# Actual Costs for Premium Pinball Experience **Source:** BlahCade Pinball Podcast **Type:** podcast_episode **Published:** 2025-07-28 **Duration:** 85m 51s **Beat:** Pinball **URL:** https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/blahcade-pinball-podcast/episodes/Actual-Costs-for-Premium-Pinball-Experience-e39ig1r --- ## Analysis Chris Frebus and Jared Morgan analyze the actual hardware and software costs for premium home pinball experiences, comparing two paths: AtGames cabinets (~$2,200) versus Meta Quest 3 VR setups with X-Arcade controllers (~$1,200+). They discuss Zen's recent announcement of Pinbot for digital platforms, tournament experiences at BPAC including hands-on time with Cactus Canyon remake and Pulp Fiction, and break down detailed pricing for premium haptic feedback setups across both formats. ### Key Claims - [HIGH] Jackbot is a superior game to Pinbot with more engaging rules, multiball, and wizard mode mechanics — _Chris and Jared directly compare the two, with Jared stating 'It's a much better table' regarding Jackbot and explaining the additional fun elements_ - [HIGH] Zen Studios' mandate is entertainment provision, not digital pinball preservation like Farsight's was — _Jared explicitly states: 'They're here to provide entertainment, right? so they don't need to bring in pin bot when there's jackpot available'_ - [HIGH] The Cactus Canyon remake is significantly better than the Pinball Arcade digital version — _Jared describes Pinball Arcade as 'garbage absolute garbage' and contrasts with real machine experience being 'so much fun' at EPAC_ - [HIGH] Chicago Gaming Company's Cactus Canyon remake has wide outlanes and drains very quickly — _Jared reports: 'The outlanes were cavernously wide and everything was draining so fast. It was such a battle to get any ball time'_ - [HIGH] Quest 3 is currently the only headset capable of running Pinball FX VR — _Chris states: 'right now, the Quest 3 is the only thing that's available to have Zen's latest, which is Pinball FX VR'_ - [MEDIUM] The X-Arcade Haptic Kit will include haptic speakers, new top plate with built-in speakers, plunger, and multiple actuators — _Chris describes kit contents but acknowledges: 'we don't even have it in frustratingly we don't have an inline line with xik' and bases pricing on speculation_ - [MEDIUM] X-Arcade Haptic Kit will connect via 3.5mm headphone jack from Quest to controller for low-latency audio-driven haptic feedback — _Chris cites intel from 'folk on pinball effects that do have the inside line' describing the wired headphone jack connection method_ ### Notable Quotes > "They're here to provide entertainment, right? so they don't need to bring in pin bot when there's jackpot available" > — **Jared Morgan**, early segment > _Establishes Zen Studios' commercial mandate vs preservation approach; explains game selection rationale_ > "It's a much better table... compared that to jackpot and it's like a completely different game with a wizard mode" > — **Jared Morgan**, opening discussion > _Direct comparison of Pinbot vs Jackbot game design quality_ > "The outlanes were cavernously wide and everything was draining so fast. It was such a battle to get any ball time on it at all." > — **Jared Morgan**, BPAC section > _Specific feedback on Cactus Canyon remake's playfield difficulty/balance_ > "I jumped up one whole level, which is a massive, massive improvement for me... I had to pass up my spot in the finals because I had something more important to do, which is go and see my two kids" > — **Jared Morgan**, tournament section > _Personal achievement and life balance perspective; demonstrates tournament intensity_ > "The way it maps the the game to the dimensions of the controller yeah that's the that really is the the thing you're paying the money for" > — **Jared Morgan**, VR discussion > _Identifies core value proposition of X-Arcade haptic setup_ > "The whole thing is brand new. That comes, and it's got speakers built into it. And I reckon those speakers will contribute some sensation." > — **Chris Frebus**, haptic kit speculation > _Explains design reasoning for X-Arcade kit components_ > "it won't be wireless so you will actually be running a headphone jack from your um quest into the um controller deck" > — **Chris Frebus (citing sources)**, technical details > _Reveals wired connection requirement for haptic synchronization_ > "It turns your your your mobile chipset headset into almost pc vr yeah like it is an impressive piece of software" > — **Jared Morgan**, software costs section > _Endorsement of Quest Game Optimizer as worthwhile performance upgrade_ ### Entities | Name | Type | Context | |------|------|---------| | Blockade Pinball Podcast | organization | Podcast hosted by Chris Frebus and Jared Morgan discussing pinball culture and hardware | | Chris Frebus | person | Co-host of Blockade Pinball Podcast (aka Shut Your Trap); analyzes pinball hardware costs and premium experiences | | Jared Morgan | person | Co-host of Blockade Pinball Podcast; competitive pinball tournament player in Australia; participated in BPAC events | | Zen Studios | company | Digital pinball developer; creates Pinball FX VR and other titles for multiple platforms | | AtGames | company | Manufacturer of commercial/home pinball cabinets featuring Zen and Magic Pixel games; sells Legends Pinball products | | X-Arcade | company | Arcade controller manufacturer; produces TV XR stand and haptic feedback kit for VR pinball gaming | | Meta Quest 3 | product | VR headset compatible with Pinball FX VR; recommended format for premium home VR pinball experience | | Pinball FX VR | product | Virtual reality pinball software available exclusively on Quest 3; latest Zen Studios pinball title | | Cactus Canyon | game | Classic Williams pinball game; Chicago Gaming Company producing remake; digital version discussed as inferior to physical remake | | Chicago Gaming Company | company | Pinball remake manufacturer; producing Cactus Canyon remake with new hardware | | Cactus Canyon Continued | product | Software modification for Cactus Canyon with expanded rule set and new modes; features Cowboys vs Aliens mode | | BPAC | event | Brisbane Pinball and Arcade Collective tournament event where Jared competed and played premium machines | | Pinbot | game | Classic Williams pinball game recently announced for Zen digital platforms; subject of debate vs Jackbot | | Jackbot | game | Williams pinball game; considered superior to Pinbot by hosts due to better wizard mode and rules depth | | Pulp Fiction | game | Recently released Stern pinball machine at Netherworld venue; features System 11 mechanics with modern gameplay; praised for audio/licensing | | King Kong | game | Recent Stern pinball release; displayed at BPAC just before event; compared to Champion Pub in design | | Godzilla 70th Edition | game | Limited edition pinball machine displayed at BPAC; black and white/red color variant | | Bobo VR | product | Halo-style VR headset with hot-swap batteries; recommended as comfort accessory for extended pinball VR sessions | | Magic Pixel | company | Digital pinball developer; creates tables bundled with AtGames cabinets | | Esha Lefkoff | person | Elite competitive pinball player now based in Australia; dominant tournament competitor | | Pinball Arcade | product | Digital pinball platform featuring Gottlieb titles; Cactus Canyon version criticized as inferior to remake | | Lyman Sheets | person | Legendary rules designer; referenced in context of Cactus Canyon rule set development complications | | Netherworld | location | Pinball arcade venue in Australia featuring Pulp Fiction and other recent releases | | Micro Center | company | US retail chain now carrying X-Arcade products for in-store pickup | | Quest Game Optimizer | product | Software utility ($10) that unlocks performance on Quest headsets; improves VR pinball visual quality | ### Topics - **Primary:** Premium home digital pinball hardware costs and value proposition, Comparison of AtGames cabinets vs Meta Quest 3 VR setups for pinball gaming, Zen Studios game selection strategy and digital pinball preservation, X-Arcade haptic feedback kit specifications and pricing speculation - **Secondary:** BPAC tournament experience and competitive pinball in Australia, Chicago Gaming Company Cactus Canyon remake quality vs digital versions, Stern pinball releases (Pulp Fiction, King Kong) playability and licensing, VR headset ergonomics