TechStuff Looks at the PS4

which went well with the Vita Orbis Vita. You start getting into this, that's really clever. But no, No, the official name is the PS four. They decided to stick with that. I mean, when you've established a brand, it makes sense to kind of uh maintain that and not leap away from it, right, especially yeah, if you're not doing any I mean it's certainly this looks like it's going to be a huge advancement, advancement over the PS three, but not in such a wacky direction that it would

require an entirely new name. Yeah. Yeah, In fact, I read this is so funny to me before we get into this, I remember reading something one of the articles I read started off with, you know, the games for the p S three and for Xbox three sixty you're still going on strong, So you might gamers might wonder, why do we even need a new console? And like, really, do you know any gamers? And every gamer I know

is like, give me new console. Yeah. Basically, I mean, you know, it's it's having the newest, fastest, shiniest hardware and software is basically what the gaming industry is built on. Now that being said, there are some things about the specifications about the PS four that that confused me a little bit, because you've got to keep in mind Sony originally said that the idea for the p S three was for it to have a ten year lifespan, and and to be fair, I'm sure how long seven seven years?

But then, to be fair, I think that just like the PS two before it, we won't see development for the PS three completely stop once the PS four launches. I'm sure there'll be some overlap there um. But uh, you know, if you have that same thought process with the PS four, and I'm not saying Sony does, I don't know what Sony's long term strategy is. You're not psychic. You don't have a mental connection. I don't have a phone number that I can call and get confirmation on.

But you know, we don't know how long the lifespan for the PS four is planned to be. Within Sony, I'm imagining it's going to be similar. That's supposed to be ten years. But with that in mind, some of the decisions they made with their specifications confused me a bit. So first we should probably talk a little bit. Yeah, let's do that thing that you said. So one of the big announcements was that they're switching their microprocessor architecture. Uh.

You may remember the PlayStation three. One of the big big things about it was that was had had this cell microprocessor architecture that's Sony developed, and tell us what that is. So it's it's essentially, without getting into all the details, it's essentially a supercomputer in a console format. It's a microprocessor where you've got this cell structure that allows you to tap into a lot of computing power and it's in this particular architecture that allows that to happen.

But it's so different from other microprocessor architectures that developing software for this, you know, essentially games some software we're talking about, But developing games for this platform was a bit of a challenge because you had to learn how to how to do it. Yeah, you had to learn,

like how do I tap into this massive resource? And we saw the same thing with other console platforms, right, you know when it first launches, the games that come out are good, but they're not They don't blow your mind necessarily, Like if you were if you were able to jump ahead in time five years and see the average game on the market five years from launch, you'd think, Wow, you're not even touching the potential that this game console has. Yeah.

That was particularly true with the PlayStation three because the architecture was so different from the other UH consoles and computers on the market that it was a barrier to entry for a lot of game developers, and certainly they had to pour money and time to learn how to do this. So the question came up, do we develop from the PlayStation UH spending that kind of time and resources that we need in order to create a game, or do we or do we stick with something that

we knew? Yeah, I mean it's hard to hard to answer that question because you could just say just stick with what you know, and that way you save money. But but you're not catering to the PlayStation audience. And there's there's a sizeable one which actually, Jonathan and I a full disclosure, are not necessarily a part of I do not own a PS three, Jonathan, you do. I own a PS three, and I have two whole games for it. Those two games are Here's a War two,

uh and Uncharted two. Those are my two games. Yeah, I own a p S three, but I own it mainly as a Blu ray player, right right, Yeah, I had a PS two and I and I went over to Xbox three sixty and I never bothered picking up a PS three. Right now. That's not to say that the PlayStation is a bad console, certainly not now. It's it's really I mean, it really does that sell architecture. If you knew how to take advantage of it, you

could do incredible things. In fact, potentially you could run a game that's far more sophisticated than you could on an Xbox three sixty because the hardware and the three sixty uh, if you're talking about pure processing power did not quite match up to the PlayStation. The problem was that very few game developers out there really knew how to take advantage of that hardware. So that brings us

