Hasta La Gadget!

The PlayStation 4 hasn’t even been shown off to the public yet, but already the box is on the minds of millions of people across the globe. In fact, in a recent earnings call with investors, GameStop president Tony Bartel said that his company has 900,000 people signed up for its first-to-know list on the PlayStation 4. And he expects demand to far outstrip supply of the console when it launches.

Such demand already might surprise some folks. After all, it took a long time for the PlayStation 3 to truly get off the ground and although it’ll likely end this generation with more worldwide sales than the Xbox 360, in the U.S., especially, it’s no match for Microsoft’s console.

To make matters worse, it appears that gamers aren’t all that excited about the next generation of consoles across the board. The Wii U, after all, has been watching its sales slow to crawl and even GameStop said publicly that it’s been disappointed by the Wii U. What in the world would make the PlayStation 4 different?

Well, I think there are a host of reasons. I’m a firm believer that Sony is still a household name in the U.S. and in Japan – its two key markets – and people buy products from the company solely because they trust the name. And despite the PlayStation 3’s initial troubles, the console turned out to be quite a success, allowing its predecessor to deliver solid results next time around.

“It’s unfair to compare the PS4 with the Wii U”

It’s also unfair to compare the PlayStation 4 with the Wii U. Nintendo’s console is one that’s a barely updated alternative to the predecessor. As I’ve said here before, I believe the Wii U is a catch-up device. And historically, catch-up devices don’t really perform all that well on store shelves.

The PlayStation 4, however, is a high-end product with all kinds of graphical firepower; it’s the kind of device that true gamers really want. And chances are, Sony will once again have the full support of the developer community to ensure it doesn’t fall short from a library perspective.

Most importantly, though, I think the strong demand for the PlayStation 4 tells us that, despite conventional wisdom suggesting that mobile and casual gaming is the future, console gamers are still extremely engrossed in their favored way of playing games. And that’s not going to change anytime soon.

The fact is that console gaming has a long way to go to ultimately match the promise gamers have been hoping for all this time. And companies like Sony and Microsoft are willing to push the envelope and put themselves in a position where they can capitalize on customers that want a true next-generation device, and not something that’s simply labeled as one.

So yes, I understand the excitement surrounding the PlayStation 4, and I can say without any hesitation that I’m one of those folks that’s excited to see what’s coming next from Sony. The future is now. And Sony is one of the few companies in the gaming industry that’s willing to embrace it.

Why the PlayStation 4 Is Already In High Demand is written by Don Reisinger & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

When the Sony PlayStation 4 was announced earlier this year, one of the features that Sony was boasting about at the event would be Remote Play. Basically this allowed Vita owners to play games on the PlayStation 4 on the handheld console, which sounds remarkably similar to the Nintendo Wii U where the secondary screen can be used to play Wii U games if the TV is in use by someone else. In any case this compatibility and integration with the Vita was more or less expected, and according to Sony’s president of Worldwide Studios, Shuhei Yoshida, it seems that both the PlayStation 4 and PS Vita were developed simultaneously, despite both devices being released at different dates.

This was revealed in the latest issue of Edge where Yoshida explained that work on the PS4 began as soon as the PS3 was released. We guess this is normal since companies can’t expect to sit around and wait for a few years before beginning R&D on their next project. “PS Vita was a shorter project compared to PS4 […] but Mark and Worldwide Studios were involved in both projects, and we worked on both projects simultaneously.” If this is the case, we can certainly look forward to seeing tighter integration of the Vita with the PS4, but unfortunately apart from the information provided at the launch, not much else is known about the feature for now, but hopefully additional details will be revealed in time.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon Spotted On Torrent Sites After Ubisoft Uplay Service Hack, SimCity Headed To Mac On June 11; Will Be Free For PC Owners,

During Sony’s PlayStation announcement back in February, while the console itself was officially announced and had its controller revealed, one of the main things missing was the actual console itself. While we’re sure that some gamers aren’t too fussed about what the console actually looks like, we’re sure that many are curious anyway. It would be tantamount to Apple announcing the new iPhone without actually revealing the device itself, or Samsung announcing the Galaxy S4 and all its features without the actual device.

In any case while the Sony PS4 could be seeing a release in October, a source who spoke to the folks at PCGamer suggested that the console could be revealed during a special event held in May prior to E3. We’re not sure what will be announced at this rumored event, but we’re guessing the actual console itself, its pricing, bundles, SKUs and whatnot. We’ll take this with a grain of salt for now, but with May being pretty close to E3, we wouldn’t be surprised if this were true.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Microsoft’s Xbox 720 Could Be Announced In May, According To Analyst, Xbox 720 Will Apparently Be Similar To The PS4, According to Ubisoft Developer,

This week it’s been revealed that Blizzard Entertainment’s own Diablo III will be coming to the PlayStation 4 without access to the Real Money Auction House still present in the desktop PC iteration. Though this might have some odd effects on those hoping to play the game with access to weapons, armor, and everything in-between with their own real-world cash, Blizzard is presenting a firm “not a chance” as they suggest that, if they could, they’d take the whole mess out of the game entirely.

If you have a travel down our Diablo III tag portal, you find a series of stories that are just as often negative and full of disappointment as they are exciting and action-packed. This release was one of the most long-awaited in the history of gaming, with 8 years separating the second installment of the series (Diablo II in 2000) and the announcement of this title.

Though Diablo III was first announced in 2008, it was only actually released to the public on May 15th, 2012. That’s one massive amount of time for a game to be in development, especially with the 5-minutes-of-fame atmosphere we’re in now. Then there’s the bits and pieces that Blizzard has had to change right from the outset. Today’s big kicker is the announcement from former Diablo 3 Game Director Jay Wilson.

“Most of the auction house’s use is with in-game virtual gold.”

Speaking with Joystiq this week about Diablo III’s real money action house, he suggested that the feature has “really hurt the game.” According to Wilson, over 50 percent of the players that play regularly use the auction house, while most of the auction house’s use is with in-game virtual gold rather than with real cash.

Because of this gold use, not necessarily the real money, motivation to collect gold and broken items (otherwise useless, able to be sold in the game to virtual vendors for gold), have become far more popular goals for users. There’s simply not as much junk everywhere anymore – Diablo II continues to be a massive mess of item drops and coins.

“I think we would turn it off if we could, [but it’s] not as easy as that.” – Wilson

Citing the near-impossible task of figuring out how much of the Diablo III user population wants the auction house to stick around or be kicked to the curb, Wilson was clear on one point: they are looking for a “solution.” A solution to what, exactly, we might never know.

Diablo III’s next big “oops” is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

During Sony’s PlayStation 4 unveiling event help over a month ago, the company took a little over two hours to detail as much of the platform and what we could expect from it as much as possible. The new PlayStation 4 controller was one of the first parts of the system that was shown off, whether they liked it or not, and some new details are coming out from this week’s Game Developer’s Conference.

We already know the controller is called the DualShock 4 and will come with a touchpad, a share button, headphone jack, and a light bar to help distinguish each player. The Verge was able to get some new details regarding the controller’s capacitive touchpad, like it being able to recognize two inputs at the same time and will be able to support a variety of gestures such as flick, pinch and twist. Developers will be able to utilize the touchpad in their upcoming games to be used as on-screen slider buttons, helping the player navigate a game’s user interface or even be used as a cursor.

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