and battery/power solutions for extended play ### Sentiment **Positive** (0.72) — Hosts are enthusiastic about premium digital pinball experiences and generally satisfied with available hardware/software options. Some frustration about X-Arcade communication gaps and incomplete product information, but overall tone is optimistic about the technology trajectory. Jared's personal reflection on tournament balance and family priorities adds emotional warmth. ### Signals - **[community_signal]** AtGames partnering with Micro Center for retail distribution of X-Arcade products in North America (confidence: high) — Chris: 'they just partnered with for those of us in north america uh with micro center uh so you could go down to the store and pick that up also and save yourself the shipping cost' - **[competitive_signal]** Esha Lefkoff's relocation to Australia established as dominant competitive force in Australian tournament scene (confidence: high) — Jared: 'we have Esha Lefkoff now in Australia. RIP us as far as winning any tournaments because, well, you know, it's Esha. He's very good.' - **[design_philosophy]** Zen Studios prioritizes entertainment and commercial viability over comprehensive digital pinball preservation like Farsight attempted (confidence: high) — Jared: 'That's not Zen's remit... They're here to provide entertainment, right? so they don't need to bring in pin bot when there's jackpot available' - **[event_signal]** BPAC tournament featured rare hands-on opportunities with premium machines including Cactus Canyon remake, Pulp Fiction, King Kong, and Godzilla 70th Anniversary variant (confidence: high) — Jared describes playing Cactus Canyon remake at EPAC 'tons of fun' and Chris lists multiple recently released machines displayed at BPAC event - **[licensing_signal]** Pulp Fiction pinball includes extensive movie callouts and music licensing; audio compression intentionally mimics 1990s pinball machine aesthetic (confidence: medium) — Jared: 'They've really pulled our little sauce with the licensing on this one like it's quotes a plenty for the movie' and 'they've even made the call outs almost a little bit compressed so they actually sound a little bit like a 90s pinball machine' - **[market_signal]** X-Arcade Haptic Kit pricing unconfirmed; hosts estimate $80-$125 range based on component analysis; official pricing not yet publicly announced (confidence: low) — Chris: 'we don't even have an inline um line with xik we've been trying for ages' and 'I can't see it being any less than that' ($80-125 speculation) - **[community_signal]** Jared advancing from Division C to Division B competitive pinball rankings at BPAC tournament, demonstrating skill progression (confidence: high) — Jared: 'I jumped up one whole level, which is a massive, massive improvement for me... D last year and I was C this year' - **[market_signal]** Premium home digital pinball experiences totaling $1,200-$2,200+ in hardware/software costs represents significant consumer investment (confidence: high) — Chris itemizes full VR setup at ~$1,200 USD and AtGames cabinet at $2,100-$2,200 USD with shipping - **[announcement]** Zen Studios announced Pinbot for digital platforms, but hosts disappointed by selection of older title over superior Jackbot alternative (confidence: high) — Chris: 'We have had one reveal of the three new Zen tables that are coming out, Jared. Which would be Pinbot.' Jared: 'I'm not going to lie, disappointed because I want jackpot.' - **[product_concern]** Cactus Canyon remake exhibits playfield design issue with excessively wide outlanes causing frequent drains (confidence: medium) — Jared: 'The outlanes were cavernously wide and everything was draining so fast. It was such a battle to get any ball time on it at all.' - **[technology_signal]** Quest Game Optimizer software utility provides significant VR performance enhancement, positioned as essential for premium pinball experience (confidence: medium) — Chris: 'Jared convinced me that i need to buy it it's only ten dollars and wow it turns your it turns your your your mobile chipset headset into almost pc vr' - **[technology_signal]** X-Arcade developing haptic feedback kit for VR pinball with audio-driven motor control via wired headphone jack connection (confidence: medium) — Chris describes kit components and cites insider sources on connection methodology: 'they say the way it's going to be connected is it won't be wireless so you will actually be running a headphone jack from your um quest into the um controller deck' --- ## Transcript This is the Blockhead Pimple Podcast. I'm your host, Chris Frebus, a.k.a. Shed Your Trap. Joining me as always, halfway across the world, is Jared Morgan. Hello, everybody. How are you going? All righty. Here we are once more. A little time has passed. That's because not much was going on in the pinball world. We have had one reveal of the three new Zen tables that are coming out, Jared. Which would be Pinbot. Pinbot. Not Jackbot, but Pinbot. I'm not going to lie, disappointed because I want jackpot. Yeah, I don't know why they went with the old one rather than jackpot. It's a much better table. It's so funny because, okay, the charm of pinbot is it's very technical. There's a very way of how you go through it. But the thing is you have to go through those exact same processes on jackpot. There's just more fun things to do also on it. Yes, correct. So, yeah, I don't understand the thought process there, but, oh, well, you know, I'm sure people, some people will be happy. Well, yeah. I don't really... Look, I don't know. It's of the era, and they do have some other games of this era in the thing already, but do we really need, like, semi-alphanumeric tables? Like, when there's DMDs lying there waiting to be well dmds of the same uh it's that reskin basically you know um it's it's why i am perfectly fine only having the getaway and not having high speed oh yeah yeah you don't need high speed well people argue because high speed's iconic but it's it's not a wonderful game and and you know i've played enough pinbot to go sure okay yeah it's definitely pinball but it's there's not much to it from a rules perspective and compared that to jackpot and it's like a completely different game with a wizard mode and like risk reward sort of things in it and it's it's a lot better the sound package everything is better about it really yeah um so yeah it's the same thing with you know we got black knight 2000 we don't need black knight no we don't we don't need it um no you know i don't then i don't want comet no cyclone yes comet no yeah so this is the the thing that i mean there might be some people like you know, old people like us, Chris, that have been around in digital pinball, well, commercial digital pinball land since the 2010s when Farsight were around. And you might recall that Farsight were bringing in all the old tables and all the new tables because they had, their remit was to preserve digital pinball. Right. That's what their whole thing was. That's not Zen's remit. No. At all. They've never said that they are here to preserve digital pinball. They're here to provide entertainment, right? so they don't need to bring in pin bot when there's jackpot available yeah so yeah okay fine it's in but i really hope that doesn't just jeopardize us getting jackpot as well because i really want jackpot it's a great game great game it's it's that if i was to buy a real jackpot and put it in the garage i don't think i get zach off it because he loves it so um yeah uh it's it's a great game you know the other thing is that in terms of the dmds that are left that are not licensed it's literally that whodunit and uh cactus canyon we already know the struggles of a cactus canyon in near budapest uh for that matter in europe um and it's made a lot easier now with the remake. Except for the fact that Zen can't use that. No, but they can use the playfield and the plastics and everything. This is true. So this is the thing, right? They just need to be able to 3D scan and digitize all the playfield. And once they've done that, they're good to go. And I was incredibly fortunate to play a Cactus Canyon remake at EPAC, which has just passed. tons of fun it is i want one i need to find i need to find twenty thousand dollars australian because they are so much fun so much fun like the digital recreation that we've played in in pinball arcade garbage absolute garbage when you play one in