to the new PS for architecture. They've actually gone to the X eight six sixty four a m D Jaguar eight core CPU, and this is more in line with what you would find in a PC, so it's something that developers are already familiar with, right sure. And and this is a semi custom thing that they're doing with a m D. It's it's got all the Chinese stuff, you know, eight eight gigabytes of RAM. Yeah, that's that's huge. Eight gigabytes of RAM is huge for gaming. That's very

that was one of the most exciting announcements. Yeah. It's it's got a graphics engine that's going to be running one point eight for Tara flop. Yeah, that's that's that's a lot of floating operations per second. Yeah, and that's uh. It's got a a GPU Graphics Pressing Setting Unit RADION GPU that's located on the same die as the CPU, and that's kind of important because the CPU and GPU by being close together, means that data transfers can happen

very quickly. They don't have to travel across a chip. That kind of sounds crazy when you think about it. That you know, we're talking super speeds already, but in gaming, any sort of latency is a problem. Latency, Yeah, And and gamers have no patience for that. I mean, whenever I have to like look at a pause screen or a load screen for even a quarter of a second,

I'm instantly irritated. Right. And and if you were to do something like play a game and you press the jump button but your character doesn't jump until an instant later, that's that's horrible, right, That's that's like the kind of latency that drives gamers crazy. And we'll get into more latency issues in a second, but go ahead. I'm sorry. I was gonna say. What they have was gonna have an onboard hard drive, so it's going to be important. We're not sure what size that's hard drives are going

to be yet, they have they talked about it. I haven't mentioned, but we do imagine. I mean, I imagine they have to be pretty big, because it sounds to me like a lot of the movement on Sony's part is to the cloud and to pull games from the cloud onto your console, which means that you would not necessarily go and buy a disk. You might buy it directly off the network and store it natively on your machine, which means the hard drive needs to be sizeable to

accommodate that. I think a lot of it. I think they're also planning on playing a lot with all of that ram um, because they're they're talking about doing a lot of things that yeah, just just are going to be instantaneous and so stored all in the right in the random axis memory. Sure. And then they're also supports the USB three point oh, which is nice because that's the that's of course a faster protocol than the two point oh that most of us are still stuck with.

I know, I don't have a computer yet that has the USB three point capability. Yeah. Yeah, all of this is so so interesting to me because these specs are for a really decently mid grade gaming computer and which would cost you a couple of thousand dollars. Yeah. Yeah. And then you've got Bluetooth two point one that I thought was interesting because we're up to Bluetooth four now. But but but then it all depends on what you

need the Bluetooth to do. Right, If it's something where it's just the the communication between the controller and the base unit then doesn't necessarily need Bluetooth four point oh, which is really more about low power features that wouldn't necessarily be a good match with the Bluetooth two point one protocols. I mean, you don't necessarily need that. If you're if your controller is working above that threshold, low power doesn't really matter. Um. On top of that, it's

gonna have gigabit Ethernet, no big surprise. There also supports WiFi. Uh that blue ray and DVD YEP, blue ray and DVD player, So that way, that's that's not going away, which is good. I'm sure that makes all the movie studio is happy because producing blue rays is still one of those very profitable markets. And then you have HD m I out as as well as analog video digital optical audio hypothetically some I have four K output for

a photo and video viewing right games. See, I was really surprised about the four K not being used for video games. I just think that if you're building out a concert old that needs to have a relevant lifespan of ten years and four case something that's right around the corner, then really I don't why wouldn't you build the four K capability for the video games as well

as for the photos and the videos. I'm sure it's more complicated than that, but I mean, yeah, I can only see it was some kind of programming related issue that they perhaps didn't think that game studios would be able to get into it, or could have been. Yeah, that must have been, or it may have been that it would have required games to be so large, has to be larger than what the console could easily because I mean, four K that's a lot of information. You're

