Even though we got plenty of use from our PS2, we held off on getting a PS3 until the Blu-ray format was declared the winner. The day after that happened, we picked up the 60GB model that has built in hardware for PS2 backwards compatibility. Later models of the PS3 dropped that feature and only supported software emulation in the 80GB, then no PS2 emulation at all after that. The PS4 is not the only console to remove backwards compatibility, but there is talk about possibly streaming previous generation games in the future.  Another feature that was dropped in later revisions of the PS3 was the ability to play Super Audio CDs. That ability won't be coming back anytime soon; in fact, you cannot play regular audio CDs on the PS4 either. Gone is the ability to plug in external hard drives or memory cards. USB flash drives are supported though. The hardware design of the PS4 is simple and quite compact. It's much smaller than the PS3 we have. On the front of the system you will find two USB 3.0 ports, a power button, and an eject button. The power light is on top of the system so if you have it up high, you won't be able to tell if it's on or not. On the back of the system you'll see the power plug, a digital audio out, HDMI out (check to make sure there is no metal blocking it!), a gigabit network jack, and finally an auxiliary port for the camera (not included).

Don't let the simplicity of the design fool you. This is a powerful system with AMD Radeon powered graphics and 8 CPU cores. The 8GB of GDDR5 memory is a giant leap from the 256MB the PS3 had. With 500GB of storage, one should be able to store many digital games. To get those games you will need to have your system online and updated with the most current firmware. This system supports relatively current standards in wireless 802.11 (b/g/n), Bluetooth 2.1 and USB 3.0. Oddly, it does not support 802.11ac. At launch, the PS4 does support stereoscopic 3D and Trine 2: Complete Story utilizes that technology. But games require special code for 3D mode; the console has no ability to convert games not written for 3D. Unfortunately, at this time, the PS4 does not support 4K output.  We bought the Killzone bundle from Sony that came with Killzone and an additional controller. The free month of PlayStation Plus and ten dollars of PSN credit was a nice gesture. It's a shame that PlayStation Plus is pretty much required for online gaming, but you do get some great games to enjoy. The space shooter, Resogun, is a nice freebie for this month (11/2013) and it's worth checking out.