Introducing the Latest MacStories Podcasts: Next Portable Console and Comfort Zone

NPC and Comfort Zone join the MacStories family of podcasts.

I’m incredibly excited to introduce two brand new shows joining the MacStories family of podcasts today: Next Portable Console (or NPC), hosted by me, Brendon Bigley, and John Voorhees, and Comfort Zone, hosted by Niléane Dorffer, Chris Lawley, and Matt Birchler. You can find both shows, along with links to subscribe, on MacStories’ Podcasts hub.

Before I hand it over to Brendon and Niléane to provide more context around NPC and Comfort Zone, allow me to say a few words since this launch marks an important milestone in MacStories’ growth for the next 15 years of the website.

NPC is a fortnightly show (new episodes every two weeks) all about portable gaming and the handheld revolution we’re witnessing. John and I have been thinking about this kind of show for years now (really, since the Steam Deck came out), and we’ve always put it off. We knew we wanted to do it, but we had to find a third person to join us – someone even more plugged into the gaming scene and portable consoles than we are. We couldn’t think of a better co-host than Brendon.

We’ve been fans of Brendon’s work at Into the Aether and Wavelengths for a long time now, and I’m thrilled to have him make a podcast with us about, as we say at the beginning of each episode, the games we take with us. If you’re a fan of portable gaming, it’s hard to deny that we’re living in extraordinary times: the Nintendo Switch kickstarted a renaissance of the scene that has expanded to encompass PC handhelds, dedicated retrogaming handhelds, and fascinating hybrids in between. And that’s not even to mention the arrival of emulators on the App Store.

With NPC, we’re going to explore every corner of portable gaming, and we’re going to have fun in the process. You can subscribe here and listen to the trailer that is already in the feed. The first episode of NPC will be out tomorrow, June 4th.

Subscribe to NPC in your favorite podcast player using the buttons below.

As for Comfort Zone, this is a project that I immediately said “yes” to as soon as I was approached about it. A couple of months back, Niléane sent me a message describing the idea for a show in which the hosts would try each week to get out of their comfort zones and try a new piece of technology, whether it be an app, a device, an automation, or something else. And at the end of each episode, they would also challenge one another with something different for the next one.

You know me: I’m always up for trying new things, pushing the boundaries, and getting out of my comfort zone with workflows and products I’ve never tried before. So, obviously, I was thrilled that Niléane, Chris, and Matt thought of launching this show on MacStories since I believe it’s the perfect home for what they sought to produce. It’s in the very ethos of MacStories to always be curious about technology and never take “no” for an answer when it comes to a challenge. As a fan of Niléane’s work on MacStories and Chris’ and Matt’s YouTube channels, I can’t wait to see what they come up with. Plus – and I’m biased here – I have to say that I’m very happy to hear another European accent on MacStories.

You can subscribe to Comfort Zone here and listen to the trailer. New episodes will be released weekly starting this Thursday, June 6th. And there’s more: Comfort Zone will be the first MacStories podcast to also release video versions of each episode on our brand new YouTube channel. YouTube integration is something we’re also excited about, and you should expect more news on this front very soon.

Subscribe to Comfort Zone in your favorite podcast player using the buttons below.

You can watch the Comfort Zone trailer on our brand new YouTube channel:

Also, check out the announcement videos from Matt and Chris on YouTube:

Lastly, before I leave it to Brendon and Niléane to say a few words, I also wanted to credit Brendon for his amazing artwork for NPC and Scout Wilkinson and Will LaPorte, two other incredibly talented artists we also worked with for both NPC and Comfort Zone. Scout created the illustration for Comfort Zone, which I absolutely love; Will composed the music for both shows, and I can’t get over how awesome both tracks sound. I can’t recommend working with them enough if you’re looking for actual humans creating art instead of kleptomaniac large language models.

That being said, let me pass the mic to Brendon and Niléane for more details about NPC and Comfort Zone.

NPC

Brendon: Increasingly, portable gaming encompasses many things. Back in the days of the Game Boy, it simply meant the ability to bring video games outside of the home or arcade. Mario in green monochrome didn’t look as high-fidelity as his console counterpart, but he could still jump on a Goomba – and that was a miracle at the time. Fast forward to the introduction of the Nintendo Switch in 2017, and the collective dream of removing the blurred line between handheld and console games finally became a reality. Nintendo merged its internal console and handheld game development teams, meaning every first-party Switch game could be played anywhere, and on any screen.

The success of the Switch and the rapid development of smaller chipsets set the industry alight, pushing the handheld PC market – led by the Steam Deck – to shift player expectation towards the ability to experience any game on the go. Add to this the steady corporate investments in game streaming technologies via services like Xbox Cloud Gaming and Nvidia GeForce NOW, as well as the swift and iterative nature of retro consoles across a spectrum of price points and manufacturers, and you have a cocktail that marks an unbelievable shift in how we think about games as a medium.

As we’ll say at the top of every episode of NPC, it’s “a podcast about the games we take with us.” They could be old games from our youth played on cheap plastic handhelds discovered in the depths of eBay or AliExpress listings, they could be games only playable because they’ve been localized for the first time by fan communities and emulated on our smartphones, or they could be the latest PC games running at max settings on experimental portable hardware we’ve cobbled together through the help of forum users worldwide. We’re in an era where the definition of portable gaming is evolving before our eyes, and it’s headed in a direction where it’s very possible that all gaming becomes portable gaming in time.

Our plan is to follow that definition’s path of change, push at its edges, and explore how others are reinterpreting it for a new age.

Come along for the ride.

Comfort Zone

Niléane: I am so excited to be launching Comfort Zone on MacStories this week with Matt Birchler and Christopher Lawley. Comfort Zone is a podcast all about pushing ourselves out of our, well, comfort zones. Each week, Matt, Chris and I will talk about a new piece of technology that we’ve been using. This can be anything from an app, to a piece of hardware, to a new automation that we’ve been working on, to whatever else we can think of. Not only that, but each episode, one of us will also surprise the other two hosts with a new challenge to mix things up in our technology stacks.

Matt Birchler and Christopher Lawley have been an incredible source of inspiration for me over the past few years. I always look forward to Matt’s writing on Birchtree and Chris’ videos on YouTube, so finally being able to work with them today on this show is exciting to say the least. Since we each have our unique approach to tech, and we already like to change things up in our own ways on a regular basis, it’s not surprising that throughout our preparation for Comfort Zone, we realized how well we complement each other. As episodes of Comfort Zone unfold, you will undoubtedly learn about what sets us apart as well as what brings us together, even if we have to give ourselves a little nudge in the process.

And this, right here, is why MacStories is such a perfect home for this show. MacStories isn’t just about covering the news or the bleeding edge; it’s also a place where tinkerers can source their inspiration from, and where readers can always find new things to try out.

I hope you enjoy Comfort Zone. Even better, I hope you will get on this ride with us and join in on our challenges every week. Who knows? Maybe you can nudge yourself outside of your comfort zone, too!