really talking about a ton of it. But I went to CE I saw four K TVs everywhere you can. It seems like the big buzz word. Yeah, you couldn't throw a rock without hitting one, and uh, don't do that because those are expensive. We're talking like tens of thousands of dollars in some cases. So I'm important in thanks to Clinton. Yeah you're welcome, and that's a little Ghostbusters documentary moment there um. But yeah, that was that was something that I found confused using was if it's

really forward thinking, huh, I can't believe I use that phrase. Uh, game system, then it needs to it needs to have these future proofing aspects in it. Another element that the PS four has is the PlayStation four Eye Camera, which is kind of basically a connect Yeah, I'm sure Sony would hate us to say that, but it kind of is. It's sorry, sorry, it's a base units. It's there around your television. It's got stereoscopic cameras in it to two cameras.

It's kind of this bar shape and it works with both the PlayStation Move controller which is still compatible which for yeah, and it's of course it's already out for the PS three, but it will work with the PS four, not like the dual Shock three controller. But anyway, yeah, because because the dual Shock four controller that they are premiering with the PS four is going to be motion capable, right,

so it will also work with this eye camera. Uh, it's going to be able to The eye camera will capture up to eighty pixel video at thirty frames per second. So it's got an eighty five degree diagonal viewing angle, which means that you know, it's going to capture most

of the room that's pointed toward. It has four integrated microphones, which is important because those microphones, what does it allows me to pick up voice commands, but cancel out other noise so it doesn't mistake something for a voice command when it should be. Right. Yeah, my my connection does that more or less continually, so that can be fun. Right. And it also is going to work with facial recognition software so that you can log into your account based

upon your mug. That's super creepy. Excellent. But that leads us into the duel Shock for a controller. Yeah, they're they're premarying the duel Shock three, like we just said, is not going to be supported for the PS four because they're so excited about this duel Shock for it's going to have a touch panel, right, So the touch panel on the duel Shock four, it's a it's a

touch screen interface. It if you're looking at the controller like from a top down view, and you know the thumbsticks are pointing towards your eyeballs, This is towards the top of this particular controller, and and those touch screen commands will allow you to do special things in the games, but that that will all depend upon how the game

developers incorporate the touch screen interface, right. I haven't I haven't heard any specific things about any game developers planning on using it, but I'm sure that they will come up with delightful ways to do that. It's going to have a new share button, which we will talk about in a moment um, a light bar to interact with the eye yep. So that way you can use kind of it's kind of like using your dual Schuck for

like a PlayStation move controller. Uh. It also it's going to have a headphone jack so you can there's it's got a speaker in it so it will play sound effects out of the actual controllers. So you plug the headphone jack in. That allows you to have the headset miked. Yeah, you can be miked, and you can also hear special sound effects that come straight through the controller to your ears. Uh. And uh, it's also got a camera on it. It can sense the depth in front of it. Wow. I

actually hadn't read about that. That is yeah, okay, yeah, well I guess I guess that goes with the with the move related with the I relate exactly. It's it's to get as much information as possible so that when I mean really the idea is just to give all of these specs out to developers so that they can find interesting ways to incorporate these abilities into the games.

So I could say, yes, it's so you can blah blah blah, but I really don't know because I don't know what how game developers are going to take advantage of this. Yes, we we are not game developers. You can charge it even when you're PS four is on standby mode. Yeah, it's It's battery is a is a latium ion that is non removable, which is just like the dual Shock three, but unlike the Duel Shock three, if you don't have like the dual Shock three, you had to have the PS three on an active mode

to charge it. This one you can be in standby mode and you can still charge. Also, you'll be able to charge it through mic USB. Uh. And it has enhanced rumble. Enhanced rumble. Yeah, I don't know what that means unless it just means it. Yes, maybe it's like the I T Crowd where they felt that the rumble in the Duel Shock three was a little a little ready and it needed to be boosted. I can't quote any more of that episode. No, there's probably nothing else

in that. But it's fantastic. It is. It's a terrific documentary. You guys should check it out. Yeah. Uh So, anyway, these are the basic spects of the PS four. It's really just part of their their presentation, which by the way, was a two hour presentation. Yeah. I got there about an hour and a half of it. I mean it was actually it was actually fascinating. I really enjoyed how excited and and nerdy and wonderfully awkward a lot of the people on stage where I and I say that

very genuinely. I thought it was very charming. Yeah. And and also I should point out before we take a quick break that it was interesting and totally understandable that Sony decided to do a standalone press event to announce this. Uh. It was interesting in the sense that they didn't go with something like E three or the Game Developers Conference, and it meant that they had the stage all to themselves.

