Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. This is Jonathan Strickland, I'm
Speaker 1: a writer for how Stuff Works, and with me is
Speaker 1: Chris Pollett, Editor extraordinaire either and we're gonna give you
Speaker 1: a quick update on some of the video game systems
Speaker 1: that are out right now. Because of the Electronic Entertainment
Speaker 1: Expo that's going on, there's been a lot of announcements,
Speaker 1: so we want to catch you up on what's going on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this year's E three is It's known is UH scaled
Speaker 1: down a bit from years past where the public was invited.
Speaker 1: It's more of a UM press and industry only event.
Speaker 1: But this year's big story is that there's really no
Speaker 1: big story. New new consoles to UH to announce, no
Speaker 1: new game with some kind of massive new controller that
Speaker 1: you have to buy. It seems like a lot of
Speaker 1: things are improved UM Sony and UH and Mike Usoft
Speaker 1: both announced larger hard drives in new models UM. But
Speaker 1: other than that, the consoles seem to UH to have
Speaker 1: legs they're they're going on the way they have been,
Speaker 1: just with brand new titles and enhanced versions of older titles. Right,
Speaker 1: It's it's really all about incremental improvement this year. Uh.
Speaker 1: And of course, all three giants we're talking about, Microsoft,
Speaker 1: Sony and Nintendo here are all claiming that they are
Speaker 1: going to dominate this year. But I mean, what else
Speaker 1: are you going to do at a press event? Of course,
Speaker 1: So let's talk a little bit about some of these improvements.
Speaker 1: So well, we'll start over with the Microsoft's Xbox, So
Speaker 1: the Xbox three sixty. A lot of the improvements they mentioned,
Speaker 1: uh refer back to Xbox Live, which is their online
Speaker 1: portion of the their console system. Um. That includes things
Speaker 1: like you can now go online using the web and
Speaker 1: and shop at the Xbox Marketplace and buy games and
Speaker 1: other applications and download them directly to your console. It's
Speaker 1: kind of like a TiVo thing where you would log
Speaker 1: in and and and shop around for for television shows
Speaker 1: and tell your vote to record the same sort of thing.
Speaker 1: You don't have to be at your Xbox to do
Speaker 1: it anymore. Yeah, and um, now they have a partnership
Speaker 1: with Netflix, So if you have an Xbox Live Gold membership.
Speaker 1: You can stream movies directly through your Xbox three sixty,
Speaker 1: which is a nice feature, although you can't you know,
Speaker 1: download them directly to your hardware. That's true. Although there
Speaker 1: is one other kind of cool feature. You can now
Speaker 1: play games from your hard drive. You can actually uh
Speaker 1: copy games onto the hard drive, which decreases load times.
Speaker 1: You still have to have the disc in the in
Speaker 1: the game system to play it, but it means that
Speaker 1: your load times are much shorter. But let's let's move
Speaker 1: on to one of the others. Let's talk about Nintendo
Speaker 1: for a little bit. Yeah, Nintendo, of course has been
Speaker 1: selling like hotcakes there. WE has been flying off the
Speaker 1: store shelves. You can them anywhere, you know. Now, they're
Speaker 1: very very hard to find still and um, you know,
Speaker 1: I think people expect them to come out with some
Speaker 1: brand new uh feature or or device like the balance
Speaker 1: board that came with WE Fit. But this year, um,
Speaker 1: they're coming out with two new games. The announced WE
Speaker 1: Sports Resort, which has a WE Motion plus plugs into
Speaker 1: the back of the Wi Remote and gives it some
Speaker 1: added functionality regarding motion and how it detects what you're doing. Um.
Speaker 1: They also have WE Music with more than fifty instruments
Speaker 1: that you can play. You know, the music games Rock
Speaker 1: Band and Guitar Hero still very popular, so that's We's
Speaker 1: unique entry into that market, right. And then there's also
Speaker 1: the We Speak, which is a microphone application that will
Speaker 1: specifically work with an animal crossing game that's coming out
Speaker 1: for the Wei, but hopefully we'll be used in other
Speaker 1: games and applications further down the road. And and just
Speaker 1: for you guys to know, my most anticipated game announcement
Speaker 1: is the Clone Wars because I want to play with lightsabers.
Speaker 1: But let's move on to uh to the third biggie
Speaker 1: Sony Now Sony. Sony's big announcement was mainly the the
Speaker 1: new model that's going to replace the forty gigabyte model.
Speaker 1: It's a it's an eighty gigabyte model, will cost about
Speaker 1: four hundred dollars that will come out later this year.
Speaker 1: But they had some other interesting information. Um, by the way,
Speaker 1: people who are waiting for Sony Home, you're still going
Speaker 1: to be waiting a while. We don't have any date
Speaker 1: on when that's gonna come out, but it is still
Speaker 1: in development, so it should be coming. I just hope
Speaker 1: that the price decreases enough where I can buy a
Speaker 1: PlayStation three and get a Blu ray Player and get
Speaker 1: to play my Ratchet and Clank games that I used
Speaker 1: to plan on. They announced a new Ratchet and Clank
Speaker 1: title with a pirate theme, yes, Quest for Booty, So
Speaker 1: I'm excited about that, right, And there's going to be
Speaker 1: a whole slew of downloadable games. Actually, downloadable content is
Speaker 1: gonna be big for PlayStation uh. They They are also
Speaker 1: going to allow users to download movies and television shows
Speaker 1: from a certain group of of providers and producers. Um,
Speaker 1: but you get to actually download those, it's you get
Speaker 1: to store them on your PlayStation and watch them whenever
Speaker 1: you like. You can you can purchase movies and television shows,
Speaker 1: unlike the Xbox version where you're dreaming. Yeah, I bet
Speaker 1: the Sony fans were really excited about the new Final
Speaker 1: Fantasy game. Oh, I'm sure they were, especially when they
Speaker 1: heard it's also premiering on the Xbox. I hope you
Speaker 1: guys can sleep at night. Well that about wraps it
Speaker 1: up for this podcast. We have tons of video game
Speaker 1: articles on the site, but to to get started, if
Speaker 1: you're really interested in learning more about some of these
Speaker 1: consoles and games. You can read how video game systems work.
Speaker 1: That's available right now at how stuff works dot com
Speaker 1: for moral this, and thousands of other topics. Does it
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