Speaker 1: Welcome to tex Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and I love all things tech. And if you've been
Speaker 1: listening to the PlayStation series of episodes on tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: you've heard me talk about the birth of the console
Speaker 1: from the moment that Ken Kutaragi, who was a Sony
Speaker 1: engineer at first and then rose to the head of
Speaker 1: Sony Computer Entertainment, he first started working on the project
Speaker 1: in secret, even two members of Sony's own board of directors,
Speaker 1: and I went all the way up to when Ken
Speaker 1: Kutaragi left the company in two thousand seven. In large
Speaker 1: part he would totally cut ties in, but that was
Speaker 1: after the PlayStation three had kind of a lackluster debut.
Speaker 1: It didn't go as well as the company had expected.
Speaker 1: In this episode, my plan is I'm going to finish
Speaker 1: off the PS three's story, then we're gonna talk about
Speaker 1: the PS four, and we'll conclude with the little bit
Speaker 1: of information we have about the upcoming PS five, because
Speaker 1: as of the recording of this podcast, that console has
Speaker 1: yet to come out. So let's get started, and we're
Speaker 1: going to backtrack just a touch to talk about the
Speaker 1: service that Sony launched in two thousand six, so that's
Speaker 1: one year before the father of the PlayStation would leave
Speaker 1: the company. This was the same year that the PlayStation
Speaker 1: three came out after a couple of delays. That was
Speaker 1: another reason why ken Kutaragi was sort of put into
Speaker 1: the back seat. It's called the PlayStation Network, and this
Speaker 1: is an online service, something similar to Microsoft's Xbox Live service.
Speaker 1: Gamers can connect to the network for downloadable content and
Speaker 1: services like messaging. Xbox Live had a couple of tiers
Speaker 1: of service. There was a free tier called Xbox Live Silver,
Speaker 1: which supported some features but not stuff like online gameplay,
Speaker 1: So if you wanted to play cooperatively or competitively online,
Speaker 1: you needed to pay for a subscription to Xbox Live Gold.
Speaker 1: The PlayStation Network was advertised as just being free of charge.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't have to pay extra for the services, and
Speaker 1: that would allow for online play. However, when it launched,
Speaker 1: the PlayStation Network had several features that only had limited support,
Speaker 1: indicating that even at this stage, the online capabilities of
Speaker 1: the console were more of a reaction to Microsoft rather
Speaker 1: than a carefully designed Sony project. And we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: a lot more about the PlayStation network a little bit
Speaker 1: later in this episode. So one thing that was still
Speaker 1: going on even as late as two thousand seven, when
Speaker 1: Ken Kutaragi would leave the company, was that Sony was
Speaker 1: still producing the PlayStation two. That console originally debuted way
Speaker 1: back in two thousand. The p S three came out
Speaker 1: in two thousand six, and Sony would keep making the
Speaker 1: PS two until two thousand and twelve, essentially just before
Speaker 1: Sony would unveil the PS four. That's the point when
Speaker 1: manufacturing facilities finally stopped rolling off freshly built PS two
Speaker 1: consoles from the assembly lines. So even as I wrap
Speaker 1: up the PS three story, we should keep in mind
Speaker 1: that the PS two's tail wasn't over yet either. It
Speaker 1: kept going strong, And just because the PS three had
Speaker 1: a rocky start doesn't mean Sony would abandon that console
Speaker 1: quickly either. Justice Sony had supported the original PlayStation and
Speaker 1: the PS two for a decade or longer, so too
Speaker 1: would it support the PS three. One thing I didn't
Speaker 1: touch on in the last episode has to do with
Speaker 1: people finding a good use for the cell processor. That's
Speaker 1: the processor that Sony, Teshiba, and IBM a k A
Speaker 1: s t I developed together for the p S three specifically,
Speaker 1: And if you remember from my last episode about the PlayStation,
Speaker 1: I mentioned Kutaragi intended the cell microprocessor architecture to service
Speaker 1: the foundation for lots of other Sony products. Well, that
Speaker 1: didn't really happen in a big way, but other groups
Speaker 1: found uses for the tech that went well outside the
Speaker 1: realm of video games. This story is all about how
Speaker 1: researchers managed to cluge together a network of PlayStation consoles
Speaker 1: to act as a sort of cluster computer that could
Speaker 1: perform calculations at such a high rate that it was
Speaker 1: like having access to a genuine supercomputer. And this idea
Speaker 1: wasn't a new one. Folks had tried doing it even
Speaker 1: back in the old PS two days with that console's
Speaker 1: Emotion Engine processor. Sony had released a kit that allowed
Speaker 1: developers to install Linux, that's an operating system on the
Speaker 1: PS two for the purposes of coding games, But that
Speaker 1: meant that you could code lots of other stuff too,
Speaker 1: and engineers at the National Center for super Computing Applications
Speaker 1: or in c s A tried to turn a bunch
Speaker 1: of PS two game systems into a computing cluster. See,
Speaker 1: supercomputers are incredibly expensive to make. Even renting time on
Speaker 1: a supercomputer is pricing, and there are a lot of
Speaker 1: different research projects that could benefit from having access to
Speaker 1: that sort of processing power. Using PlayStation two consoles, which
Speaker 1: were insanely cheap in comparison to a supercomputer, would be
Speaker 1: an amazing workaround. But the researchers found that the PS
Speaker 1: two wasn't really suited for that kind of work, and
Speaker 1: they frequently encountered problems, particularly with system memory, that made
Speaker 1: the PS two sort of a non viable option. But
Speaker 1: then the PS three came along and the story changed.
Speaker 1: The initial PS three's seemed ideal for the supercomputer treatment.
Speaker 1: It was easier to load Linux on them, they didn't
Speaker 1: have the same memory issues. Soon you had research organizations
Speaker 1: around the world sweeping up PS three consoles, not to
Speaker 1: play games, but in order to run complex processes such
Speaker 1: as simulations about black holes. I'm not kidding. They really
Speaker 1: were used to do this. That's what the University of
Speaker 1: Massachusetts Dartmouth researcher garov Kana did. He worked for several
Speaker 1: weeks developing the code that would allow him to network
Speaker 1: together multiple PS three's and use them like a supercomputer
Speaker 1: in order to run scientific calculations related to black hole research.
Speaker 1: That is some seriously cool tech. Ultimately, he was able
Speaker 1: to connect one hundred seventy six PS three consoles to
Speaker 1: act like a supercomputer, gaining access to computational processing power.
Speaker 1: This team wouldn't otherwise never had access to it. Just
Speaker 1: black hole research isn't one of those areas that gets
Speaker 1: tons of funding thrown at it, so they have to
Speaker 1: make a little money go a long way, and this
Speaker 1: was one of the ways they were able to do it.