They were not competing with any other companies, so they didn't have to worry about the fact that as soon as this press conference is over, everyone's going to rush out and go across the hall to get to the Microsoft conference with to show conference. So that was a big advantage. It was kind of interesting to see the stuff they did not do. Uh. They said that it was a way for them to draw out the announcement over the course of Uh so, for example, they didn't

actually show the console. They showed off the controller, the dual Shock four hounch Yeah, but but we haven't actually seen the box yet and and that's you know, and to be fair, I would say that that probably the least important things surrounding a new console is what it looks like. I mean, I mean, it's it's nice, you know, especially as as a journalist in a web journalist, I understand the irritation of not having a shiny picture of something that you can show around right right and it

and it raises suspicions. It always does, Like if you don't actually have a product to show, then people are like, are you do you really have something you're going to launch in holiday season? Or you just reink in our chain? But uh, you know, I'm pretty sure Sony's on the

up and up on this. Yeah. But they had they had live demos of the of the software, but just just because they didn't have a shiny package to present, and that could be that they're still finalizing the design or maybe they don't have Maybe they had like a working uh PS four, But it's not in the final case, you know. That's what they said. They said that they're still working on it, and and I believe them. I take people at their word. I'm okay with it too. I know a lot of people got up in arms

about it. But the more I thought about, the more I was like, the only time I ever look at my console is when I'm actually changing a disk out. Otherwise I'm looking at the controller or the screen. I'm not looking at the actual box. It's not like a cell phone or something that you're interacting with. Contin Well, let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor before we continue on with the PS four and now back to the show. Alright, So we talked about the specs.

Let's talk about some of the features besides, you know, things that aren't aren't just about you know, the hardware, but some of the things that we can actually expect from this PS four. A lot of that comes to us courtesy of the cloud. Yeah. Yeah. They were talking all kinds about about streaming games and pre little previews and and fancy shiny things that smart browsing stuff. You know, the kind of the concept that that this machine is

going to learn what kind of games you like. Yeah, that that to me was really interesting the idea that and they very briefly touched on this, so we don't have all the info, but it did sound like the PS four will start to learn about your preferences based upon the way you use the PS four and that it will start to prioritize things and maybe even uh download stuff in advance for you because it already quote unquote knows that you're going to like that and and

perhaps you know, won't you know? For for example, for me, every time I get on my Xbox and ad for for a Madden game, I'm like, why is it showing this to me? I could not care about this. Any less targeted advertising would be more effective. Absolutely, yes, that is that is what I am say. If it had my little Pony friendship is magic uh RPG that you'd be all over right on top of it. Wow. I have never seen someone want to kick me so much in such a short amount of time. Uh yeah, and

they're they're partnering. Actually then partner they acquired a million dollars. That's that's the kind of partnership holing money can buy. Guy Kai and this is a service that's all about streaming content and particularly about games. So there there was some discussion about how the relationship between guy Kai and Sony would would would develop with the PS four. One of those things was all about the backwards compatibility issue, because Sony has said the PS four is not backwards compatible.

