Advertise on podcast: The Bobby Blackwolf Show

Surprise! I got a Steam Frame after all thanks to a listener who was able to get into the reservation queue when I was merely wait listed. I give my impressions of the Steam Frame, the controllers, the upsides, and the downsides compared to other VR headsets. Sony has sold many of their XR related patents to Meta, indicating that they are getting out of the VR space. Wing Commander 3 is getting a remaster because a producer at EA found the original FMV recordings while going through EA's video archive. Richard Garriott, aka Lord British, has informed EA that he will be reclaiming the rights to the Ultima series thanks to a little-known US Copyright law.

Xbox is continuing their "streamlining" by moving studios under Activision and Bethesda and rehoming the Halo franchise with Call of Duty developers. Meta has announced the Meta VR Glasses, their cheaper competitor to the Apple Vision Pro. Sony has been issued a patent to place a credit card chip reader into a game controller. We hop on the JimSally train as he calls in to be the Official Spokesman For Halo on The Bobby Blackwolf Show. Then we talk to Jamie from OLR about Xbox's streamlining.

I give my big Dragon Con recap of the panels I hosted. While I didn't get to do much else, I did go into the arcade once and got to play some games. We also talk about why the biggest cosplay group was not from a movie or TV series, but from a book. The Steam Frame has finally gone on sale - for some buyers. A reservation system was used and sadly I did not win the lottery to give Valve my money, and probably won't for a year or so, as there is definitely not enough supply to meet demand, even with the price being higher than many people wanted to pay. Recompilations are becoming the new Generative AI battleground, as many people who did not want to take the time to learn how to develop software now use Generative AI tools to develop the software that they want - like making old games run on current hardware with different art and sounds. Some groups are fighting against this, and the Donkey Kong 64 Randomizer community is creating DK64 Recompiled without using GenAI. This leads to a discussion about GenAI usage in hobbyist development, as people who merely had ideas and dreams can now actually execute those ideas without dealing with knowledgeable people. We talk about one restoration team in Commodore 64 history now credits Claude with their project working at all, and they state that their restoration would not exist without GenAI - despite having an original developer from 1986 on the team. (He also uses Claude exclusively today.) We do touch on the doomerism of "AI will kill us all" (it won't) and that the majority is actually perfectly fine with Generative AI usage.

I saw Coyote vs. Acme in the theater at full price, and enjoyed it. It's actually really good, but I'm not sure I would have seen it if it wasn't for the drama about its release. Playdate has announced that they will refund their tariff upcharges to customers. Several indie game exhibitors at Gamescom in Germany had their shows cut short due to thefts of their locked up laptops and Steam Decks. Then we talk to Jamie about security at conventions.

Sorry this took a while to get up (a month!) - between Dragon Con and illness, this episode and 993 sat in the queue to be edited for podcast. There were no live episodes in September until September 20th. Nintendo is raising Switch 2 prices on September 1st, and we just learned how much they will be going up in the UK. This is because of components, not because of geopolitical financial situations. Riot Games have announced that the live service fighting game 2XKO is ceasing development and no new content will be made after 2026. But, refunds are being offered and Riot is trying to do right by the players that did pay them for virtual items. Then we talk to Jamie from OLR IIDX about development timelines and how they work in larger companies versus smaller companies.

I am moderating many panels at Dragon Con in Atlanta this year - come say hi! I built the LEGO Arcade Cabinet! Too many stickers... Twitch is training Amazon's generative AI on streamers content - but they loudly told people how to opt-out, and the reason they loudly said it might surprise you. Netflix has closed Night School studio, which developed Oxenfree and the recently released Unhinged, which overperformed on the service so much so it was praised on an investor call. Then we talk to Jamie from OLR about California Extreme.

EA is now completely owned by Saudi Arabia's PIF and partners, and is no longer publicly traded. Layoffs and shutdowns are incoming. Indie publisher Devolver Digital has announced its intentions to become privately owned, saying that the responsibilities to shareholders do not align with being a good game publisher. The CEO of Take Two says that we all will be streaming our games from the cloud in three years instead of playing them on local hardware. We also touch on Flight Simulator 2024 on PS5 getting an update for an amazing PSVR2 experience. At the time of this recording, the new VR experience was only in the beta branch, but as of publishing, Sim Update 6 has been released and it is now available to all.

