Suspicious Rumor: Project Café Boot Sequence and Menu Leaked

I don’t know about you, but I’m kind of getting sick of all the rumors floating around to do with Project Café. I wish that we could just wait without apparent leak after leak. This time around we have a video claiming to be leaked footage of Project Café‘s boot sequence and menu. This video says that the console will be called Nintendo Stream – which was one of the rumored names along with Café and Feel.

I honestly can’t call this one. Last year some of our staff members called some Zelda rumors as true that weren’t, and we suffer the continuing ramifications of that. I recently labeled an obviously fake Café video as fake, which it was – but I’m not sure about this one. Ultimately – I’m just going to say that its extremely suspicious, and is most likely faked. It is a rumor. Either way, this is my attempts at piecing together this new suspicious video.

For starters let’s look at the actual video itself. It shows some decent craftsmanship if it is fake. Unlike the earlier leaked video it is more creative, and therefore more realistic. It uses the name Nintendo Stream and has some basic sound effects. The whole in a dark room setting makes it seem extremely odd, and as always, if this is real leaked footage – people sitting in that area of the room are going to be having some serious questionings from Nintendo, leading to a lot of issues. Ultimately, leaks like this don’t usually happen because people know the consequences. If the person is accepting of them, then this may be authentic.

A New Super Smash Bros. game has been rumored for the new console, so either this is a real video confirming that, which also tells us it is called Super Smash Bros. Strife – likely or unlikely for a name I do not know. On the flipside, this video might just be clinging to that rumor for some sense of authenticity – because no actual in-game footage or imagery is shown. The menu seems extremely simplistic, but not impossible. I think the word “game” as a menu option is unlikely, and I can’t make out the other text. One looks like options, which is no big surprise. Overall though, its pretty droll for a Nintendo menu.

Based on all of that, it seems more plausible than the prior video that we posted. However, if I am required to make a value judgment – I say fake. Leaks like this are extremely rare and unlikely. Besides, it’s not the video itself that I find the most suspicious – it’s how we came across it.

Now I’m not laying out any accusations – just the facts and how they could be interpreted. We received a tip for this video on Facebook. It said – “i just found this, duno if real, very dark, put does kinda look legit… im gona admit, that is too well done to be a mock up. Might be a e3 testing unit?” It seems like the tipster is trying to convince us of the video’s authenticity, or at least that it is valid enough for us to post about.

From there I went on to YouTube to find that the video is extremely new (1 hour old), with 10 views, and that the only comment on the video comes from our tipster. Going on to the uploader’s channel I find this is their first activity on the site, and our tipster happens to be the only subscriber. Now I could be overexaggerating the naturally skeptical side of me, but it seems to me that our tipster may be in on it – having come straight to us on a new video that would be quite hard to find given the lack of connections of the new YouTube user’s channel.

On the counterargument side, the video does show up in the latest videos in a Google Video Search for Nintendo Project Cafe, so our tipster could have legitimately come across the video.

Again, I’m not making any decisive claims here, but this video is ambiguous at best, and extremely suspicious. Just calling things the way they are. Treat this as a weak-rumor at most.

UPDATE: Check out this post for the recent developments on this leak.