real life okay now is the version that you played was it the not the remixed rule set but what was supposed to be the original rule set correct yeah so the quote-unquote complete rule set okay um because i don't even know have they come out with the remix rule set yet or is that still i know it all got messed up when lyman passed i'm not sure but it was like it was very familiar as far as like playing it in pimble okay goes like all the rules and everything it was set unfortunately i had so little time on it because it was in the tournament banks and you couldn't just play it so i've maybe got three or four games on it um but those games i got on it like it all came flooding back to me with people like hey what do i do in this game you know and like just the the big things that stand out to me i know this is a bit of a detraction but let's go there go there yeah let's hear it um uh the uh the mind mechanism you know how in pinball arcade the thing sort of it looked really weird and it looked like it didn't really stop the ball yeah or do any sort of thing yeah well it it does affect the way the ball travels but it kind of they kind of got it right in in pinball arcade in that it it sort of as it gets up a little bit higher the ball can just go straight through it yeah like it's not really a barrier but when it's fully down it will stop the ball and it wasn't really doing that in pinball arcade at all i always thought of it more as a um an indicator of how many shots you've had on it than an actual it's a bit like that yeah but it's a poor indicator for that purpose as well because there's no gauge there's no reference point as it goes up and up it's just like oh it's really high i guess it's nearly there you know but the cool thing is that the actual the essentially the the gate which is the the mine sort of support um and the actual mine itself it actually goes the whole mine moves up and down the back like it's articulated so it goes like this and it's not really visible in um uh in the pimble arcade version but when you see it in real life it's like that's a it's a large bit of the play field and bart the way bart animates um compared to pimble arcade yeah i don't know what they were doing in pimble arcade when they animated that it must have been a bad day because it does not move like it does in pimble arcade it's like Cactus Canyon to me, when you look at it it really is it's medieval madness, it's Attack from Mars the western thing, it really is you play it, people go I've never played this game before and when we were talking, when we were walking up and having a game on it in the tournament I said play it like medieval madness and they go oh, oh and they start looking at the shots and they see Bart as a castle and they see just shoot the shots three times and you'll get the thing and it's like yeah just play it like medieval madness and I gave someone that tip and they blew it up so yeah it's great it works it is very much a fun table have you played the original? did you put hands in one? when I played it it was an original machine but they had put Cactus Canyon continued uh you know via the laptop that software um all right yes this is back before chicago coin ever even existed uh you know for these purposes and it was the cactus king continued with so much fun um the the two favorite modes that popped up on it one of them it suddenly was uh attack from mars with the uh the saucer coming and you're attacking that but the soundtrack was ridiculous and it would just like it was so much fun so in your face um but it wasn't just the saucer and you shooting there there was other things going but it was and i think the mode was called cowboys versus aliens which which was good you know and i don't know if that was because the movie had just come out or not um anyway there was that and then there was uh uh i can't remember if it was a multiball mode or not but it was drunk flippers so i was at backwards so the backwards flippers and so you totally had to reach across and do that action to get it going um and then those were those were the two favorite modes that i that i played and i was just like i'm sold this is great so I don't know if any of I don't think the Cowboys vs. Aliens would have landed in the Cactus Canyon continued thing but isn't there a drunken pinball mode in it? I don't know. I can't validate that because we didn't get enough time on it. It was so hard. The outlanes were cavernously wide and everything was draining so fast. It was such a battle to get any ball time on it at all. Isn't there a new newer I don't know if it's Stern or who, that has that same thing where the flippers get reversed as a mode? Probably, yeah. I do remember it being in a machine, but I can't recall which one it is. I'm like, I know it's out there, so it would be really funny if, I mean, I shouldn't say funny, it would be ridiculous if Cacus Canyon didn't wind up having that mode too. Yeah. so i don't yeah i don't actually know where you can enable old rules new rules in it because if it's pc driven maybe not but i mean really the the chicago coin versions of the game are all running on a mini pc anyhow really yeah um so yeah but boy the other thing that really stood out this is the last bit i'll talk about so b-pack i i qualified for two finals the brisbane masters and the best card final. I won't go into formats of those because we're short on time. I didn't win any money this year because it's very, very stiff competition at these ones. We get people flying in from the best pinball players in Australia flying in from interstate to play the tournament here. Of course, we have Escher Lefkoff now in Australia. RIP us as far as winning any tournaments because, well, you know, it's Esha. He's very good. But I did final. I actually jumped to complete division bank and master. So I was D last year and I was C this year. Excellent. So I jumped up one whole level, which is a massive, massive improvement for me. And unfortunately, the best card finals, I had to pass up my spot in the finals because I had something more important to do, which is go and see my two kids get very good achievement awards. um at a school presentation so i thought no i'll do that instead and it was good because i really needed like i've been doing two days straight of pinball and it's really intense and the friday which is when the graduation thing was on i really benefited from that just day off just to reset and just chill out and then i went back saturday morning for the master's event which is like literally about 12 hours worth of qualifying you know waiting between rounds and everything but still it's a big day and it was honestly the best thing um so i'm very thankful for the friday very thankful for the fact that i needed to attend school but yeah really fun um but yeah that cactus canyon was a real highlight for me that's one i've never put hands on before and i would love to own one it's beautiful yeah i agree that that's definitely one of those that It would be, if I could afford to buy a new machine, would be near the top. That's trailing your list. It would be near the top of my list, yeah. The other thing that was really cool to see was that you can buy this modification for super pins, probably any pin, actually, because I saw it on Adam's Family and I saw it on Indiana Jones. But you can buy, essentially, the Cactus Canyon Chicago coin massive color DMD as a mod, and you can fit it to all the older Belly Williams and it's like a full-on massive... It makes the Segan big displays blush. And it's fantastic. People are going, is that Addams Family remake? It looks newer. It looks nicer. It's like, no, it's just the DMD panel has been swapped out on a 30-year-old machine that makes it look new. It's like the bang for buck on this mod is amazing. I'd buy them for all my fleet Have you been able to put hands on the Pulp Fiction table? Yes. And how is it? Oh, it's fun. It has a very sort of System 11 feel, but with modern mechanics. But unfortunately, the one that's at Netherworld is just hammered. Hammered. And it's set so hard. I can barely get fun away around it on the table. like it's it's such a drain monster um they go play for the game somehow are the uh the callouts just like loads of fun too i mean i i don't know for me i expect them to be almost at that fun level of medieval madness with the callouts uh it's definitely lots of movie callouts in there um all the music you