You will not be able to play PS one, PS two, or p S three games on the PS four with the possible exception, and they only said possible that you might be able to stream those games using a guy Kai service on the line, so you would be able to stream a version of a PS three game onto

your PS four. Yeah, they're they're they're talking about basically um supporting or emulating games, and and that they're not sure whether they They basically said that they have the capacity and they don't know if they're going to do it yet, right right, which which I thought was a really interesting kick in the pans. Yeah, No, that's that's a tough response, right. They said, it's possible, we just don't know if we're going to do it, and if they do it, we don't even know how that's going

to manifest. So for example, how like you would probably end up having to purchase those games. Again, that's my guess because possibility, and I mean they have said that used games will be playable, but if they're only PS four games, then that's not gonna matter for another five years or two years. Anyway. There's actually some question about that too, about whether or not you needed to have

a persistent Internet connection all the time. They didn't really touch on that, right there are there are a lot of rumors leading up to the PS four release about or not the release, but the the announcement that uh, that the PS four would require a persistent Internet connection and that you would have to register games when you bought them, and those games would be tied to you, which means that that would eliminate the used game market.

You wouldn't be able to sell that game because no one else could play it but you it was tied to you. Uh, they didn't really touch on that. That is still a possibility. We don't really know. Um, you know, I know a lot of people are hoping that's not the case. And by the way, and and just full disclosure, it sounds like that's going to be the same case for the Xbox. The next thing, This is not not not just a sony thing, I mean, only has its

own reputation as far as dr M goes. Uh, like introducing back doors to your computer system so that hackers can get access to it just because you put a CD in there. But that's all in the past, silly billy um. Moving on to other other features besides this idea of streaming games, like kind of like uh, the the uh oh yeah, or other games systems out there

that are all about streaming. Uh. It's interesting to me that they are building in the capability so that if you start to download a game, you purchase a game on the PlayStation network, you start to download it, and you can play it immediately, yes, you know, yeah while while the rest of it, because I mean, you know, if a game is what twenty gigs these days or something like that, hopefully not that many, but yeah, you're you're talking about four or five gigs easy, and if

you're talking if you're talking about a super advanced one, it may be upwards of ten for a really really big game. Yeah. But you know, as these things advance and we get you know, closer to to that's super high def kind of thing. Yeah, sure, yeah, they're gonna start getting huge and uh so so yeah, so that's and that is just tremendously exciting. As I said before, you know, gamers hate waiting for anything. Ever. We want,

we want it now. That's one of the issues I have with my Xbox is that if I want to get some DLC, some downloadable content, then uh, you know, I start the download and I really can't do much else for fear of disturbing the great download flow and having to start all over again. And and I can take some time depending on how big the file is. But to have the ability to start launching into the game immediately while the game is downloading in the background,

that's amazing, fantastic. Now. They also you mentioned the share button on the controller, which has something interesting in it. Social connectivity is going to be a really huge part of this console. They're um, they're talking about with this share button. You know, you know that wonderful moment that happens sometimes in a game, you do something so cool and you wish that your friend was sitting there with you.

It's it's happened to me once, Yes, I remember, well there there's For some of you, it happens more frequently, I know, But for me once just the ones. Yeah, that's okay, that's fair. Well for that one time, you could press this share button and and pretty pretty instantly apparently, uh, connect to to Facebook or another social media site and share the last little clip of video. Go in and select the little bit that you want to send and

send it out. Yeah, you can even choose to live stream your video play through the PlayStation Social Network, and so other people with a PS four can can actually and maybe even PS three some of this might be

accessible through the PS three network. You wouldn't be able to necessarily do it on a p S three, but you might be able to watch this idea of streaming live the gameplay and you know what, it turn into backseat gaming kind of Yeah, as you're you're giving people the capacity to watch what you're doing in real time, talk to you about what you're doing, and possibly even jump in and help you out with a portion of a game that you're having trouble with. That kind of

drives me nuts, but it does. It is kind of a throwback to the old arcade days. The idea that you know, you're you're sitting there and you're trying to get this crazy combo and you're working on it really hard, and the guy behind you is giving you hints and giving you tip and then eventually you're just like, I can't do this, and you hand it over to him many and it does his magic and then hands it

right back to you and you take back over. It's like that, yeah, yeah, and then there's you know, that's that's a very natural way that I think of playing games. Certainly, you know in Silent Hill, when I'm playing something and I might be a better sharpshooter than than a person that I'm playing with, because I always play that in pairs, at least so that I don't end up a terrified ball in the corner shaking um. And so you know, some parts, some parts I might do, some parts they

