Just caught up on this. I saw some of the pre-discussion in the Nintendo first-party thread but missed all the fun when the rumour started to be reported everywhere.
What's interesting is that Retro info has more or less been under lock and key for ages. We barely hear anything. And just before E3, we get this rumour that is being vouched for by various sources. I smell a controlled leak.
My first thought was about the sudden leakiness as well, but I came to a different conclusion. If anything, this is a mark against the leak as coming from too narrow a band of sources. Reporters are fed tips all the time, and it's their job to make an evaluation of credibility and judge whether they should risk staking their publication's masthead or personal brand on passing it on to the public. Rumour-mill types like Liam Robertson naturally have less to lose than, say, Eurogamer because they already have a reputation for being extremely hit-or-miss.
In this case, it seems the bigger publications were all fed the same crumbs at some point, but crucially, decided not to publish because they couldn't independently verify the information. In other words, nobody wanted to be first, even with the obvious benefits of attention/citation that come with breaking a big story; the tips they were sitting on just weren't good enough. You're seeing a big wave of reporting on the same leak now because "we've heard it too" is newsworthy now that someone else has taken the reputational risk of firing first, but note that (as far as I have seen) the corroborations from the bigger publications are
not expanding our picture of the scope or reliability of the sources involved. And they've stated their caveats accordingly. It's not like a situation where, for instance, the NYT, Washington Post, and so on have separate trusted links with White House staff, where the more reporting you hear, the wider the network of trust relationships is behind the story.
The size of the reaction to this story, magnified by years of pent-up curiosity about what Retro is up to next, may be occluding our view of how little information is actually floating here.
For the record, I believe it. But that's coloured by my excitement over the idea and how much sense it makes once you think about it.