Speaker 1: And he wasn't the only one doing this. Not only
Speaker 1: were other research facilities trying out similar approaches. The United
Speaker 1: States military was as well. The Air Force Research Laboratory
Speaker 1: built one of the largest networks of PS threes in
Speaker 1: a project called Condor Cluster. But this project launched in
Speaker 1: two thousand nine. That was right around the same time
Speaker 1: Sony was making some decisions that made everything much more
Speaker 1: difficult if you wanted to make a computer cluster LPs
Speaker 1: three's see like other PlayStation consoles, Sony would release several
Speaker 1: updated models of the p S three, and the newer
Speaker 1: versions were typically slimmer and smaller, and sometimes had new features,
Speaker 1: or in a few cases, sometimes they got rid of
Speaker 1: old features that Sony no longer wanted to support. The
Speaker 1: newer PIECEPS three models, the ones that were coming onto
Speaker 1: store shelves around the time that Condor Cluster was getting started,
Speaker 1: wouldn't let you load Linux on them the way the
Speaker 1: old ones did. Sony had removed that capability, and even
Speaker 1: the old consoles were affected if they had been connected
Speaker 1: to Sony's online services because the company had released a
Speaker 1: firmware update that nullified the Linux solution on those old consoles.
Speaker 1: So when a project like Condor Cluster comes along, everyone
Speaker 1: working on it was left searching for older PS three
Speaker 1: consoles that had not been updated. They hadn't had that
Speaker 1: firmware update installed on them. Sony had a warehouse of
Speaker 1: a pretty hefty collection of older PS three's that were
Speaker 1: sitting in Chicago, Illinois, and initially the company's intention was
Speaker 1: to recall all those old consoles. They weren't going to
Speaker 1: let them go onto the market at all. Representatives from
Speaker 1: the US Air Force had to actually convince executives at
Speaker 1: Sony to sell off those old consoles to Condor Cluster,
Speaker 1: rather than just recalling them. Apparently it took a few
Speaker 1: phone calls and meetings to make this happen. Now, ultimately,
Speaker 1: Condor Cluster did take off pun intended, and it did
Speaker 1: so with one thousand, seven hundred sixty PlayStation three consoles,
Speaker 1: so ten times the number that were used to research
Speaker 1: black holes, and these were all wired together to form
Speaker 1: the backbone or the Condor Cluster system. The arefore stated
Speaker 1: that the intended uses for the system included radar enhancement,
Speaker 1: AI research, and satellite image recognition processes. It was also used,
Speaker 1: at least reportedly to analyze images collected by surveillance drones.
Speaker 1: So um, this isn't a period of American history that
Speaker 1: gets kind of dicey, especially when it talks about, you know,
Speaker 1: drone surveillance and and potentially attack drones. But anyway, at
Speaker 1: the time of the systems unveiling, it was estimated to
Speaker 1: be the third most powerful supercomputer in the world, although
Speaker 1: other reports disputed that and said it was much further
Speaker 1: down the list, ranking it around number thirty five for
Speaker 1: fastest supercomputers. Though I guess you could also make an
Speaker 1: argument that powerful and fast are two different metrics, so
Speaker 1: it really just depends on what they were actually measuring,
Speaker 1: and neither of the press releases I found got into specifics. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I should use the past tense for Condor Cluster because
Speaker 1: that project ended around two thousand fifteen. By that time,
Speaker 1: other computing model power capabilities were outstripping what seventred or
Speaker 1: so PS three's could do. The Air Force would donate
Speaker 1: some of the p S three's to other research projects,
Speaker 1: and then they sold off the rest. And there are
Speaker 1: some projects that still use PS three's to help run processes,
Speaker 1: but a lot of those projects have then moved on
Speaker 1: to different approaches in processing or moved operations into the
Speaker 1: cloud for example. Just turned out that the rest of
Speaker 1: computing power kind of caught up and then surpassed the
Speaker 1: PS three, making it less useful. In two thousand seven,
Speaker 1: the same year that kN Kutaragi would leave Sony, the
Speaker 1: company introduced the PlayStation I periph role for the p
Speaker 1: S three. Now you might remember that when I was
Speaker 1: talking about the PS two that the company experimented with
Speaker 1: a webcam PERIPH role called Eye Toy. Well, in many ways,
Speaker 1: the PlayStation I was the next generation of that webcam technology.
Speaker 1: It could capture video at a higher frame rate, which
Speaker 1: means more frames per second that gives you a much
Speaker 1: more smooth video quality, and also had a higher resolution
Speaker 1: than the earlier Eye Toy. It also had a more
Speaker 1: sophisticated microphone than the earlier Eye Toy. And on the
Speaker 1: software side, Sony included facial recognition support, which the company
Speaker 1: claimed could only recognize faces and expressions, but also recognize
Speaker 1: the orientation of a face, such as where you are
Speaker 1: looking at any given time, kind of like a very
Speaker 1: primitive version of eye tracking technologies. One year after Kutaragi left,
Speaker 1: so we're talking around two thousand eight. At this point,
Speaker 1: Sony would release the dual Shock three controller, which officially
Speaker 1: replaced the six axis controller. The dual Shock three was
Speaker 1: essentially a six axis controller with rumble motors. So if
Speaker 1: you listen to the last episode in this series, you'll
Speaker 1: remember Sony released the six axis itself was a last
Speaker 1: minute replacement for a boomerang shaped controller that was never released,
Speaker 1: but they released it without a vibrating motor because there
Speaker 1: was this big intellectual property lawsuit that was leveled against Sony.
Speaker 1: But by two thousand and eight that lawsuit had been settled,
Speaker 1: and so the little vibrating motors were back in the controllers,
Speaker 1: restoring haptic feedback to the PlayStation line. And while we're
Speaker 1: on the subject of controllers, Sony would introduce a new
Speaker 1: type of controller in two thousand nine. It's the Move controller,
Speaker 1: which looks a bit like a handheld microphone or maybe
Speaker 1: a flashlight. At the end of the device is a
Speaker 1: small globe which can light up many different colors thanks
Speaker 1: to an LED on the end of the gadget. It's
Speaker 1: meant to work with the PlayStation I the webcam that
Speaker 1: I had mentioned earlier, So the PlayStation I could detect
Speaker 1: the globe at the end of a Move controller and
Speaker 1: track it in three dimensions, so not just up, down,
Speaker 1: and left right with respect to the view of the camera,
Speaker 1: but also closer or further away from the camera, because
Speaker 1: it could detect how the size of the globe was changing,
Speaker 1: whether or not it was coming closer to the camera
Speaker 1: further away. In addition, the Move has a pair of
Speaker 1: sensors in it inside the controller itself that tracked changes
Speaker 1: in movements, so it could measure stuff like a change
Speaker 1: in the angle it was held or in rotation, and
Speaker 1: I could dedicate an entire episode to all the sensors
Speaker 1: and technologies that make the Move controller work, but that's
Speaker 1: gonna wait for a later date. We're going to stick
Speaker 1: to the consoles for now. So in addition to this
Speaker 1: wand like controller, Sony also released a companion controller called
Speaker 1: de PlayStation Move Navigation Controller. You would hold this one
Speaker 1: in your other hand, presumably you would hold the Move
Speaker 1: controller in your dominant hand, and the navigation controller has
Speaker 1: buttons and a thumbstick on it to give players and
Speaker 1: game developers more options when it comes to game interface
Speaker 1: and controls. The Move was in many ways a response
Speaker 1: to Nintendo Wee's success that we had launched in two
Speaker 1: thousand six, and the novel motion based control system was
Speaker 1: an enormous breakout hit among an audience that traditionally wasn't
Speaker 1: really into video games. So these were all the casual
Speaker 1: gamers and the non gamers who went crazy for the Wii.
