Here's where the rumour falls apart, though: the source claims that the game is 80 per cent complete, despite Konami referring to it as "embryonic" and co-director Guillermo del Toro talking about it like it was just ideas. Hideo Kojima's been busy with Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, so we're not sure when all of the work got done.

The story also suggests that it'll be out in March 2016 – six months after the aforementioned stealth-'em-up – and that the Redmond-based company is willing to pay billions of dollars for it. Keep in mind that it stumped up a similar sum for Minecraft – a franchise which is likely to become a cultural touchstone for an entire generation. Unlikely, isn't it?

Konami, despite its refocused mobile-first strategy, even stated yesterday that it considers its existing properties "very important", and regardless of where it's leveraging them, we suspect that that will remain the case. This story's complete and utter nonsense, then – but it's earning a lot of websites a lot of hits. And yes, cynically, now we're getting in on the act.

[source youtube.com, via uk.ign.com]