The PlayStation 4 will not require an internet connection, though it is likely that if you want to take advantage of some of its core features and frequent updates you'll need a connection at some point. According to Eurogamer Sony says that, while you may want to keep your console connected to the internet to take advantage of the system's new features, it is not a requirement.

Eurogamer delivers bit of good news this evening from Sony Worldwide Studios head Shuhei Yoshida: the PlayStation 4 will not block used games. Catching up with Yoshida a few hours after last night's two-hour PS4 press conference, Eurogamer asked him directly if Sony had any plans to block used games on its newest console:

At a two hour press conference this evening, Sony Computer Entertainment officially unveiled its next-generation console, the PlayStation 4. Sony revealed a few details (without getting into specifics) about the PS4 hardware at the start of the press event. It contains what the company called a "supercharged PC architecture," an x86-64 AMD processor and 8GB of GDDR5 unified system memory.

Sony's ass-numbingly long PlayStation 4 blowout is finally over!

So what did you all think?

Are you excited?  Are you cautiously optimistic?  Does your apathy towards Sony's new console know no bounds?

Please vote in our poll then fill the comments section and our inbox (SuperPACpodcast@gmail.com) with your opinions and thoughts on the show.  What are you most excited about?  What are you most concerned about?  Did you watch the entire 2-hour presentation at work?  Does your boss know?

Tonight is the night that Sony will make some sort of announcement about the future of the PlayStation brand. Some speculate that it will be more details on their next system, commonly referred to as the "PS4." Hopefully there will be some other surprises like game announcements, new features for the technology they already have on the market now and - with any luck - a price cut to the North American and European versions of the PS Vita hand-held - which currently cost as much as a brand new PS3.

DealNews, a web site dedicated to bringing you all the latest news on all the hottest items past and present makes a pretty bold prediction: After Sony makes its big announcement (it is presumed) about the PlayStation 4, the PlayStation 3 will see a price drop of 64 percent at retail. They base this price drop percentage on historical retail data for the PS3 versus the PS2 and the Wii U versus the Wii. Here is the crux of the argument:

Why did Microsoft enter the console market in 2001 with the original Xbox? Well, if you believe former VP of Windows Sales at Microsoft Joachim Kempin, the company jumped into the market because it wanted to "stop" Sony.

Entertainment reviews aggregation site Metacritic has published its 2012 publisher rankings, ranking Electronic Arts at the top of the list, followed by Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, and Capcom. The rankings use each publisher's game scores to determine the order.

EA was helped by Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning and Mass Effect; Microsoft came in second with the help of Mark of the Ninja; followed by Sony with Journey; Nintendo with Xenoblade Chronicles for Wii; and Capcom with Okami HD and Dragon's Dogma - both for PS3.

There's a lot of speculation today that Sony will unveil the PlayStation 4 at an event scheduled for February 20. Yesterday Sony put out a video encouraging viewers to "see the future" at an event it plans to host in New York City at the end of this month.

Earlier this week we reported that the Chinese government was considering lifting a 13-year ban on game consoles in the country. While there's plenty of black market devices and software for Chinese consumers, there's no way to legally buy a PS3, Xbox 360, or Nintendo device in the country. The story from a few days ago was based on a China Daily report that quoted an anonymous source inside the Ministry of Culture.

Sony has confirmed with IGN that PlayStation All-Stars developer SuperBot has laid off a number of its staff. An SCEA spokesperson told the publication that work would continue on PlayStation All-Stars DLC to be released in the next few months despite the smaller staff at the studio. Sony did not confirm just how much of the staff had been laid off.

The United Kingdom has levied a fine of £250,000 against Sony for the PlayStation Network security breach that occurred in 2011 that put the personal information of 77 million customers at risk, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) announced. The government's agency in charge of data protection called the Sony security breach a "serious breach of the Data Protection Act" and note that - if Sony's security had been up to date - the attack "could have been prevented."

Sony announced that it plans to sell its U.S. headquarters, a 37-story building located on Madison Avenue in New York City. The PS Vita and PlayStation 3 maker will gain an estimated $1.1 billion from the sale. The buyer is a real estate consortium headed by The Chetrit Group. Sony expects that the transaction will close in March 2013. After paying back debt related to the building, Sony plans to pocket around $770 million from the sale.

Eurogamer reports that actor Jerry Lambert has settled a lawsuit with Sony over his part in a Bridgestone ad where he played an engineer playing a Wii video game. In 2012 Sony sued Bridgestone and the actor because they claimed that Lambert's engineer character in the ad was too much like its popular fictitious PS3 spokesperson Kevin Butler.