Speaker 1: Microsoft would have its own gesture based motion control system
Speaker 1: to connect, but that would launch a year after PlayStation Move,
Speaker 1: so Sony got the jump on Microsoft even though they
Speaker 1: were trailing behind Nintendo. The Move would also play a
Speaker 1: part in a future VR system for the PS four,
Speaker 1: but I'll get to that in just a moment. In
Speaker 1: the meantime, let's take a quick break. At the three conference,
Speaker 1: Sony announced it was launching an online service called PlayStation Plus,
Speaker 1: built on top of the PlayStation network. PlayStation Plus introduced
Speaker 1: a subscription based element to Sony's online platform. The subscription
Speaker 1: would give gamers access to free content each month, or
Speaker 1: really not free content, is rather content that was included
Speaker 1: in the subscription fee each month because you were paying
Speaker 1: for this stuff, but that included game titles. So let's
Speaker 1: say you'd picked up a PS three, but you never
Speaker 1: got around to buying that one launch title. Well, there
Speaker 1: was a chance that Sony might make that very game
Speaker 1: available for download one month on the PlayStation Plus program,
Speaker 1: and you could just snag it. Then you wouldn't have
Speaker 1: to buy it yourself. You just get that as part
Speaker 1: of the subscription service. All it took in return was
Speaker 1: that monthly subscription, and when a debut, it cost forty
Speaker 1: nine cents for a year of service in the US. Now,
Speaker 1: some months you'd say, Wow, this is incredible. I got
Speaker 1: a great game or a couple of games on this
Speaker 1: month's PlayStation Plus. Some months you'd say, wow, I never
Speaker 1: want to play that game. Ever, but I guess I've
Speaker 1: got it now. Same thing is true with Microsoft's service.
Speaker 1: By the way, it's not like Sony's alone in this.
Speaker 1: A year later, in two thousand and eleven, the PlayStation
Speaker 1: network was the target of an intrusive AC, meaning an
Speaker 1: unauthorized person or group of persons managed to penetrate Sony's
Speaker 1: network security, and they gained access to an enormous amount
Speaker 1: of information, including the personal data of around seventy five
Speaker 1: million PlayStation network users. The attacks started around April seventeen,
Speaker 1: two thousand eleven. Sony would shut down the network on
Speaker 1: April twenty so, three days later, and it would remain
Speaker 1: offline a total of twenty three days, the longest outage
Speaker 1: in the network's history. Making matters worse was that Sony
Speaker 1: admitted that while credit card information was encrypted, other personal
Speaker 1: identifying information wasn't, which meant the hackers potentially had access
Speaker 1: to millions of users personal information in plain text data.
Speaker 1: As for who committed the hack today, that still remains
Speaker 1: a big mystery. According to Sony, the company had reason
Speaker 1: to believe that the people connected with online activist group
Speaker 1: Anonymous were responsible, but Anonymous denied responsibility. However, This is
Speaker 1: incredibly tricky because Anonymous is a largely decentralized organization. In fact,
Speaker 1: calling it an organization might be a little bit um
Speaker 1: misleading because Anonymous is historically more like a group of
Speaker 1: hackers and activists, anarchists and troublemakers who share some but
Speaker 1: not all, points of view. So there's not even a
Speaker 1: unifying ethos or philosophy and Anonymous um other than you know,
Speaker 1: big companies and big organizations shouldn't have that much control
Speaker 1: over everybody. That's generally a kind of unifying theme, but
Speaker 1: there's a lot of splintering within that group. At the time,
Speaker 1: the general wisdom was that Anonymous had a motive to
Speaker 1: hack Sony because the company had recently filed a massive
Speaker 1: lawsuit against a packer named George Hotts a k a.
Speaker 1: Geo hots. He had found a way to alter a
Speaker 1: PlayStation three so that it would play pirated or unauthorized software,
Speaker 1: and then he published how to do it, and Anonymous
Speaker 1: was largely on the side of the hacker. However, the
Speaker 1: entire matter had been settled out of court by the
Speaker 1: time the PlayStation network hack happened, and as far as
Speaker 1: I can tell, no one has ever been positively identified
Speaker 1: as truly being responsible for that hack, so that person's
Speaker 1: identity remains a mystery, or those persons identities because it
Speaker 1: could be multiple people. The hack and corresponding data leak
Speaker 1: would prompt the U S Government to call upon Sony
Speaker 1: executives to explain what the company would do for all
Speaker 1: those who were affected by the breach, and Sony arranged
Speaker 1: to offer identity theft protection policies essentially insurance policies against
Speaker 1: identity theft, with a company called all Clear i D
Speaker 1: to everyone affected. The hack set Sony back up pretty any.
Speaker 1: The estimates on losses went around the hundred and seventy
Speaker 1: million dollar range, which is a princely sum. Indeed, and
Speaker 1: the US was not the only country to call Sony
Speaker 1: to task for this. The UK did as well as
Speaker 1: did other places. Now, before we move on to talk
Speaker 1: about the PS four, I do want to say that
Speaker 1: several predictions made by Sony executives, such as Kutaragi's replacement
Speaker 1: Katsu Horai, ended up being true. Harai said in interviews
Speaker 1: that while developing for the PS three was definitely complicated,
Speaker 1: that it really was hard to make great games for
Speaker 1: the p S three. He said it would lead to
Speaker 1: really incredible games as long as developers took the time
Speaker 1: to learn how to do it now. I mentioned in
Speaker 1: the last episode that if you do a side by
Speaker 1: side of the first Uncharted game and Uncharted three, both
Speaker 1: of which were developed four and debuted on the PlayStation three,
Speaker 1: you'll see a world of difference despite the fact that
Speaker 1: they're but two games that are playing on the exact
Speaker 1: same hardware. The same is true for the last huge
Speaker 1: title to come out on the p S three. That
Speaker 1: would be the last of us. So yeah, the PS
Speaker 1: three had a pretty rocky start, and a lot of
Speaker 1: gamers and game developers and game journalists criticized Sony for
Speaker 1: putting out an expensive console, missing a launch date in
Speaker 1: the process, and it was hard to code for than
Speaker 1: other systems, and they all said, or not all, but
Speaker 1: many of them said, this is a recipe for them
Speaker 1: to fail. However, in the long run, the PS three
Speaker 1: would prove to be a very strong system and it
Speaker 1: would sell enough units to rest second place away from
Speaker 1: Microsoft in the console wars. For the seventh generation of consoles,
Speaker 1: Nintendo's we was still in a league of its own.