expect to be in there is in there as well okay um they've really pulled our little sauce with the licensing on this one like it's quotes a plenty for the movie um unfortunately it being in the other world you can't hear anything really um except for the really loud call outs um but it's a struggle to hear anything in the other world i still don't understand why they don't have the game volume up higher like it frustrates me every time but um yeah i was able to hear some of the call outs they're they're good um and they even they've even made the call outs almost a little bit compressed so they actually sound a little bit like a 90s pinball machine like they they've kind of well it sounds like it anyhow it's like there's a little bit of compression to it um so it's not super high fidelity because it's like they're not running through a a stereo speaker or anything it's just like um it's it's they've done a really tasteful job with the audio it's very clear but it's like you could sort of tell It just has the highs and the lows just cut off a little bit. Well, maybe that's just because it's in the pub too and I can't hear anything. Is that right? Yeah. But yeah, Pulp is fun. The new King Kong as well we got to play. That literally made it into the country a week before the event. So that was a bit hardcore. That's a fun game. Really fun. It reminds me of the Kong, the big Kong dude in the back. He reminds me so much of the Champion Pub Boxer. We're actually saying they missed an opportunity there, put him right in the middle of the playfield so he can smack him with a ball. Yeah. Like, that would have been so much fun. And we got to play a Godzilla 70th Edition too, which is the black and white and red one. It was really nice. So, yeah, lots of nice little treats to play at BPAC this year. We were really lucky. Such a great selection of games from all the collectors. I had three there. and I've still got three there at Maruka because my three games are now on site for Coindrop. Oh, well. So I'm an operator now, I guess. Good stuff. All right. Well, we're going to shift over into our main, basically our one and only topic for the day. Our main event. Because I think this is going to fill up all the time that we have. It will, yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, so I had this idea in one of the other, I don't know if it was last episode or the episode before that, of just kind of, you know, as stuff has come out for us to play pinball at home, and Jared and I have been lucky enough to get our hands on a lot of this. I have all the things. Jared has half the things. um but yes that's what we've both come away from is there is a premium pinball experience to be had with digital pinball at home this is beyond just playing on a console beyond playing on your pc with the monitor rotated to landscape or i mean to up to portrait mode but you're still playing with a controller right this is premium is also beyond just having a vr headset and playing with the controllers right yeah this is having all the feels that you can possibly have um and so we've had we kind of wanted to break down how much is the actual cost of going the premium route not the budget route with these things premium being that you're getting as much haptic as you can getting as much form factor as you can. And obviously the two formats that this breaks down into is the AtGames cabinet or going with the MetaQuest 3 headset and in combination with the X-Arcade, Arcade to TV XR stand there. What we're not going to talk about. Not going to talk about just a regular VPN cabinet. Because I want this to be something that it's readily available to purchase and that what you purchase is the same thing that other people can purchase, right? Yeah, it's not bespoke. No, it's not bespoke. So we're not going into that arena and talking about stuff. All the software that we're talking is commercially available. It's not anything that you are downloading and loading in ROMs and doing stuff like that. So it's the stores that are the AtGame store and the Horizon store. It's, again, things that you can easily purchase, kind of treating it like a console, but just in this other new form factor. Sorry. yeah no am i missing any point on that jared is there more than no you nailed it it's so yeah we're we're not dealing with pc i mean you know we can touch on it now very briefly but like both of these things like both vr and um at games have quite a few more abilities than what we're speaking about at the moment but as far as like we're going for on device on device with the with the intent that you turn the thing on you start the commercial software you play the commercial software as it's intended to be played on the device so yeah that's that's the brief because we could go on five hours and probably get lots of hate mail about all of our opinions about running roms and stuff yeah um like we have in the past so we're not going there We learned how to listen. All right. So that being said, let's take a quick look at just the hardware portion of CUS. So this is the AtGames cabinet. This is the headset and the X-Arcade. Yeah. So let's see if I can bring that up. There we go. All right. So if we're looking at this now, you'll also note I'm not talking about things on sale. You can find things on sale. This is the RRP Yeah because Manufactured Recommended Price MSRP Yeah Whatever you want to call Yeah So let look at the Just with the You want a VR set, right? Now, right now, the Quest 3 is the only thing that's available to have Zen's latest, which is Pinball FX VR. If you had one of the other headsets, you would still be able to do Star Wars VR and... Well, actually, could you do Star Wars VR? Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I think that wound up getting a lot of steam. That's what I'm saying now. And then you could also do the... People of X-Facts 2 or Classics as it's known on Horizon. But, all right, so headset, right there, $499. Good news is it is available at local retailers. So you don't have to actually pay any shipping to get that home. for yourself. This is, they only sell the one version of it now. So this is the 512 gigabyte version. Which is, honestly, I've got a 128. And yeah, if you see those, if you're trying to cut costs here and they're thinking of buying 128, do not buy 128. Yeah. Gig, buy a 512. You need the extra space. Yeah. And then the X-Arcade TV2 Arcade XR setup. This is, for Jared, definitely a game changer it was it was nice playing it in 3d yes but actually playing it with proper flippers um and and standing up and doing that that made all the difference in the world right oh yes yeah like it really does uh like the way it maps the the game to the dimensions of the controller yeah that's the that really is the the thing you're paying the money for yeah like that level of integration um amazing readily available for 3.99 and now it states on their website that the msrp is 4.99 but they don't even sell it for that much on their website they sell it for three oh really yeah um shipping on it is 80 however uh they just partnered with for those of us in north america uh with micro center uh so you could go down to the store and pick that up also and save yourself the shipping cost if you oh wow if you have a micro center near you um that's really good yeah it's good they got real retail partners over there in the uh in the u.s for these sort of things because why not they're all right essentially u.s companies right now the next line yes before everyone starts quoting us these are speculation we do not have any pricing we don't even have it in frustratingly we don't have an inline um line with xik we've been trying for ages to find someone there who can actually help us out with like content creator stuff it's we can't find anyone yeah so it's annoying us but we based on the how'd you come to this price okay so here's here's this is my best guess right so the x arcade uh without the stand is $299. So the stand's $100. And the stand is $100. So think about it as just... That's a lot of stand for $100. Yes, it is. Yeah. It's beefy. So $200, or excuse me, $300 essentially for the controller, right? The meat of it. X-Arcade sells, if you want to add spinner controls, they would actually go where you drop in the handsets currently for VR. That's the port. You pop that off. You put those in. You have to disassemble and plug in and all sorts of madness. Anyways, those