Life is filled with uncertainty but there remain various bits and bobs you can count on: death, taxes, and the fact that I'll pass out if I don't get something to eat soon.

Sony CEO Kaz Hirai had a few short but notable things to say about Nvidia's freshly announced handheld console, Project Shield, and his thoughts on how the PlayStation Vita is doing at this moment in time. First, speaking to the Wall Street Journal, Hirai admitted that the system is at the low-end of the company's expectations:

A patent application unearthed by a NeoGAF forum post and picked up by Kotaku reveals that Sony has plans to implement a technology to deal with the use of used games on more than one console.

The results are in, the votes have been tallied and the sole light in my mom's windowless, basement bathroom burnt out while I was taking a shower this morning.  It's time to reveal which of the current consoles GamePolitics poll participants think has the dumbest name!

A particularly light and fluffy question for this week's poll, GP faithful:

Which of the current crop of video game consoles do you think has the dumbest name?

Is it the Wii?  It's the Wii, isn't it?

Yeah, it's probably the Wii.

According to new data from MediaCreate on sales in Japan for the week of Dec. 3 - 9, the Nintendo 3DS has sold more units to-date than the PlayStation 3. The 3-D enabled hand-held system managed to do this in the region in less than two years to boot.

Lifetime sales of the 3DS came in at 8,799,378, beating out the PS3 which came in at lifetime sales of 8,716,260 units in Japan. The PS3 has been on the market in Japan for six years. In terms of sales in Japan for the week, the Wii U came in on top at 308,142, followed by the 3DS at 211,499, and the PS3 at 36,994.

Episode 5 of Telltale's horror adventure series The Walking Dead based on the popular comic series took the top spot on the PlayStation Store charts for the month of November, according to Sony. In fact all five episodes in the series managed to make the Top 20. Coming is second was Assassin's Creed 3, followed by Sonic Adventure 2, Okami HD, and PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale.

Sony has released full details on the PS Vita firmware update 2.00 which is hitting Europe today and was pushed out to North American PS Vita owners yesterday. The update adds some new features to the hand-held and offers a ton of tweaks.

In Episode 29 of the Super Podcast Action Committee hosts Andrew Eisen and E. Zachary Knight discuss the shaky launch of the Wii U console over the weekend, Sony perma-bans for PS3 'hackers,' and the good and bad side of Electronic Arts. It's a show to remember unless you stopped that Wii U firmware update - then it's a painful reminder that getting your brand new console 'bricked' kind of sucks! Download it now: SuperPAC Episode 29 (1 hour, 19 minutes) 73 MB.

Sony announced that it will raise an estimated $1.85 billion in cash through the sale of its convertible bonds. The money generated from the sales of these bonds, the company says, will help pay down on the $380 million it spent acquiring cloud-based gaming company Gaikai, along with financing investments it has in other businesses such as Olympus Corp., and paying off miscellaneous company debts.

Sony has begun taking steps to secure the PlayStation Network to deal with the threat of the PS3 lv0 boot loader key leak and the ability for hacked consoles to play online alongside legitimate users.

We know when Nintendo is releasing its next console: November 18th (NA).  Yep, that's this Sunday.

But when will Sony and Microsoft's next consoles see release?

Sony released the PlayStation 3 on November 11, 2006 in Japan; in North America on November 17, 2006; and in Europe, Australia, the Middle East, Africa and New Zealand on March 23, 2007. China never got access to the system because the Chinese government didn't approve it for sale in the region. Nearly seven years later it looks like Chinese gamers finally have some hope of playing PlayStation 3 titles legally.

A new print ad from Sony Computer Entertainment France is getting some attention for pushing the boundaries of sexism to promote the company's PS Vita hand-held. The ad (pictured left and courtesy of MCV) shows a female body with four breasts and compares those four breasts to the PS Vita's front and rear touch screens.

The tagline for the ad is "Touch both sides, twice the sensations."

Some are chalking the ad up to what is acceptable in French advertising and cultural standards.

Last week we detailed a new hack for the PlayStation 3 that has some in the PlayStation Network concerned that they could face another major security breach like what happened back in 2011 when millions of users' information was compromised by hackers. But security firm GFI Software says that PSN users shouldn't be all that concerned about it.

Sony's PlayStation 3 is facing a new security threat - one it hasn't seen since the system was cracked via the PSJailbreak in 2011. According to a report on Eurogamer, a new PlayStation Network-enabled custom firmware was recently released along with the publication of the console's LV0 decryption keys.