Speaker 1: It was still in first place with a bullet, but
Speaker 1: Sony PlayStation three would take second place, and this is
Speaker 1: despite the fact that the uh the Xbox three sixty
Speaker 1: had a heads art of like half a year or
Speaker 1: more really over the PS three, So that that's food
Speaker 1: for thought right there. It also helps that Sony supported
Speaker 1: the PS three for more than a decade. Now for
Speaker 1: the PS four, the company would serve again. Now, I
Speaker 1: don't know how much input Kutaragi had on the development
Speaker 1: of the PS four, He surely was working on it
Speaker 1: by the time he decided to leave the company. However,
Speaker 1: game systems are in development for years before they debut,
Speaker 1: and the PS four would launch in North America in
Speaker 1: two thousand and thirteen, so six years after Kutaragi left. Now, interestingly,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't debut in Japan until early two thousand and fourteen,
Speaker 1: so it might have been because of PS three sales
Speaker 1: in Japan and Sony you didn't want to hurt a
Speaker 1: good thing. Now, I would imagine that had Kutaragi had
Speaker 1: a large influence in the development of the PS four,
Speaker 1: it would have taken further steps down the same path
Speaker 1: that the PS three had established. But instead, the p
Speaker 1: S four's architecture was much more like a standard personal computer.
Speaker 1: In fact, it would be extremely similar to the architecture
Speaker 1: used in Microsoft's Xbox one. And here's where, yet again
Speaker 1: I complain about Microsoft's naming conventions. The Blaze station is
Speaker 1: sensible because Sony just adds a higher number with each generation,
Speaker 1: so it's very easy to talk about them. Meanwhile, over
Speaker 1: at Microsoft we get Xbox, the Xbox three, six D,
Speaker 1: the Xbox one, the Xbox Series X. Knock it off, Microsoft,
Speaker 1: There's no way to meaningfully talk about generations of consoles
Speaker 1: with these sort of names. And I say that as
Speaker 1: someone who tends to play more Microsoft consoles than Sony consoles.
Speaker 1: Get your act together, all right? Also, what happened to
Speaker 1: Windows nine? Why don't we go from eight to ten? Anyway,
Speaker 1: this isn't an episode about Microsoft. I'll get back to
Speaker 1: the Sony now. This design decision was deliberate by so
Speaker 1: many engineers and executives. The company used components manufactured by
Speaker 1: Microprocessor Company a m D. So under the hood, the
Speaker 1: PS four is similar to a typical personal computer, but
Speaker 1: during development it did have a more mysterious code name
Speaker 1: at least orbis. Now what this means in a practical
Speaker 1: sense is that developing games for the PS four was
Speaker 1: more straightforward. It was easier than developing them for the
Speaker 1: PS three and taking full advantage of the PS three's capabilities.
Speaker 1: It was also easier to develop a game for multiple
Speaker 1: platforms because the differences between the PS four and the
Speaker 1: Xbox One weren't so great that it would be an
Speaker 1: enormous strain on a game development company. So for companies
Speaker 1: that were looking to maximize their sales by reaching as
Speaker 1: many gamers as possible, it was much easier to port
Speaker 1: a title over from one platform to another in this generation.
Speaker 1: On the downside, this would mean that there would be
Speaker 1: fewer features that really distinguished the PS four from its
Speaker 1: chief competitor, and it's also why the research organizations that
Speaker 1: have been using PS three consoles didn't show any interest
Speaker 1: in using the PS four in the same way, because
Speaker 1: the new console didn't offer any substantial benefits over a
Speaker 1: standard PC. So if you wanted to link a bunch
Speaker 1: of machines together, you would just go out and buy
Speaker 1: regular computers. There was no real advantage with the PS four. Now,
Speaker 1: the PS four is Sony's contribution to the eighth generation
Speaker 1: of video game consoles. Nintendo's original console in this generation
Speaker 1: was the WEU, but Nintendo would actually have two consoles
Speaker 1: in this generation, the second one being the Nintendo Switch.
Speaker 1: Microsoft's entrant is, of course, the Xbox One. The PS
Speaker 1: four was the second console to debut in that particular
Speaker 1: generation of games. It followed the WEU, but it came
Speaker 1: out a week ahead of Microsoft's Xbox One, and this
Speaker 1: generation is perhaps the most difficult to define from a
Speaker 1: distinguishing characteristics perspective. The new consoles were not a huge
Speaker 1: departure from their seventh generation counterparts, apart from the fact
Speaker 1: that Sony chose to go with a more straightforward microprocessor architecture.
Speaker 1: The PS four and the Xbox One were undeniably more
Speaker 1: powerful than their predecessors, but otherwise it's kind of hard
Speaker 1: to point out like big defining features for these consoles.
Speaker 1: Over the course of their production life cycles, which by
Speaker 1: the way, is still ongoing as of the recording of
Speaker 1: this podcast, both Sony and Microsoft would release updated versions
Speaker 1: of their consoles then not only slim things down, which
Speaker 1: was typical we've often seen, you know, later versions of
Speaker 1: the same console just get smaller and more compact, but
Speaker 1: they also up the anti on performance. So in some ways,
Speaker 1: this makes the eighth generation of consoles more like traditional PCs,
Speaker 1: except you can't really do those upgrades yourself. You can't
Speaker 1: break open a PlayStation for or an Xbox One and
Speaker 1: swap out components. I mean you could, but you're not
Speaker 1: supposed to. You have to purchase a whole new console
Speaker 1: to benefit from the enhancements unless you really know what
Speaker 1: you're doing and you don't mind the fact that you
Speaker 1: avoided all warranties and potentially set yourself up for heartbreak
Speaker 1: if if games start relying on code that detect if
Speaker 1: if a console has been altered anyway. This includes these
Speaker 1: enhancements include the ability to send four K resolution graphics
Speaker 1: to a compatible television. Both Sony and Microsoft would launch
Speaker 1: updated consoles capable of doing that, but the launch versions
Speaker 1: the original PS four and the original Xbox One did
Speaker 1: not have four K capability, which means both my PS
Speaker 1: four and my Xbox one are totally outdated. I have
Speaker 1: the original versions of both of those, so I can't
Speaker 1: run four K resolution stuff from those consoles to a television,
Speaker 1: But that's okay because I also don't have a four
Speaker 1: K TV, so I wouldn't be able to see it anyway. Anyway,
Speaker 1: back to the timeline. Sony gave some early details on
Speaker 1: the PS four at a special press of in New
Speaker 1: York City in early and at that event they didn't
Speaker 1: actually show off the console. They rather gave some overall
Speaker 1: specs on what it had going on, and a big
Speaker 1: part of that actually had to do with its new controller,
Speaker 1: the dual Shock four. All Right, So I've talked a
Speaker 1: lot about dual shock controllers in this series. So what
Speaker 1: sets the four apart from the earlier controllers. Well, for
Speaker 1: one thing, Sony built in some of the features found
Speaker 1: in stuff like the move controllers. The dual Shock four
Speaker 1: has motion detection sensors in it. It also has a
Speaker 1: capacity of touch pad on the controller itself, mounted towards
Speaker 1: the front of the controller in between the two thumbsticks.