are $49. That's the most expensive accessory that they have for this, right? So it's $49 for that. So obviously with what you get with the Haptic Kit, what they were advertising, which is you're getting the haptic speakers, you're getting a new top plate because there's speakers built in on that, and you're getting a plunger. Yep. And you're getting about four different actuators. Yeah. And there's a whole, there's a lot of stuff that you're getting in this kit. There's a lot of stuff. So my thought was, obviously it's not going to be the same price as spinners. It's going to be more expensive than that. Well, it has to be. But it's got to be, it cannot cost half of what the actual control deck costs, right? So it's not going to be $150. I can't foresee that. So in my guesstimation, on the high end of things, it's going to be coming in at probably $125. On the low end of things, I'd be very pleased if it came in at $80. I can't see it being any less than that. Again, the plunger alone, I feel it's going to cost more. You're going to kick up the price. Yeah. The little haptic speakers, that's nothing. That doesn't cost that much. They're actually not even speakers. They're like vibration motors. Right. But then you have the top plate. The whole top plate is brand new. That comes, and it's got speakers built into it. And I reckon those speakers will contribute some sensation. those are realistically though for the actual table sounds yeah they are because your your headset will actually go well i think you can choose but we'll go mute and all the sounds will be coming out of this to further uh make it feel like you're actually in front of a machine um yeah so from what i've seen from there's there's some uh folk on pinball effects that do have the inside line and are actually getting communication from ex arcade and they say the way it's going to be connected is it won't be wireless so you will actually be running a headphone jack from your um quest into the um controller deck so into the um into the thing itself because there's no other way to do the audio it's there's there's no way for them to make it low latency enough it's got instantaneous so it must be direct wide connection okay um which you know isn't great but at the same time it's unavoidable so you can't really do anything about it so that's fine so you'll connect it up to your headset and then it goes into a jack somewhere not sure where probably in the back um and that will then control all of the the motor feedback and stuff so i don't know whether it's going to be like a usb connector i think they're still gonna have the dongle which they're redesigning apparently right yeah the dongle is being redesigned so that we don't have this issue of uh when we go to hot swap a battery that it goes disconnects yeah yeah it's bad so i think they'll probably be coinciding that redesign with this haptics kit so they can support some extra stuff in there yeah um but it seems like it's going to be driven a fair bit by the audio that's received so yeah that's what i've come across so far great um if um i know a couple of the guys after i we mentioned last time i think they're following the show now so folk if you're watching now just comment and bring us up to speed it'd be great We appreciate you. The other thing that I threw in here to complete the premium experience is Jared and I are both fans of the Bobo VR headset. It's that halo style fitting on your head. It's very comfortable. The hot swap batteries are very easy to use, and I'm including buying the extra battery that comes with the charger. The price varies. Again, you can find these things on sale. Full retail is a whole different thing. I personally just looked it up. I found the headset and the batteries for $90. When I purchased it, I think I purchased it for $80. So, you know, again, price will fluctuate on that kind of thing. But you don't want to be constantly having to charge your headset. And with two batteries, you don't have to charge your headset. You're just constantly, by the time the one battery goes, the other battery is almost all the way charged. You throw that back on your head. You know, if you're planning on playing for five hours, well, that's going to be an issue. But if you're planning on playing for, you know, two plus hours, you're set. You're good. And the other option is if you don't want to have to mess with batteries, you plug in a 45-watt charger. Plug your device into that 45-watt charger with a USB splitter. and you can play for 24 hours without having to worry about your battery. A couple of folks have done that on pinball effects and go, yeah, we've just done away with the batteries altogether because of the X-Arcade syncing issue with the dongle. And they just play wired all the time. Because you're sitting down or you're standing up, you're not moving around playing Beat Saber. So you don't really have to worry about it. But the Bobo VR is very nice for when you're playing not pinball. yeah so particularly if you are also which we'll get to using software that over clocks your device not over clocks it it unlocks its performance um so you will definitely need it some sort of external power supply whether it's batteries or wired when you're doing that so yeah yes i mean that all comes to like us dollars here uh 1200 and change in a bit so that's a fair bit aussie dollars ouch it's still not terrible but i've got it later on you'll see the actual cost that's an estimation that's not even close to what it is in aussie dollars um now the ad games that is much simpler to talk about uh first off i'm quoting the price for the adams family cabinet that's the evergreen cabinet that will always be available um it's not collector's edition it's not going to disappear on you uh so you can get that at any time uh get it with the surround sound feedback kit and the reason why i saw that for you before they ship it right they will they Okay, so, yes, you can buy it pre-installed, $500. Or you can just buy the surround sound feedback kit for $500 and install it yourself. Let me think what I'd like to do there. What do I want to do? Plus, if it's pre-installed, it's covered under warranty fully. If you install it yourself, you can void that warranty. Yeah, nope. Yeah. So, why do that to yourself? just buy it pre-installed um again you can get lower cost versions of the machine uh you can get it where the the ability to use a pc with it is not unlocked uh and that's a little bit less for the pricing uh you can find some of the machines are actually on sale uh for less than the Adams family table. So you can even find them a little bit cheaper. Um, but my thing is you need to get it with the surround sound feedback kit because that for me is the difference maker between me playing it native on the machine and playing pinball effects via the PC on the cab. Yeah. Those, the, the, the feeling is what makes it feel, what makes you just lose yourself into the game. You forget it's digital, basically. Yeah. Even without being 3D, that's the difference maker right there. Premium experience. That's why I'm throwing that in there with the cost. Yes, $2,100 and you are going to have to pay shipping because it's not available at retail locations at the moment. And that's US and Canada only. Yes, North America only. So $2,200. Which is why it's not applicable for me down here. Yeah. Alright, so that's just the hardware. Yeah. Now, when you purchase the ad games, it does come with 15 tables. One of those will be a Zen title, so long as you're buying a Zen cabinet. The other 14 will be Magic Pixel titles. Right. so that being said let's go ahead and move on over then to the software side of things for right now what we're going to concentrate on is the Zen software because that's pretty much what people want so and it's also with the MetaQuest 3 I don't believe you can play at games i mean excuse me um zacharia pinball natively over the headset i think no you can't no you can't there's not an actual app to purchase no there isn't and that's a real shame so trying to make it again apples to apples kind of uh comparison in this world so let's take a look at uh your software costs and what is actually available um hold on if i push the proper there we go okay so we've got a couple of things listed here uh hey first thing you'll notice is the quest game optimizer that i put in there uh jared convinced me that i need to buy it it's only ten dollars