might do. It all kind of works out, and being able to do that over digital network sounds kind of interesting. Like the Incredible Future, I think I would find it irritating, but I'm sure that's going to be one of those things where you hand control over to the other player, not that they take take control, because that would just be the bully in the room, like move. I could get past this part, move right, uh. But the the

other part of this the whole live streaming thing. Uh maybe a couple of years ago, I would have thought this was weird, the idea of watching people play games, but I have actually really enjoyed watching some There's some YouTube channels out there that are all about playing through certain games, and sometimes it's fun to watch people who are just really really good at a particular game and just see like how coordinated they are as they make

their way through a level and they're they're all cooperatively playing this game, and and yeah, and you're and you're watching this and you're just saying, Wow, I'm terrible, or the flip side of that, as you can watch people who are just goofing around and being silly and making goofy remarks, like the Rooster Teeth people, the Achievement Hunter guys. They play they do Let's plays, and they're Let's plays are hilarious. They're not safe to watch at work because

of the language, but they are really really funny. And so once I started to really get into that, I thought, Okay, I'm saying I can understand why this live stream would be uh interesting to me. What was most interesting was how much they stressed this whole idea of sharing and social integration with the PlayStation network, because it is true.

I mean you have online capability with the Xbox as well as with the PlayStation and with Xbox where you to really have access to anything of real value, you have to be on Xbox Live. Yeah, you have to be a subscriber. Like the free stuff is pretty limited. Yeah, you can't even you can't even watch stuff on Netflix without being a subscribe, right, so you have to subscribe to two different services, right, you have to subscribe to Netflix and then you have to subscribe to Xbox Live.

And the PlayStation network is free. Right. But for some reason, it just never really had the traction that Xbox Live had. I think it was the kind of games that the PlayStation was using it for. It never quite had the big titles like, for example, Halo. Yeah, the community just didn't grow the same way. Not not not that there aren't communities out there, as it just wasn't. It just never seemed to really catch on like Xbox Live dead. Now, this looks like this is a real move to change that,

to make this a much more viable community. Now, how how many gamers are actually going to take advantage of that? That remains to be seen. Yeah, I'm really curious about about who who and how often people will be sharing that kind of thing, um other other exciting stuff. It

is going to connect with the Vita. They are hoping to at some point have all developers for the PS four incorporate Vida and and and by by connect with the video, what I mean is that what they really want is to let you with any game, you know, like like you have to. The example that they gave is you're playing something and your kids come into the

room and just absolutely take over everything. Uh, you just poured it to your Vita, walk out of the room, continue playing your game, and when you have a chance to come back and pick right back up where you were right so you can play seamlessly across both devices. So you can stop playing on the TV and switch it over to the Vida. And then once it's bedtime for the kids and they're they're out of the way, you go back to the TV and poured it back

over and you just continue playing the whole time. You don't really have any interruption to play. This would be really cool for me whenever I get to a part where I don't want to quit but I have to save my game because my wife wants to watch the next episode of Supernatural. I know, I see that all the time. Your wife. You have nothing to do with their dreamy. Okay, they are dreamy, and I will watch

another episode alright. Bad example. Let's say that my wife wants to watch something that I don't care about, then this would let me switch it over to the Vida and move on. This was kind of a fire across the bowl of Nintendo, which is the we you that has the built in uh that the controller with the built in screen. This is kind of uh a shot at them saying well, ours can play the same game and not just to say a mini game or something like right, so uh again, And that means that you

have to buy two systems. You have to buy the p S four and the Vida to really take advantage of it. That it's pretty expensive, but it may very well end up being the winning strategy. Now, the Vita has not done so well. Like when I say so, well, it hasn't flown off store shelves in the United States. Yeah, like like I mean I think that the ds uh uh whatever the new one is. I'm an excellent The three DS that one um I you know, I think that that has has enjoyed pretty serious popularity, but yeah,