Speaker 1: And just a quick reminder that capacity of touch screens
Speaker 1: have an electric field that's essentially running underneath the screen,
Speaker 1: and we humans are conductive, So if we touch a
Speaker 1: surface like that with our bare skin, we change the
Speaker 1: nature of that electric field because some of the electric
Speaker 1: current can flow into us. The capacitive touch screen devices
Speaker 1: detect the point of contact doing this there's like a
Speaker 1: grid pattern underneath it, and the disturbance of that pattern
Speaker 1: is what quote unquote tells a machine where you touched
Speaker 1: a touch pad surface, and then you've got a processor
Speaker 1: and you've got some software that determines what that actually
Speaker 1: means within the context of an application. So it might
Speaker 1: be like on a touch screen smartphone that when you
Speaker 1: touch something it activates a particular program, right, or if
Speaker 1: it's a gesture like a swipe, it might mean let's
Speaker 1: move to the next photograph or whatever. The dual CHUCK
Speaker 1: four also has a three and a half millimeter headphone jack,
Speaker 1: and honestly, I almost forgot what those are because phones
Speaker 1: have been dropping support for them for the last few years.
Speaker 1: I'm just really exaggerating. My computer, my laptop has a
Speaker 1: three and a half millimeter headphone jack, but it's just
Speaker 1: a regular headphone jack. It also connects to PS four's
Speaker 1: wirelessly via Bluetooth two point one. You could also have
Speaker 1: a hardwired connection if you bought a special you know,
Speaker 1: well not special, but a long enough cable for it.
Speaker 1: The cables that came of the PS four were notoriously short,
Speaker 1: long enough for you to be able to charge your
Speaker 1: your controller, but that was about it unless you were
Speaker 1: going to have the console in your lap as you played.
Speaker 1: Sony and Microsoft would do something similar leading up to
Speaker 1: the launch in their respective eighth generation video game consoles.
Speaker 1: Both companies began to promote some stuff in their consoles
Speaker 1: that fell outside the realm of video games. Both Sony
Speaker 1: and Microsoft position their consoles as kind of an entertainment
Speaker 1: and social networking center, uh, sort of a key component
Speaker 1: of a home theater system or computer system. So features
Speaker 1: like sharing stuff on social media, or watching live stream content,
Speaker 1: or creating live stream content, and accessing services like Netflix
Speaker 1: became a really big part in the promotional efforts both
Speaker 1: for Microsoft and Sony. However, I will say Microsoft leaned
Speaker 1: into this way harder than Sony did, in fact, to
Speaker 1: the point where fans of video games began to criticize
Speaker 1: Microsoft for short changing games at events like E three,
Speaker 1: where the company seemed determined to talk about pretty much
Speaker 1: everything besides video games. One other thing that would set
Speaker 1: the PS four apart from the Xbox One, at least
Speaker 1: the original plan for the Xbox One had to do
Speaker 1: with online connectivity. Sony made online connectivity and option for
Speaker 1: the PS four gamers were not required to have an
Speaker 1: online connection in order to play games. There would be
Speaker 1: no restrictions on playing secondhand games or sharing games with friends.
Speaker 1: Contrast that with the original plan for the Xbox One.
Speaker 1: That one was supposed to require a persistent internet connection,
Speaker 1: even if you just wanted to play a single player
Speaker 1: game that had no online component to it. So you
Speaker 1: might want to settle in for a couple of hours
Speaker 1: on a solo adventure. You got your game, there's no
Speaker 1: online component to the game, but then your internet connection
Speaker 1: goes bad, well, you would be out of luck if
Speaker 1: you were using an Xbox One, at least in its
Speaker 1: original concept form, and due to online copy protection, being
Speaker 1: able to share games or buy used ones and then
Speaker 1: play them on a console would be pretty much a
Speaker 1: no go because the system would be able to verify
Speaker 1: whether or not that game had been registered to that console,
Speaker 1: and so gamers were really not happy about this direction
Speaker 1: that Microsoft was taking. There were some positive parts of
Speaker 1: this persistent online approach to but the negative ones were
Speaker 1: really apparent, and Sony would end up enjoying the benefits
Speaker 1: of not going down that same path. In fact, Sony's
Speaker 1: presentations often would contrast against Microsoft with the company playfully
Speaker 1: and gleefully claiming play as many used games on our
Speaker 1: system as you like. Now, this isn't an Xbox series
Speaker 1: of episodes, but I do want to just say that
Speaker 1: Microsoft famously walked back their plans. They dropped the persistent
Speaker 1: online component before they launched the Xbox One, so they
Speaker 1: did change that between the announcement and the launch. But um, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's for a different episode anyway. Along with the console,
Speaker 1: Sony also introduced the next generation of PlayStation webcams. This
Speaker 1: time they finally dropped the eye naming convention for this one.
Speaker 1: You know, they had the eye toy and the PlayStation I.