and wow it turns your it turns your your your mobile chipset headset into almost pc vr yeah like it is an impressive piece of software and i will also say it does wonders for the other games that you play on any game like it's not just pinball like any game that runs natively on this headset shoot it makes me it makes the the ui look better yeah the whole everything everything it it's it's almost a no-brainer so i threw that in there as part of the cost um okay if you were just going to be playing the what's available in pinball effects vr there are currently only 19 tables available if you were paying full price for those tables it's going to be 110 dollars again i'm saying if you're paying full price zen has already put some of these on sale at various times i believe if i'm not mistaken right yeah absolutely there's already been sales on vr so there's been sales on vr also those are the only titles that are available to play currently using the x arcade controller the other two zen titles pinball effects classics and star wars vr your controller city baby um yeah it is annoying everyone is asking for it on the forums like They're going, when is it going to be added? We paid, in my case, you know, $1,000 Australian for this thing, and we can't play it with all of the other software that you offer. Like, what is going on? Yeah. And the shame of it is, because this stuff already exists, I don't think Zen is in a hurry to bring it into Pinball FX VR. No, you're right. And I'm like, come on, be in a hurry. If you don't want to program it for those games, just dump it in. Or give support. Yeah. Be in a hurry or do the support. They're your two levers you're going to pull here for customers, right? But that being said, Star Wars VR, $25, eight tables. And Pinball FX Classics, 12 tables for $51. Now, so that's right there. If you want all of the Zen titles, paying full price, $196. now you're playing in vr bam with that i'm pretty sure someone did find a way to that they they got so tired of the connection issues with the x arcade yeah that they worked out how to actually connect the x arcade using a usb cable and remapping it using the pc they actually sniffed out the the keyboard strokes that are required yeah and they they remapped it and now they play wired so i would suggest that you probably could if you're willing to diy this and this goes away from what we're talking about here where you just play it stock without any mods you can probably get it to work but that's out of scope of what we're talking about here yeah yeah because i personally find the diy thing it's a pain in the butt i don't know it's a royal pain in the ass like really it's horrible like i don't have time for it no i just want plug and play i just want to go um all right let's look at the uh other side with at games so zen titles they've got 52 and counting um titles available from zen uh now at games prices you are paying an at games tax yes so all of the titles are more expensive and unfortunately i don't think they've ever gone on sale um even when they do their uh nod weekend or national owners day weekend they will put on sale all the zacharia or the magic pixel titles but i don't believe the zen stuff has gone on sale um so when i put there that it's going to be 275 dollars for all of the tables that's how much it's going to be um that being said they are still cheaper than the magic pixel titles um most of the packs for magic pixel are 35 dollars well it's also individual tables they don't sell no they don't sell okay the individual tables are eight dollars yeah eight individual tables on for zen are five dollars um those packs now a lot of times the pack will include call it 11 tables but what you're getting is really three titles and it's the retro uh remake and deluxe version of the zach table you know likability varies per person on those i have not been a fan of hardly any of the deluxe tables um my biggest complaint is that magic pixel has been very lazy with their video screen every single one of them has the exact same font they all have the exact same coloring the font is is ridiculously bubble shaped yeah and even if you're playing something like uh what did they come out with a primal primal rage yeah which is the the font of the video game is very aggressive and ah right but boy the font for your score is just happy and we It just doesn't fit. It's just wrong. Also, they've been repeating the same rule sets on the same call-out script table to table to table to table to table. Yeah, they are very generic. It's very generic. So that's why I say, hey, if you're a fan of the Zach tables, you're essentially getting three tables for $35. so it's rather expensive um but they've got a lot of them look at that there's 126 yeah like you like you really able there if you put the the price aside and what you're getting and you're just looking at content alone you can't you cannot argue with the at games value proposition here. Like, there is a lot of content that you can buy. And if you have a cool 1.2K lying around, you can just get it all, you know? Right. Easy I will just say if you do buy the Farsight Gottlieb packs you going to be disappointed They're not good. They're exactly what you used to play. And by that, they haven't been optimized for this cab. The surround sound feedback is not great. The nudging doesn't work well. it's nothing was great they're the wide body tables like black hole they're compressed to fit so there's a lot to despise and not be happy about um really like there's a well okay so we should balance it out by saying well there's a lot of content um by the way yeah um yeah consider your purchases before buying anything other than the zen pinball titles yeah and we don't say that because we're like you know shills or whatever it's because literally they're the best quality tables on there now those at game originals that's where you're those are the titles that are made exclusively for ad games right so those are your title pack um those are the dr seuss packs yeah they're all made by magic pixel they are made by magic pixel uh the The Taito packs are really good. Oh, yeah? I think those are the surprising ones. They're the ones that you're like, oh, dang, this is pretty awesome. Right. The Dr. Seuss packs, honestly, I really kind of hate them. Right. They look nice. The call-outs are nice. The layout design is atrocious. Right. So just putting that out there. But yeah, the cost of the software though, wow, $1,200. If you wanted everything, that's a significant difference. Look at that. It's $1,000 more than what you would currently buy on Meta. Yeah, it is. Significantly more. Even if you were to go, like, say we had game parity or game parity with Pinball FX VR and the titles that are currently on AtGames, and you were paying even around the same amount of money, like that $2.75 mark, for example, US dollars. You know, that's still not an insignificant amount of money to invest in having to, like, pay the software tax here, which is the ongoing problem when you're deciding which platform to go with it's like this it's it's a real hidden cost that you have to really consider when you're going do i what do i want to play this on you know so yeah it's worth being eyes open about which is why we've gone to the trouble of doing it because it's not to say that it's bad or wrong it's just it just is right it's that idea of We don't want you going in and then being like, but what do you mean I have to buy this all again? You know, that whole argument. It would be fair to assume that if you're paying $2,200, that you would actually get a little bit more than what you're currently getting at the moment when you invest in an AtGames cabinet. Because that is a large amount of money. And I get that they're dealing with wood and screens and, you know, buttons and hardware. and that's hardware is expensive right it is i don't i don't discount that for a minute like i understand but like 15 games included with a 2.2k purchase feels like a bit of a dodgy thing to me at least for an outsider who has no skin in the game because i can't buy this any right right right like i have no choice i cannot buy this but it's a bit of a stiff cost yeah i i will say that when it first came out and there weren't that many titles available at all that even getting like the first four Zen titles that were made available on the cab, I was happy. Oh really? You could just go with Zen titles