Sony dropped a surprise State of Play announcement event on us this week, and we take some time to recap everything discussed. We also spend some time on Xbox, and recent comments by Phil Spencer that appears to be shifting away from live service games. Is the bubble finally bursting on this trend in gaming? Or do some companies feel they need to stick with this at all costs? We discuss this and much more in gaming news on another week of the longest running video game podcast, Orange Lounge Radio!   Programming Note: No new show until March 9th due to vacation.

An update on disability discrimination at Crunchyroll, the newest found species of fish named after Princess Mononoke, and live-action Cells at Work earns 6 billion yen at the Japanese box office! Also, UDON signs a deal with Lunar for distribution rights, Alice in Borderland gets its season 3 release date, and Romi Park to guests at Nostalgiacon! Meanwhile in Japan, a tourist was arrested for striking a clerk over a 3 yen bag, and curry bread achieved a new world record!

The Aphrodite Inheritance was a 1979 BBC serial set on the Greek island of Cypress. David Collier travels to Cypress after his brother is in a car accident there. David is soon caught up in the search for a cave containing some valuable artifacts. Three mysterious characters seem to be involved, but we don’t know […]

I visited the Sonic The Hedgehog Speed Cafe pop-up restaurant in Atlanta - a place where you are paying for the experience and not for the culinary excellence. (But the food was fine!) We had a listener correct me on calling the Meta Quest 3 a "low-end" VR headset, and then point me to Arcade Time Capsule, a five story VR arcade. (Bring your own games!) Forza Horizon 5 is coming to PlayStation this year. Then we talk to Rob about the Video Game History Foundation and what he searched for when it opened its digital library.

Ohayocon sues Sekaicon over trade secrets, lawyers ask to nullify arsonist's appeal withdrawal, and J-pop artistLiSA announces North America tour! Also,Crunchyroll is accused of firing an employee after an ADA request, thePokémon company claims Diamond Comic Distributors owes them money, and Hideaki Anno sets up an exhibition for the 50th anniversary ofSpace Battleship Yamato! Meanwhile in Japan, the Nintendo Museum might owe you money, and tourists in Kyoto cause railway crossing chaos?!

The PlayStation Network unexpectedly went down over the weekend in what ended up being the longest outage since the major multi-week shutdown in the PS3 era. This left a lot of gamers wondering why the network went down for so long, while others wondered what entitlements they might get due to the downtime. While all the answers aren't available yet, we speculate what may have occurred and when or if we will get more facts about the downtime. All this and much more gaming news make up another week of the longest running video game podcast, Orange Lounge Radio!

A new piracy bill has been backed by Netflix, Disney, and Sony, the Japan Fair Trade Commission to investigate anime studio abuse, and rock band the pillows disbands! Also, Kyoto Animation - 京都アニメーション arsonist withdraws appeal, Anime Tourism Association releases 2025 list of sites that fans should visit, and BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment opens first US interactive store! Meanwhile in Japan, Osaka to ban smoking on its streets and the newest maid cafe has an age limit for its maids, 65?!

Tonight's show starts with a live listener question on how our current political climate might effect video games. We make predictions best we can on how big releases this year might shift depending on what this political climate holds. Sadly, the gaming industry climate is far too full of layoffs, as major layoffs hit Bioware studios, seemingly leaving the next Mass Effect title as a make or break game for the studio. We discuss all this, more in gaming news, and yes food too on another week of the longest running video game podcast, Orange Lounge Radio!

The first part of the podcast is actually about me getting two new kittens! It takes up the first 15 or so minutes. EA is retiring the Origin PC client, which means that they are no longer supporting DRM for titles on 32-bit PC's, so older computers won't be able to launch The Sims anymore. US spending on physical video games has halved since 2021, spelling doom for people who don't want to lose access to their purchases. The Video Game History Foundation has brought most of their library online for research purposes - magazines, dev notebooks, and other things that aren't the games themselves. Then we talk to Rob about the Video Game History Foundation and what he'd search for first when it goes online.

"...Atari released a modern version of their classic system. (my first game system actually) Now by 'modern' I don’t mean high-end graphics and AAA titles. This is functionally the exact same system that was released back when I was a kid."