Speaker 1: This one was just the PlayStation camera. The hardware actually
Speaker 1: contains two cameras inside of it, which are used to
Speaker 1: help since depth similar to the way our eyes work,
Speaker 1: and it's through what's called parallax. So parallax actually refers
Speaker 1: to how an object looks different when you're when you
Speaker 1: view it from different positions. And that's super intuitive, right, Like,
Speaker 1: if you look at something like a coffee mug from
Speaker 1: the side, then you can see the handle of the mug, right,
Speaker 1: it's just poking out. But then let's say you were
Speaker 1: to move so that the handle of the mug is
Speaker 1: behind the mug. From your point of view, the mug
Speaker 1: would look differently to you, look like a smooth cup. Well,
Speaker 1: our eyes are obviously in slightly different positions on our
Speaker 1: heads right our left eye and our right eye are
Speaker 1: offset from one another, which means we're getting two different
Speaker 1: feeds of visual information, and each of those feeds is
Speaker 1: slightly different from the other one, and our brains combine
Speaker 1: these together to create our concept of what we're seeing,
Speaker 1: and that includes a sense of how far away something
Speaker 1: is from us. This is, by the way, only one
Speaker 1: of the ways that we're able to sense depth. Parallax
Speaker 1: is one way. This is kind of what we talk
Speaker 1: about when you lose depth perception, like if you if
Speaker 1: you've lost an eye, or you're wearing an eyepatch or whatever,
Speaker 1: um you you have problems with depth perception because your
Speaker 1: ability to use parallax has gone. You no longer have
Speaker 1: two streams of information coming in. But there are other
Speaker 1: things we use as well, like context clues, like environmental
Speaker 1: clues to kind of gauge how close or far things are.
Speaker 1: So it's not the only way, it's just a way.
Speaker 1: The PlayStation camera uses parallax as well. It has those
Speaker 1: two camera lenses to pull in information, and then the
Speaker 1: system processes that information to get a sense of depth,
Speaker 1: even without tracking something like the size of a move
Speaker 1: controller's globe, which obviously is another way to detect depth,
Speaker 1: is just judging that relative size. The PlayStation camera could
Speaker 1: play a very important role in another PS four system,
Speaker 1: which we're gonna cover right after I take a break,
Speaker 1: but before I get to that break. When the PS
Speaker 1: four debuted, it did so to great enthusiasm. After the
Speaker 1: first twenty four hours, Sony reported it had sold more
Speaker 1: than one million units and the product had launched in November.
Speaker 1: By the end of December, four point two million PlayStation
Speaker 1: four consoles were sold, so it was already a hit.
Speaker 1: Now I have more to say about the PS four
Speaker 1: and a bit about the PS five, but before I
Speaker 1: get to that, let's take another quick break. Before the break,
Speaker 1: I tease that the PlayStation camera would be an important
Speaker 1: component in a new hardware system for the PS four.
Speaker 1: Another piece of that system was the move controller, so
Speaker 1: these were two already established pieces of hardware. The third
Speaker 1: would be a VR headset. Sony first acknowledged this at
Speaker 1: the game Developer Conference or g d C in two
Speaker 1: thousand and fourteen, and they called it Project Morpheus. Morpheus
Speaker 1: would eventually, um well morph into PlayStation VR that became
Speaker 1: its official name as a as a product, the PlayStation
Speaker 1: camera would be part of this system, and it would
Speaker 1: help track the position of the VR headset, giving players
Speaker 1: more nuanced VR experience and more importantly, working with another
Speaker 1: component in this system, the move controllers. Those would work
Speaker 1: with the camera and the camera would be able to
Speaker 1: pinpoint the relative position of the controller and provide more
Speaker 1: precise gameplay controls as a result. So in all, you
Speaker 1: would have the PlayStation camera, the move controller, and the
Speaker 1: headset to work together to create PlayStation VR experience. And
Speaker 1: a lot of folks wondered if this might be the
Speaker 1: way to finally get virtual reality out of being kind
Speaker 1: of a curiosity or a niche market and into the mainstream.
Speaker 1: And you see one of the really big barriers for VR.
Speaker 1: Does that tend to be pretty expensive. Even if you
Speaker 1: can get the cost of a headset down to a
Speaker 1: couple of hundred dollars, which is still expensive, you typically
Speaker 1: need a pretty beefy computer system to run the software
Speaker 1: for VR experiences. You want there to be no latency
Speaker 1: between the hardware and the game. Latency is that lag
Speaker 1: and in VR, latency leads to really bad motion sickness.
Speaker 1: You want graphics that are good and they hold up
Speaker 1: to scrutiny that they'll get from someone who is, you know,
Speaker 1: immerged in those graphics. And it's a tall order. And
Speaker 1: a PC based VR setup can cost thousands of dollars
Speaker 1: if you want one that runs really well. The PlayStation
Speaker 1: was a potential solution to this, right. PlayStation cost a
Speaker 1: few hundred bucks itself, but people already had the game system. Right,
Speaker 1: Lots of people have already bought PS fours. We just
Speaker 1: before the break talked about how many many millions of
Speaker 1: units they sold in just two months. Fewer but still
Speaker 1: a lot had the PlayStation for plus a move controller
Speaker 1: in the PlayStation camera, so they would really only need
Speaker 1: to buy the headset. Other people would have to buy
Speaker 1: the full system. The installed base for the PS four
Speaker 1: was going fairly strong, so there was this kind of
Speaker 1: optimism that perhaps this could be the equipment that made
Speaker 1: virtual reality a reality reality for more players. It would
Speaker 1: take about two years from the initial announcement of Project
Speaker 1: Morpheus to the launch of PlayStation VR and the headset
Speaker 1: hit shelves in the fall of two thousand and sixteen
Speaker 1: for like four bucks. The PlayStation VR system is is
Speaker 1: pretty versatile. Developers can create games in which the person
Speaker 1: wearing the headset sees one set of images, and people
Speaker 1: watching the connected television to the console they could see
Speaker 1: something totally different. So in other cases, the games would
Speaker 1: just have the TV display mirror whatever the person wearing
Speaker 1: the headset is seeing. But the fact that you could
Speaker 1: have two different displays meant that you could open out
Speaker 1: the possibility for cooperative or competitive gameplay, so that someone
Speaker 1: sitting on the couch watching the television can play in
Speaker 1: the same game that someone wearing the VR headset is playing,
Speaker 1: but they're playing, you know, two different modes of play
Speaker 1: or two different aspects of that game. So it opened
Speaker 1: up a lot of interesting possibilities from a developer standpoint,
Speaker 1: and I think that's pretty darn cool. Now, did it
Speaker 1: bring VR into the main stream? I would argue it
Speaker 1: is not, but it has performed pretty well, and if
Speaker 1: we're to believe Sony, it actually has sold above expectations.