maybe. Like just get rid of the other like you know, million grand. No, because what was I doing? I was playing the crap out of Attack from Mars, playing the crap out of Twilight Zone, playing the crap out of Adam's Family. It really it was fine. Everything else became irrelevant, right? So literally my favorites page because fortunately you can categorize these things and you can make favorites and all that jazz. I've only put the Zen titles now in the favorites page. There's one or two of the title tables that I've put in there. but I'm being selective with it and even then you're starting to get to that point of what am I going to play? and you're just scrolling through, what am I going to play? and it's like, just make a choice and play something even with favorites marked on your page you go I don't know what I'm going to play today so imagine having, I don't know like merely 300 tables to have to do that with Yeah, it's going to be rough. But that's why I wanted to highlight those costs, those individual costs. Because, again, if you just went with Lausanne titles, $275. And truthfully, I would be happy just with those. So, I mean, yeah, if you put that side by side, that value proposition isn't at all bad. Nope, not at all bad. All right. so now that we've got that let's combine everything let's let's add it all up for you uh and here we go um oh actually let me what do you want here you want let's okay let's let's before we get into the add-up yeah let's talk about these talking points that uh jared so kindly uh organized um all right pinball software if you were just purely saying who's going to win on the software side vr or ad games well yeah ad games has a lot of a lot more titles to to select from yeah but we just discovered that maybe that's not a bad maybe that's not a perfectly good thing and maybe you don't need all the titles to actually still have a great time on the platform but even if you were just going with the zen zen has double the titles available on ad games as opposed to vr i think that gap is going to quickly go away uh i think it will yeah uh but yeah all right hardware cost of entry well yeah vr wins on pricing definitely wins on price uh vr wins if you live outside of north america definitely wins yep winner um disputed champion and you know obviously there's no alternatives uh there's there's not arcade one up is not a factor you know to compete with alp uh there is no other headset that pinball effects vr is playing on other than meta quest three at the moment well at the moment i should i shouldn't say meta quest three the meta space because you can play these on the two uh and you can play it on the 3s um yeah even the pro if you have one right but if you are one of those people who's like i can't support meta i can't support at games well well then you're out of luck you're out of luck there so uh you know are you going to come to grips with that or not um we'll see if zen decides to finally bring it to uh playstation vr i think it would be wonderful if they did because guess what the arcade 2xr works with playstation 5 it well it works with literally anything anything yeah even like mega drive all the way back to Sega Genesis. And I would love nothing more than Zen to make friends with Valve again and use their headset, because then maybe we would get Portal in VR. And I think Portal in VR, oh lordy, would that be good. Aside, this is not related to anything we're doing, and I'm only going to mention it quickly. Multimorphic now have a Portal module. And I'm blown away by it. it's like it looks so good yeah and it's so logical zen tate i mean zen knows they probably want it back in their collection like anything because it's such a fun oh yeah that table is fun and in vr yeah geez um so good hardware availability again kind of already touched upon that which is you've got to be in north america um but on the plus side uh also again the X-Arcade is available at a retail location. So you can get your whole VR setup in a retail location, not have to worry about shipping. And that's really nice. It is. That's really nice. All right, playing experience. Here's where Jared can't quite comment as much. I'm running blind here. Chris, you're the only one that can be impartial here. I can only tell you about what VR is like. Yeah. I've been very vocal this entire time that as wonderful as VR looks, I don't like the isolated experience. Being able to play it in mixed reality helps immensely, but you're still dealing with a headset on your head, and during the summer it gets hot. And if you want your friends to be able to... I've had people come over and they'll be like, what are you playing? And then I'm like, well, I guess I could cast to the phone and you could see, but then you're not experiencing it in VR. But then if I want you to experience it in VR, I've got to pop out my Zeni lenses that I bought. Oh, by the way, I did that. I purchased the prescription lenses and, okay, yeah. Worth it. That wasn't worth it. Thanks. But, yeah, I've got to pop out those so that you can actually see without my prescription interfering. and then you've got to wipe it down so you're not getting all the head sweat and then you've got to give a quick tutorial on how to even navigate through anything it's not at all shareable experience, it really is solo play only and that's the thing there's no way to play Hot Seat at all, they don't even give it as an option in pinball effects and that's why I say that it needs multiplayer desperately for it to be comparable with being able to like play um with a group of people like you would yeah in a bar you know like it's desperately needed multiplayer so that's the big gap at the moment if you if you favor um having people over to experience pinball then you you just you have to do um at games or a cabinet style um solution by the way jared i like that uh a bit of slang there faffing no faffing about we've never heard that but i i immediately understood it i love it yeah okay it's yeah very understandable once you know next category losing yourself in pinball well jared we have a double check mark there so i'll let jared speak to the vr uh end of things because i agree with him yeah well you you know as far as comparing it with flat and then going to vr seeing like either when you choose mr mixed reality or just immersive with the room environment everything when you see that table in front of you and you're interacting with it in like full scale dimensions i challenge you to actually voluntarily want to go back to flat again because it is there's nothing quite like playing pinball in vr it's like it's it's the way to play pinball um if you're not and there are just certain tables that shine so much brighter in vr than they do in flat and i mean it actually makes sense we just talked about in the last episode with the uh the tomb raider tables they absolutely shine in vr um and curse of the mummy is another one that makes so much more sense yeah absolutely yeah yeah And I mean, there's easily a dozen tables that are much better in VR than they are in the flat world. So, yeah, really pretty much all the Zen tables, all the Zen tables, there's something about them. They really translate well to VR. So, yeah, I mean, it's good. That being said, walking up to the cabinet and you start playing, it's amazing how quickly your brain just goes, yep, I'm playing pinball. And the 3D aspect doesn't matter. You just, I'm playing pinball. Yeah. You know, and it has everything to do with the form factor standing in front of it, seeing the back glass, seeing the DMD your head is doing all the things that it would do in pinball it's just moving side to side doesn't affect it hovering over the top of it doesn't affect it so that's where the illusion goes away but for people who have problems with VR or people who just aren't interested in VR whatsoever even if you don't go with an AtGames solution here you source your own and you go down the path of PC and stuff yeah like playing it on a cabinet versus playing it flat is a eye-opening experience that once you've experienced it you won't want to go back because i've i've played on somebody's cabinet here in australia and i was like okay that's really cool yeah i don't want to be bothered with setting it up yeah i don't have six thousand dollars for a really good setup to get one so let's roll it into the uh feels better category because they're losing yourself and how