It seems that non disclosure agreements have pretty flexible meanings in certain quarters. Like, maybe, no meaning whatsoever. Indeed, following yesterday’s story about Sony’s ‘top secret’ new game and how it would radically reshape the gaming landscape in 2009 some US journalists have already begun spilling the beans about what they've seen. So you wanna know more?

Firstly let’s treat everything that follows with liberal fistfuls of sodium chloride until Sony has confirmed it all or we have seen it for ourselves – and that may yet happen sooner rather than later. Okay, it seems that the game in question is actually the project previously known as ‘Eight Days’, although it looks like a new name is in the offing for the supposed October ’08 release. October 08?! Weren’t we told 2009 just yesterday? But that’s just the beginning of the intrigue…

Moving on we’re informed that the action takes place across eight US states and eight 24-hour days, hence the previous project name. On top of this a real-time system is employed so that if it’s dark outside in the real world it’s dark in the game too, and vice-versa. If you think that’s cool the game is also supposed to employ the Google Mapping function in some way. Presumably to give the proceedings a sense of scale and some basis in geographical reality.

Storyline-wise the plot apparently follows the exploits of two dudes on opposite sides of the law – one a former mobster seeking revenge on his ex-colleagues and the other a detective whose son has been kidnapped by the gangsters in question. Each character has their own storyline, but both are intertwined in their quests for retribution.

Finally the real-time/real-world thing takes another twist in terms of the game’s pace and relentlessly forward momentum. To the extent, in fact, that if you miss a scheduled appointment with an in-game character you’ve more or less had it and are better off moving on rather than scrabbling around trying to locate them elsewhere in the title’s massive environs. Sony explains that we should think of it all as a non-stop action movie where you’re never sure what’s around the next corner, who you'll meet or where you’ll be headed next. The animation even rivals that of Uncharted too.

In other words it’s all sounding pretty darned good – it was certainly remarkable enough to get the BBC journo who broke the story yesterday a little, shall we say, moist. Anyway, as we said, let’s keep the salt cellar handy until we’ve had official confirmation of some description. And you can be sure we’re talking to Sony about that right now! More soon, then…