Speaker 1: At c e S twenty, that's the most recent as
Speaker 1: the recording of this episode, Sony announced that it had
Speaker 1: sold five million of the PlayStation VR systems, but that
Speaker 1: announcement also seemed to indicate that sales as a whole,
Speaker 1: we're kind of slowing down. Because the previous announcement, the
Speaker 1: one they made before CSWY, had been ten months earlier,
Speaker 1: and at that point they had sold four point two
Speaker 1: million units, So if you were tracking trends, it looked
Speaker 1: like the trend had already hit a peak and now
Speaker 1: was starting to slope off. Now, they still sold eight
Speaker 1: hundred thousand more units between those two announcement that that's
Speaker 1: that's significant, but it was still a slowdown. Going along
Speaker 1: with that was a perceived reduction in the number of
Speaker 1: titles being developed for the VR system. See at launch,
Speaker 1: game companies had released severn all high profile titles, some
Speaker 1: in beloved franchises for the PlayStation VR system, but that
Speaker 1: trend overall has slowed down. There have been fewer of
Speaker 1: those titles released in the last year or two. And
Speaker 1: this is where we get into a sort of catch
Speaker 1: twenty two situation because gamers are reluctant to spend a
Speaker 1: lot of money, you know, like four hundred bucks for
Speaker 1: the PlayStation VR headset, and then several hundred more for
Speaker 1: a PS four especially they want to get a PS
Speaker 1: four pro more than that in a second, they're they're
Speaker 1: reluctant to do that if there isn't already a big
Speaker 1: library of Dynamite games available for that system. Meanwhile, game
Speaker 1: developers are not really chomping at the bit to dedicate
Speaker 1: the assets that are required to build video games for
Speaker 1: a system that doesn't have a big audience, because it's
Speaker 1: harder to make your money back on that investment. If
Speaker 1: you say, well, we have two choices. We can make
Speaker 1: this one game that we can sell on all sorts
Speaker 1: of platforms and thus make a huge amount of money
Speaker 1: after investing X million dollars in the development process. Or
Speaker 1: we can develop this VR game, but we already know
Speaker 1: the audience for that is a fraction of the size
Speaker 1: of the overall audience. That's you. That's a tough call.
Speaker 1: So you have not that many gamers pulling the trigger
Speaker 1: on buying the system and not many developers making games
Speaker 1: for it, and the hardware, even if it's really good,
Speaker 1: won't move like it won't sell very well, and that's
Speaker 1: a real issue. That being said, we could see an
Speaker 1: enhanced PlayStation VR system offered for PlayStation five. More on
Speaker 1: that in a second, but let's finish up with PS
Speaker 1: four now. Backtracking just a little bit. In two thousand fourteen,
Speaker 1: so between when Sony announced Project Morpheus and when Sony
Speaker 1: VR actually launched, the company introduced a new service called
Speaker 1: PlayStation Now, which was also, you know, similar to PlayStation Network.
Speaker 1: This service allows subscribers to play a variety of PlayStation
Speaker 1: titles through old streaming. So what does that mean. Well,
Speaker 1: in cloud streaming, the actual hardware running the game isn't
Speaker 1: your console or your phone or whatever. It's actually somewhere else,
Speaker 1: probably in a server farm that's potentially hundreds or maybe
Speaker 1: even thousands of miles away. The data from that machine
Speaker 1: gets streamed to some end device that you are accessing.
Speaker 1: So it could be a game console, it could be
Speaker 1: a computer, it could be a mobile device, it could
Speaker 1: be a smart TV. And as you play the game,
Speaker 1: your choices so you know, for example, the buttons that
Speaker 1: you push on a controller zip back to the hardware
Speaker 1: that's actually running the game many miles away. For this
Speaker 1: to work well, particularly for very fast paced games like
Speaker 1: first person shooter type stuff, you want the distance between
Speaker 1: the server and the game system or the end device
Speaker 1: to be as short as possible, because otherwise you get
Speaker 1: latency issues, and that's a big problem. It's really hard
Speaker 1: to make a precision run in a video game if
Speaker 1: there's a small delay between when you take an action
Speaker 1: using a controller and when you see play out on screen.
Speaker 1: Like let's say that you've got to make a jump
Speaker 1: and it's a really precise jump, but the game doesn't
Speaker 1: detect that you hit the jump button until after your
Speaker 1: character has apparently stepped off the edge of a cliff.
Speaker 1: It's a very frustrating experience. With PlayStation now, gamers can
Speaker 1: access titles for the PS two, p S three, and
Speaker 1: PS four now not all titles, mind you, but a
Speaker 1: lot of them, like more than eight hundred titles, and
Speaker 1: they can play them on a PS four or on
Speaker 1: a PC, and a subscription is ten dollars a month.
Speaker 1: PS four owners can also download around three hundred titles
Speaker 1: using this service as well. Now. In September, Sony announced
Speaker 1: the PS four Slim, which, as the name implies, is
Speaker 1: a slimmer version of the original PS four console, and
Speaker 1: they also announced the PS four Pro and that version
Speaker 1: of the PlayStation four can handle much higher resolution graphics.
Speaker 1: In fact, that's what supported four K graphics, so if
Speaker 1: you also had a four K television, you could get
Speaker 1: some seriously good looking games on your home set up.
Speaker 1: Now I've got, as I said, a p S four.
Speaker 1: It's not a PS four Pro, and I really think
Speaker 1: it's a great system. There's some seriously unbelievably great games
Speaker 1: for that system. There are many exclusive or semi exclusive
Speaker 1: titles that are phenomenal, like the two thousand eighteen Spider
Speaker 1: Man game swings to mind. I love that game. It's
Speaker 1: a fantastic video game. Developers didn't have nearly the same
Speaker 1: amount of trouble programming for the PS four as they
Speaker 1: did with the p S three. Even so, I think
Speaker 1: a lot of folks kind of view the PS four
Speaker 1: as a solid console, but more of a course correction
Speaker 1: as far as design elements go, than as something truly revolutionary.
Speaker 1: And that brings us to the PS five, which, again
Speaker 1: as of this recording, has not been released. It's scheduled
Speaker 1: to launch later this year in Q four twenty, although
Speaker 1: with the COVID nineteen crisis, all of that is up
Speaker 1: in the air because manufacturing and shipping have been affected,
Speaker 1: not to mention customer behaviors are changing dramatically because we
Speaker 1: have to prioritize stuff, right, So all of this has
Speaker 1: been impacted in ways we don't even fully understand yet
Speaker 1: by this global emergency. However, we can talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about what has been shared so far. On March eight.
Speaker 1: Mark Sarney a technical architect for the system. Some have
Speaker 1: referred to him as the Bob Ross of video game
Speaker 1: press events because he was very calming and very articulate,
Speaker 1: and people found it somewhat reassuring because this was in
Speaker 1: the early phases of people not knowing what to do
Speaker 1: about COVID nineteen. Anyway, he talked a lot about the
Speaker 1: PS five specs in a very very technical way, which
Speaker 1: was super cool, but probably not the jazzy sort of
Speaker 1: thing that a lot of video gamers were hoping for.
