Digital Trends Live: Huawei takes a hit, Disney’s dominance, and more

By Todd Werkhoven Published April 25, 2023

On this episode of Digital Trends Live, DT senior writer Parker Hall joins host Greg Nibler to discuss the top tech stories of the day, including the U.S. declaring a national emergency that effectively bans Huawei, Comcast’s sale of its Hulu shares to Disney, a $500 price tag prediction for the PlayStation 5, flying taxis, and more.

Later Nibler, is joined by Dr. Malcolm Thompson, executive director of NextFlex, to discuss flexible electronics boards and the future of wearable technology that can bend, flex, and adhere to skin.

Felicia Miranda, DT’s New York-based gaming editor, welcomes Tim Willits, studio director of Bethesda and id Software, to talk about Rage 2 and the development process behind the new, open-world first-person shooter.

Nibler then talks with Beverly Harzog, credit card expert at U.S. News & World Reports, about getting the best travel bang for your buck, and cashing in on your credit card rewards.

Lastly, Jon Heim, TiVo’s senior director of product management, voice solutions, discusses the evolution of voice recognition, and how TiVo is leveraging machine learning and A.I. for a smarter, more efficient user experience.

Topics

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Todd Werkhoven's work can be read at numerous publications and he co-authored a personal finance book called "Zombie…

Gaming

PlayStation sales are down, but more players are using PS Plus

A Pulse Elite, DualSense, and PlayStation Portal sit on a table.

Is console hardware struggling? In its latest financial report released Tuesday, Sony revealed that hardware sales are declining, although that doesn't spell doom for the video game conglomerate.

Hardware sales are down year over year, from 3.3 million to 2.4 million, which finance chief Sadahiko Hayakawa attributes in part to an increase in first-party software sales and the impact of foreign exchange rates. However, those same game releases, along with increased PlayStation Plus subscriptions, meant income was up 12% for games overall. Sony also revealed that PlayStation had clocked 116 million monthly active users during June, which is the highest recorded for this time of year (even though it's down from the 118 million from last quarter).

Gaming

Grand Theft Auto 5 and 11 more games are leaving PS Plus in June

Trevor, Michael, and Franklin are all holding guns in GTA 5 promotional art.

PlayStation Plus users will be losing out on 12 games in June, and one of them is a must-play if you're a fan of open-world action adventures from 2013.

Grand Theft Auto 5 is widely considered to be one of the most iconic games all time, and it's definitely the best Grand Theft Auto game. It's also easy to play on nearly any platform (minus Nintendo Switch, of course). It even received a next-gen upgrade for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S in 2022. That said, if you have a PlayStation Plus subscription and wanted to play it at some point -- or just wanted to get a session or two in before Grand Theft Auto 6 -- you'll have until June 12 to do so.

Gaming

The new 1TB PS5 has more usable storage space than the Xbox Series X

The new slimmer PS5 models.

It's out with the old and in with the new for the PlayStation 5, as Sony has replaced its old 2020 model with a slimmer redesign. The new model fixes one of its predecessor's biggest issues thanks to its 1TB storage upgrade. As is the case with any console, not all of that space is actually usable. In testing our own review unit, we've been able to break down just how much of an upgrade it actually is.

When popping into the storage menu, the new PS5 says it has 848GB of space. You'll find that some of that is already taken up by a few things, including Astro's Playroom, which comes installed on the system out the box. That'll leave you with 830.6GB, though you can delete the game to get 11.06GB back. The only thing you can't cut is 6.33GB of system files. All in all, that means you have roughly 842.2GB of usable space.