Dylan wanted to know about next-gen systems, and somehow he learned plenty. He got development documentation for the next PlayStation and Xbox. Long before I'd sized him up as a hacker, he'd sent me troves of PDFs and white papers describing the functionality of both the code-named Orbis and Durango. The documentation was loaded with programming code—and with details.

Earlier this week, Sony officially announced the PlayStation 4 (the former Orbis), and it turned out that everything in the documentation Dylan had sent me—the names of the controller's buttons, the specs of its new touchpad, the specs for the console itself—were entirely correct. Sony never commented to me about Dylan's supposed hack, but their PS4 press conference made a strong argument that what he said he'd done, he'd done. His info all checked out.

What he learned and shared with me about Durango—its specs, the vast improvements to the new Kinect sensor, and other notable improvements over the 360—is richly detailed in the documents he found but likely won't be proven until Microsoft finally reveals its new machine in the next few months.

Tbf, he was a bit 'gotta catch 'em all!'