Speaker 1: One big thing about the PS five is that it
Speaker 1: places a new emphasis on loading speed. So as games
Speaker 1: get more complicated, they require more computing assets. That's kind
Speaker 1: of a no brainer, and that often means that they
Speaker 1: put a lot more stress on a console's memory. Game
Speaker 1: systems load information from hard drives or disks into RAM
Speaker 1: or random access memory. That's like the quick pick part
Speaker 1: of a computer systems memory. The system can consult that
Speaker 1: data rapidly as players work through a certain section of
Speaker 1: the game, and there's no delay because the information is
Speaker 1: right at hand. But unless the game is incredibly simple,
Speaker 1: there will come a point when the player maneuvers to
Speaker 1: a point that requires the system to pull new data
Speaker 1: into memory. So it's got to get rid of the
Speaker 1: old stuff and pulling new stuff. Memory is a finite resource, right,
Speaker 1: so you can't just pull the whole game in there.
Speaker 1: You can pull the bits that are important at that moment,
Speaker 1: and the whole process of pulling new info and dumping
Speaker 1: old info takes a little time, and typically that manifests
Speaker 1: and game as a load screen. And Sony's details about
Speaker 1: the PS five seemed largely geared towards getting that downtime
Speaker 1: minimized as much as possible. And this is going to
Speaker 1: be really important because we have to remember that as
Speaker 1: consoles get more complicated, game developers make more complicated games.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna see game developers really put these new
Speaker 1: consoles to the extreme. So one of the solutions Sony
Speaker 1: has is including a solid state drive or s s
Speaker 1: D into the PS five, and for a long time
Speaker 1: s s d s were super expensive. They have come
Speaker 1: down in price over the years. This is typically the
Speaker 1: way we see technology move from expensive and hard to
Speaker 1: get to ever present and cheap. But solid state drives
Speaker 1: can load data into memory much quicker than older platter
Speaker 1: based hard drives. And if you wonder what those are,
Speaker 1: I've done episodes about it. But it's kind of similar
Speaker 1: to think of like a record player or a CD player.
Speaker 1: It's literally information stored on a platter and moving parts
Speaker 1: have to move to the rights spot on those platters
Speaker 1: to pull data. Ssd s have no moving parts. They
Speaker 1: are lightning fast. The PS five will have a m
Speaker 1: D s Zen two microprocessor, and this is going to
Speaker 1: be one that has eight cores operating at a clock
Speaker 1: speed of three point five giga hurts. That's three point
Speaker 1: five billion cycles per second. It will also have a
Speaker 1: crazy powerful graphics processing unit or GPU that can operate
Speaker 1: at ten point twenty eight tara flops, which sounds like
Speaker 1: something that Doc Brown would say in Back to the Future.
Speaker 1: A flop, just to remind you, is a floating point
Speaker 1: operation per second. You know, it's what flops stands for.
Speaker 1: Floating point opration per second. Flooding points are referred to decimals.
Speaker 1: It's when you boil it down. It's a really easy
Speaker 1: way for computers to handle calculations that could include very
Speaker 1: small and very large numbers. Uh. The this particular GPU
Speaker 1: can handle ten point twenty eight million million of those
Speaker 1: operations in a second. Yes, million million, that's incredible. The
Speaker 1: PS five is also supporting three D audio capabilities, which
Speaker 1: will help developers make even more immersive gameplay experiences. I'm
Speaker 1: particularly excited by this because I think games that have
Speaker 1: really good sound design are incredibly impressive. I love games
Speaker 1: that that do that. The company is also working very
Speaker 1: closely with game developers in general, just to make sure
Speaker 1: that the system is going to be one that game
Speaker 1: developers are going to want to develop for. It's another
Speaker 1: kind of nod to the troublesome past of the PS three,
Speaker 1: which again ultimately turned out well but initially was a
Speaker 1: bit of a problem. And reportedly it's going to be
Speaker 1: backwards compatible with PS four games, though they may not
Speaker 1: all be playable right at launch. That that, Sony has
Speaker 1: been very careful to say that that some titles will
Speaker 1: be supported, with more titles supported down the line. The
Speaker 1: new dual Shock five controllers will likely be similar to
Speaker 1: Dual Shock four controllers, but reportedly will include a built
Speaker 1: in microphone, which suggests that the PS five will have
Speaker 1: a voice activated assistant akin to something like Alexa or Sirie.
Speaker 1: My apologies if I just activated those. And there's a
Speaker 1: lot of speculation about the console design. It's rumored to
Speaker 1: have a sort of V shap shape motif to it,
Speaker 1: So if you've seen any of the mock ups or
Speaker 1: some of the photos that are purported to be of
Speaker 1: PS five developer kits, they have sort of this V
Speaker 1: design incorporated into the console itself. That kind of makes
Speaker 1: sense because V is the Roman numeral for five. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's an equal amount of speculation about the consoles sales price.
Speaker 1: Sony hasn't given one as of the recording of this episode.
Speaker 1: Most guess is fall somewhere between four hundred and five
Speaker 1: hundred dollars in the US. And that's about all we
Speaker 1: know about the PS five as of the recording of
Speaker 1: this episode. There's a lot more speculation I could talk about,
Speaker 1: but I find that road not really worth traveling down.
Speaker 1: We can just wait to get more info later and
Speaker 1: If there's enough, then I can dedicate another episode just
Speaker 1: to the PlayStation five and talk about that. But for now,
Speaker 1: I think it's time to say goodbye to the PlayStation
Speaker 1: and turn our eyes to some other tech topic. But
Speaker 1: I hope you guys enjoyed this exhaustive exploration of the
Speaker 1: history of the PlayStation consoles. Obviously there are other things
Speaker 1: I could have talked about, like the PSP. I didn't
Speaker 1: even touch on that, but honestly, I think of that
Speaker 1: as sort of a side the thing to the PlayStation consoles.
Speaker 1: So I might do an episode in the future about
Speaker 1: different handheld systems, and that would obviously take a very
Speaker 1: important play in that particular discussion, as with the Nintendo
Speaker 1: Switch now that I think about it. So maybe in
Speaker 1: the future I'll cover that sort of thing, but for
Speaker 1: now we're gonna leave it, and we're probably gonna move
Speaker 1: away from video games for a little bit, just because
Speaker 1: you know, I don't want to turn into a video
Speaker 1: game podcast. There's plenty of those out there, and they
Speaker 1: are all really good. I love you the besties. You
Speaker 1: guys are fantastic. That's not a plug. They don't know me.
Speaker 1: I just love that show. It's a lot of fun Um.
Speaker 1: They had a lease Willems from fun House on recently,
Speaker 1: and if you have not heard that episode of them
Speaker 1: talking about Doom, you should go check it out again.
Speaker 1: Free Plug. They have nothing to do with me, and
Speaker 1: that wraps this up. You guys, reach out to me
Speaker 1: with any suggestions you have for future episodes, whether it's
Speaker 1: a company, a specific product, general trend and technology, anything
Speaker 1: like that. You can get in touch with me on
Speaker 1: Facebook or Twitter. The handle it both is tech Stuff
Speaker 1: hs W and I'll talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,