The Southern-Fried Gaming Expo was this week, and I talk about the pinball and arcade games that were there. I give my impressions on the new Sonic the Hedgehog pinball machine from Jersey Jack. I also give my impressions on the new Bon Jovi pinball machine that was released at SFGE by Barrels of Fun Pinball. I talk about Gen Con and Multimorphic's new Dungeon Crawler Carl and Ender's Game modules for their combo physical and virtual pinball platform. I give my impressions of a pinball accessory called Pin-Pal - microphones you can affix to pinball speakers that connect to bluetooth headphones so you can actually hear the pinball sounds in crowded environments. Then I talk to Jamie about California Extreme and expensive Neo-Geo games.

On this show that turned 21 years old, we...just did a normal show and then it took a few weeks for it to hit the podcast feed. Sorry bout that! The Steam Frame could wind up being even more expensive, as well as other mobile devices like other VR headsets, because Qualcomm is raising the price of it's Snapdragon line of chips. Arcade1up was at San Diego Comic-Con with new versions of arcade cabinets it has already released, but maybe this is more to show game publishers that they are worthy of licensing their retro games. Nintendo has stated in court that they are under no legal obligation to refund consumers after receiving a refund from the US government over the tariffs on the Switch 2. Then we talk about the Video Game History Foundation's new E3 collection (and how they actually want some of my tapes) along with an interesting revelation about why E3's creation was so important for the industry after the scrutiny of the senate hearings on video game violence. Then we talk to Jamie about what we have on old tapes.

I will be moderating two panels at the Southern-Fried Gaming Expo from July 31-August 2nd in Atlanta! Microsoft restores an unrestorable 25 year old account that was hacked after learning the user was a prominent content creator. Valve has says that the RAM crisis is going to get worse, as they are seeing leading indicators that prices will rise even more for consumers in 3-6 months time. A new update to SteamVR and a new Great On Frame page means that the Steam Frame release is imminent. (But not Tomorrow.) Then we talk about the Donkey Kong LEGO set as well as talking to Jamie from OLR about how messy our office spaces are and home videos we have on analog media.

EA Sports has reversed course and taken out unpopular singleplayer microtransactions from College Football 27 thanks to backlash from their own content creator network. Xbox lays off most of iD Software, including many long time employees with deep institutional knowledge, and then says that the team is the same size as it was 10 years ago and this is good, actually. Bethesda's employee union is protesting the layoffs, especially considering some employees who had been with the company for decades were laid off. Then we talk to OLR about game collecting in this new era of digital-only distribution.

A Steam Machine case based on the Companion Cube from Portal is no longer being made - because the company never had permission to make it in the first place. Sony is going to stop producing physical discs starting in January 2028. Sony is shutting down their PS3 and PS Vita digital stores over the next year. Some game preservation groups have said what the only real option is to preserve the artform, and the publishers don't like it.

We talk more about the FIFA World Cup and the matches I attended in Atlanta. Jersey Jack Pinball has announced a new pinball machine based on Sonic The Hedgehog, and the headlines once again focus on the high price of owning pinball. Find a pinball arcade near you and request it so you can play it for just a dollar or two! The Steam Machine has launched with a price much higher than Valve initially intended due to the RAM and storage shortages. Valve has released a new version of SteamOS that can now run on any AMD desktop - for free. Grand Theft Auto VI will not release with a physical edition on consoles, and it came out later that it will NEVER launch with a physical edition. Then we talk to Jamie from OLR IIDX about Transformers Pinball and the 24th anniversary of Orange Lounge Radio.

I went to two World Cup matches this week, so we start the show talking about sports and the cultural exchange that is happening. We remember Bobby Prince, the composer who worked on many 90's era DOS games like Doom and Commander Keen. He passed away at the age of 81. Xbox is possibly closing Double Fine, Compulsion Games, and Ninja Theory, in order to "reset" the business. Unreal Engine 6 will be removing blueprints and C++ and replacing them with new technologies that are more friendly for LLM's. They are also wanting to bring every UE6 game into the Fortnite ecosystem. Then we talk to Jamie about Pokemon and Transformers pinball.

Valve will no longer sell physical gift cards in retail locations because of scammers using the cards to steal innocent people's money. Xbox has said that more layoffs and studio closures are coming to "reset" the business. The ESA says that the No Fakes act that is currently going through congress to regulate "digital replicas" will "destroy the game industry". This leads into a discussion of how much actors get paid - even in TV and film. Then we talk to Jamie from OLR about Dead by Daylight announcements.