The Steam Podcast

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This week’s podcast features the following on-air personalities:

• Bob Somers - SteamPodcast.com
• Ramzy Bekheet - SteamPodcast.com
• Vincent van Geel - Lead Designer of Iron Grip: The Oppression

The following news articles were discussed on the show:

Steam Powered User Forums Finally Get vBulletin 3 Upgrade
We’ve all been waiting a very long time, bugging the moderators and Valve team for the upgrade. There’s a lot of new features and the forums seem to run noticeably faster, but the blue color scheme is killing me. (full story)

Defcon Released to Authentication Problems for Steam Buyers
Defcon was released on Friday, September 29, but many players who had preordered the game on Steam couldn’t play anything but the demo for a few hours after launch because the massive load on Introversion’s authentication server. Thankfully, the authentication problems were resolved within a few hours, and the game is running smoothly now. (full story)

Dark Messiah: Might and Magic Now Available for Preorder
You can now preorder Dark Messiah: Might and Magic on Steam for $49.95 and begin preloading. If you’d like, you can download Sthe singleplayer demo to check out the game before you preorder. Dark Messiah is an RPG developed by Arkane Studios and Ubisoft, and is one of the most anticipated RPG’s of the year.

Well, not for me personally. I downloaded the demo and the graphics and processing requirements ate my machine alive. (full story)

The Ship and Red Orchestra Release Updates
An update to The Ship was released, fixing a lot of bugs and adding some new content. Also, an update to Red Orchestra was released to add support for Logitech’s G15 gaming keyboard, but it was rolled back due to compatibility issues with connecting to servers. (full story)

Poker Superstars II Now on Steam
Now available on Steam for $14.95, Poker Superstars II puts you at the table with 15 of the top poker players. The game features a new AI engine that has “learned to win by playing millions of simulated tournaments”. Interestingly enough, the game is single player only. (full story)

Zuma Deluxe Price Cut for Two Weeks
For the next two weeks Zuma Deluxe is now only $9.95 on Steam instead of the regular price of $19.95. Although I still think the Pop Cap games are way overpriced, this is a good opportunity for Zuma lovers to add the game to their Steam account for cheap. Sounds like sales of Pop Cap games aren’t going too well. However, it’s also a slap in the face to customers who bought the game for $20 when it was first released on Steam about a month ago. (full story)

First PS3 Ads Seen In New York City
The first billboard ads for the PS3 have been spotted in New York City, although they’re kind of bland. It’s just a white background with a black PS3 on it, urging gamers to “Play B3yond”. The only other object in the ad is melting clock on the wall. Apparently the PS3 will be so powerful, it can melt time. (full story)

Comparison Photos of the Gamecube vs. the Wii
To be honest, I didn’t think the Gamecube’s graphics looked that bad, but when compared side-by-side with screenshots from some of the Wii’s games the difference is quite stunning. (comparison 1, comparison 2)

PS3 Offers Developers Less Memory Than Xbox 360?
In a recent interview with Edge Magazine, an Ubisoft development team said their focusing more on the Xbox 360 than the PS3.

We’re developing with 360 as our main development platform and porting to PS3 means that there’s less memory available for us to use, but we’re trying to minimise any drop in quality.

Is it possible that the PS3 won’t be the uber-powerful console we’ve all be led to believe? It certainly would make the PS3’s launch quite anticlimactic. (full story)

Pelican Accessories Developing Wii Nerf Remote
Apparently Pelican Accessories is working on developing a remote controller for the Nintendo Wii that would be padded with soft Nerf-like foam to withstand some serious gaming abuse. Estimated price is $30 for the Nerf remote. (full story)

Battlefield 2142 Available for Preloading
BF2142 is up for pre-loading on the EA DOWNLOADER. The BF2142 demo was also released some days back. The demo represents the final build of the game. (full story)

FireFox 2 RC2 Officially Listed on Mozilla’s Website
Firefox 2 RC2 is now an official download at Mozilla’s website. Some of the new features include:

• A “refreshed” version of the original Firefox skin.
• Built-in phishing protection.
• Enhanced search capabilities.
• Improved tabbed browsing.
• Resuming your browsing session.
• Inline spell checking.
• Improved add-ons manager.
• Support for JavaScript 1.7.
• Client-side session and persistent storage.
• New windows installer.

We’d like to thank the Iron Grip team for coming on the show and talking with us. For information about the Iron Grip mod, or to download the open beta, you can check out their website at www.isotx.com.

Somewhere between Wordpress and Feedburner there was a bug that prevented the new episode from showing up in the feed. However, I think I’ve got it fixed. The new episode should be embedded in the feed now and should be up on the iTunes Music Store shortly.

Thanks for listening!

So, we unfortunately didn’t record a new episode this week, but we did bring you something! Check out our new IRC channel on GameSurge, #steampodcast. Come on in and idle with us, it makes us feel like we’re cool.

We’ve also opened up a general email address, fans@steampodcast.com for our listeners who want to send us:

• Interesting things that we might want to include in the next episode.
• Cool game mods or projects we might want to check out for interviews.
• Comments, suggestions, and complaints.
• General fan mail. (We might read it on the show!)

The whole crew will have access to this email address so it could be any one of us that reads your mail!