the Vida has maybe. Well, the three D s also started off really slowly, but once they once in Nintendo lowered its price, like within a couple of months of launch, they lowered the price dramatically, then it started to do much better. But yeah, the the Vida just it's had sort of a slow start in the United States particularly, but maybe with this interoperability with the PS four, we would see that increase, which I guess is why they're

not putting a screen. I was surprised at first that they weren't going to incorporate a screen onto the dual Shock for controller. But but I think that especially with with everything that they're trying that they're hoping for with the Vida, that it makes perfect sense. So uh, moving back with the idea of the possibility of streaming older PS games on PS four, which still don't know about. We also are not sure if you've purchased something in

the cloud already on the PlayStation network. For example, let's say you've purchased a movie on the PlayStation network, it's not clear yet that those purchases will be able to port over to the PS four. Uh that it's tricky thing to do. Their licensing issues involved to make sure that the stuff that you've already bought that you can still use it on your new platform. This is another concern that gamers have because you don't want to have to purchase the same stuff twice in order to have

access to it. And you don't want to have two versions of the same kind of mensol. Yeah, you don't want. You don't want to have a PS three and APS four hooked up to the same television. Necessarily, some people do because our television has more inputs than they know what to do with, and therefore they will hook up as many different game consoles as they possibly can. I think most new TVs are like that, and my my TV does not have quite that many, so I have

to make some tubes so it does. Yeah that one. Lauren's television just got color last week, so very fancy and watching the Disney's Wonderful World of Color ever since. They also ended up showing off some games while they were there, or at least some demos and a little bit of gameplay footage of a few games. All right, Yeah, some of them, some of them look really really shiny. I am personally extremely excited about nac oh Nack, which is uh that that was kind of a cartoony looking game,

a little bit platform me. Yeah, and you play as a robot defending humanity against the Goblin invasion. Yeah, it just looked like it had it had fun character art and and you know, just entertaining, kind of family friendly sort of stuff. Yes, whereas I was thinking of kills his own shadow Fall that did not look family friends. That's a sci fi game. And some of the games they were showing, in fact, a lot of them were kind of sequels or spinoffs of existing games. Yeah. Yeah,

we've got an infamous second son Diablo three. Um oh yeah, now now hang on a minute, I gotta take them over Diablo three. So I did not watch this live as it was unfolding. I was I was on my way home. It aired at six pm Eastern time in the United States, and I get home a little after six pm typically, and I got there a little bit later this time, and so I look at my Twitter feed and I see, of course all the people I follow are watching, and everyone's going nuts that Diablo three

is coming. To the console, and I'm thinking, Wow, I remember when you all went crazy when Diablo three came out for the PC and then never talked about it ever again, So why are you excited that it's coming to the console. And then yeah, Scott Johnson got onto me for that and got very defensive about it being a good game. Not I don't dispute that it's a

good game. I wouldn't know. I haven't played it. But but at the same time, I'm just saying that within a month, no one was talking about Diablo three anymore. So it just was amusing to me that people went so crazy that Diablo three was coming to the console. Uh. They also showed off Drive Club, which is a racing game. UM and UH watch Dogs, which is kind of an open world game that's set in Chicago, and you can you can do things like uh snoop on people as

they're having conversations. It's kind of interesting. The other one that I'm really excited about is uh The Witness, which is a puzzle game that looks a lot like like Mr. Riven to me, UM and the and the It's a it's a very rich environment and a very limited scope, right right, So so so yeah, another another interesting throwback to the old puzzle games. I'm also interested in Bungee's next game, Density Density Destiny Destiny Bungee Destiny waking him

back to the future. Who you are my Density what anyway? No, it's Destiny. It is a game where you take part as a defender of human kind, which might sound familiar for anyone who's played Bungee games. Um, but yeah, apparently something has happened. Mankind has has spread far and wide. Things did not go so well. There was a big conflict. Now there is a city that is sort of mankind's last little um outpost, and you are one of the defenders.

