Hello fellow Wayland High School students! I hope you are all slowly getting back into the rhythm of things after a refreshing summer. If you didn’t know already, I’m David Flynn, and I’d like to sincerely welcome you to a brand new blog called “Tech Corner.” I’ll mostly be talking about technology and the latest gadgets, along with interesting news. This will be a bi-weekly blog.

In this blog post I will be talking about popular next generation video game systems along with trendy games.

With every school year there is always commotion about the “latest and greatest” video games. The majority of high school students own video game systems and play with friends online as a hobby or pastime. A national survey from the Pew Internet & American Life Project shows 97 percent of children and teens ages 12 through 17 play video games, and two-thirds play with friends.

Some upcoming games that fanatics are looking forward to include FIFA 14 (professional soccer), NHL 14 (professional hockey), Grand Theft Auto 5 (third person free roam), Watch Dogs (third person free roam), Drive Club (realistic racing simulator) , Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag (historical third person free roam), Battlefield 4 (first person shooter), Call of Duty: Ghosts (first person shooter) and Destiny (futuristic first person shooter).

Out of this list, Drive Club seems the most intriguing to me. It is one of the most realistic racing games known to date. The graphics and gameplay are phenomenal, and it is also multiplayer oriented, so you can play with friends at any time.

Most of the sports games are a good choice as well because high school athletes can relate to them and the games themselves are quite entertaining. Just grab some friends and controllers, and let the fun begin!

Now the systems. The most popular next generation consoles include Sony’s PlayStation 4 (PS4), Microsoft’s Xbox One and Nintendo’s Wii U. The PS4 and Xbox One are meant for more devoted players while the Wii U is more family-oriented.

Each console is competitively priced; The Xbox is priced at $499, the Ps4 $399 and the Wii U varies from $299 to $349. The Xbox and PS4 include a Blu-Ray/DVD player, which is rather nifty.

The PS4 packs quite a punch with eight gigabytes of dedicated GDDR5 RAM (random access memory), an eight core AMD “Jaguar” processor for its CPU (central processing unit), AMD Radeon graphics and a 500 gigabyte hard drive.

The Xbox is just a tad behind the PS4 in specifications, having eight gigs of DDR3 RAM, a custom eight core Microsoft CPU, AMD Radeon graphics (853 MHz), and a 500 gigabyte hard drive. The Wii U, meant for casual gaming, includes two gigabytes of DDR3 RAM, a tri-core power PC CPU, AMD Radeon graphics (550 MHz) and 8-32 gigabytes of memory.

If you don’t know, RAM is a form of data storage. The higher the RAM, the easier it is to open saved/stored data in any order. The CPU is like a human brain: It undertakes all the mouse clicks and keystrokes, and it carries out calculations. It takes given info, processes it and then determines where the data needs to go.

The performance of a gaming system is heavily based on the CPU. A graphics card is responsible for generating all texts and pictures on your screen, so the better the card, the clearer and faster the graphics are.

Last but not least, the hard drive is where all your saved data goes. More data can be saved to a bigger hard drive.

As of now the PS4 has 600,000 pre-orders already, while the Xbox only has a mere 340,000. The Wii U has been out for 10 months and has sold 3.61 million units worldwide. However, even though the Wii U is receiving most of the sales now, it will soon be outsold by the Xbox and PS4 in a matter of months.

Well this wraps up the first Tech Corner blog post. I hope you’ve enjoyed it, and I’ll catch you at the next one!