And it's it's an a and a persistent online world that uh, you can play either as a single player or multiplayer experience. And the as you play in the game, the things you do carry over whether it's single player multiplayer, and it's the world itself. The state of the world will change over time and it remains that way whether you're playing single or multi So the idea being that your your actions actually have consequences. Yeah, a little bit

more mmo than than what I mean. Not that Halo, for example, isn't kind of technically mmo, but yeah, yeah, but then this one definitely has more what has that permanence, that persistence it because again, like with a Halo multiplayer game, you play a little you know, capture the Flag or death match or whatever, and then when you play it again, everything's reset. So this one, at least from my understanding, sounds like there's going to be a little bit more

of a changeable world. I don't know to what extent, and I don't know how much impact you will actually have as a player on that world, but it sounded interesting. It sounds interesting. Yeah, they're didn't you do you have any others that you wanted to cover? No, no other games that want to cover, And they're they're talking about these well, I mean, these are all big titles, but they're talking about their games being anywhere from cents to about sixty bucks, which you know, not a big surprise.

I heard some people kind of balk at the sixty dollar amount, but really that's what's Yeah, yeah, that's I mean, that's what video games have costed for the past. I mean, Donkey Kong Country still costs like fifty bucks. So really you're talking about like it's it's just it's maintaining the market value, which you should really be thankful for. Thanks actually,

and they are. They have not released a price point for the console yet, you know, as as we all remember the PS three debut at five dollars, which is a lot of dollars for a gaming console that is many dollars many it's more than two. And see, it's kind of smart for Sony not to announce it yet because it may very well be that they're waiting to find out more about what Microsoft is going to do. And you know, and Jack Jack Trenton has said that he hopes it will be less as and like, so say,

we all you know, there we go. Sorry, that's fine, that okay? So uh. Also, Jimmy Fallon got to play I got to play a PS I've never been so jealous of Jimmy Fallon. Yeah, he wasn't able to get through the game without laughing. Well ha ha snap. Now he played kill Zone shadow Fall on his show, and according to Polygon, which is a great site for video

game news, he was not very good. He's actually a bad I mean, you know, I don't know it's I I haven't watched the clip, but but you know, I imagine they kind of shoved it at him, and I don't think that I would also perform any better on live TV when dealing with the first person shooting, especially never played before. It's a game you've never played before,

there's gonna be Yeah. I think I think it was probably them being a little snarky, which you know, it's to make on I'm okay with that, but uh got nothing against him personally anyway. The the it was interesting that that was another way of exposing the world to it because of course, with the announcement, all the people who were like hardcore gamers and journalists and things like that, they were all really focused on that event. But then you have to reach a broader audience, and that was

a good way of starting this. And they've been Yeah, they've been doing a lot of interviews and dropping little tidbits here and there, and I think that that's I think that they're overall being pretty savvy about it. Yeah. Yeah, And they'll be interesting to see how this continues, whether or not Microsoft has a console that can kind of

answer the challenges that the S four has laid down. Um, it may very well be that there are elements of the PS four that we are not aware of that have not been revealed yet that could be lying in wait, so that so that they can they can counter anything that Microsoft says when they introduced the Xbox. Yeah, certainly they're they're talking about a m D who's making the processor, is talking about releasing more about that at the Game

Developer Conference in the end of March. And and I'm sure that the three will bring us lots of lots of us. Yes, I'm sure it will. So it'll be interesting to see how that all shakes out. And uh, and you know what's also interesting is this is going to be the year where we start to see some of these independent companies coming forward, things like the steam Box or the Yeah Uh coming out and and really competing with the established players. So it's a it's an

exciting time to be a gamer. Well, guys, if you have any topics you think we should cover here on tech Stuff, I invite you to let us know by sending us an email our addresses tech stuff at disco very dot com, or drop us a line on Facebook or Twitter are handle there is tech Stuff hs W. Meanwhile, Lauren and I will be awaiting the announcement of the next Xbox so we can figure out how to frag one another in the next game of Halo. And we'll talk to you again really soon for more on this

and thousands of other topics. Is it hostaff works dot com,