it feels are kind of synonymous truth be told yeah this is this is really subjective right and it will feel different to everyone but this is how it feels to me right um for me it it's it really needs the haptics to be done on vr to make it a comparable experience i i get glimpses of haptics sometimes Yeah, sometimes you can feel the controller rattle through. Yes. And some tables it works and some it doesn't. It seems to work mostly on Zen tables, but not Belly Williams tables. And when I feel it, I go, oh, was that a buzz? Yeah. And you sort of go, oh, it's a tantalizing glimpse into the future when the haptics kit is going to be released. And I can't wait. No. but if you just if we're talking by right now not with the haptics kit obviously because it's not released until the end of the year it's still a phenomenal experience it's still amazing to play it with the X-Arcade or if you've found your own solution you've mapped your buttons and everything to your own thing now which people are finding out how to do now, it's good like whatever thing you're using to actually have physical hands on a controller nvr wow i'll tell you what it's it's something else um the the nice thing about x arcade is it's very easy to adjust the height for your particular play height the other day i decided to drop the thing right down to console seated console height and played it sitting down in a chair and the the experience where uh you're looking down the table it's when you map it in x arcade I have not been able to find a way to adjust the height no matter what I do it doesn't work so your perspective shifts so you're really looking at it really flat and it's interesting I was able to line up shots differently when I was playing at that angle and it's comfortable to play seated you can do it as well if you have a high bar stool and you adjust the height of the thing and then you sit at the bar stool and play as well. Honestly, it really cuts down the fatigue and it works just as well because you're not having to actually tilt the game. You don't need to be anchored on the ground so you can tilt it. You can actually tilt, you can move the whole cabinet around if you really put your mind to it while you're sitting on a chair. It's no problem. So I think when the haptic is released and you prefer to play seated, you may want to consider doing that, um going to a bar stool but it's it's it's great standing and it's also great seated as well so that's a really flexible bit about it and then uh again i agree wholeheartedly with what jared's saying uh that being said the form factor of having a wood cabinet in front of you um it's square it's the proper thing there's glass on top you can you know you touch there's all these things, these sensations that are one-to-one with an actual pinball cab as opposed to the X-Arcade where it's a piece of plastic that has a pseudo-carbon fiber feel to it. It has a weird angle, let's be frank. Yeah, where your palms rest, your right hand wants to be on top of buttons. So you actually have to kind of adjust how you normally would have played at a pinball and an actual cabinet. You get used to it, but that's just what I'm saying. It's not the walk up and do exactly what I would do on any other pinball machine. The haptics and the space of where the speakers are really sell that ball rolling. and again that's something that's not there yet it's coming but it's not there yet with the x arcade and i don't know how they're going to transmit that idea of where the ball is on the table when you have you know only a what is that a foot and a half wide top um so i don't know it's gonna be interesting yeah um but also nudging if you lock down the x arcade like i've done nudging that thing is going to be because it's really rigid um whereas again the the the the ad games cab it's a pinball machine it's going to nudge the exact same way that any pinball machine nudges um you know what i'd love actually to consider doing it's given that if you're playing vr and it's a solo experience and sure that thing is great for playing pc games why not sell a control panel with just one one stick centered so you can sit center on in it and have the control right in the middle have nice space either side of the panel so that you'd you can actually just have that more pinball aesthetic, a little bit similar to what AtGames have done with their controller panel edition, where it's designed for one player, one player only standing in front of the machine with ample room either side. And I don't know, maybe they can redesign where the flippers sit to make it a little bit more realistic. I have a feeling that depending on how well the haptic kit does that you you may see exactly that transpire yeah or people like i don't care about the ability to play regular arcade games i purely want a pinball experience there's a good chance that they adjust for that look i would i would actually be happy like it's only me playing video games i don't need to i don't need two controllers in fact i don't really want two controllers I would be quite happy to just have one just sell me the panel I'm happy to like swap out all the all the equipment on it just like screws it easy yeah sell me the sell me the panel to fit that molded with the thing in the middle so that I can actually I can have a single player thing otherwise i don know maybe 3d print one someone pretty smart out there they could probably do it um but you know to me that's that would be the ultimate for this thing okay like just a single control in the middle with all the buttons laid out in my mind maybe you could even put some extra ones over the edge or something to give you that extra flexibility to go well if i want to map like extra flipper buttons perhaps i can use my thumbs at the top to activate the magna save buttons or something like that you know yeah so thinking about that sort of like additional use if you want to use it with pc or something like that give it give us a pinball layout on the top and i honestly think that's a really missed opportunity here that they should consider doing But I think what we're saying here is there's really no wrong choice between the two. No, they're both good for what they do. Yeah. And you will get a higher level of immersion no matter what solution you get, whatever your budget is. Yeah. Like, it's great. Playing on either of these solutions, with my knowledge of what a digital pinball cabinet feels like, not X-Arcade, not AtGame, sorry, it is a great experience. Yeah. So whatever your personal preference is, you're going to have a good time. So let's see what those actual prices with software, all the bells and whistles. Here we go. All right. Sorry, the column format is a little bit wonky here because I had to have enough room. But I can probably improve that now that we've finished that other section. Yep. So I'll scroll down a bit more. Bear with me here. There we are. That's a bit better. There we are. so hardware with zen software uh if you're going the vr route uh one thousand two hundred fifty four dollars if you're going and these yeah this is north america u.s prices um yeah and then if you wanted to do it with the ad games cab you're looking at you know let's just call it 2500 bucks really yeah that's what you're looking at and that's just then just then um yeah all right uh do we have another price down there or is there we have more oh yeah the give me everything yes yeah give me everything yeah so the price doesn't go up incredibly much with uh with the vr you're now at 1409 but it goes up significantly for app games it's literally all the software combined is not over 900 yeah which is so yeah you get them yo it's a lot of money that's nothing to sneeze at if you're going all the way in yeah i hope you have a i hope your bank manager is prepared um but we've already discussed it may not even be necessary like like that honestly the that 2475 if you went with that expenditure and just went with the Zen software you're going to be pretty happy with that that's a lot of content, 52 games is a lot yeah and speaking from Chris's experience you don't really need the others really to have a good time on it now, because I'm in Australia I was talking before you know, the estimation we were working on is like, you know the Australian dollar is about 65 cents to the US at the moment, right, so I was going oh let's call it considerably 40 more right but that's not really the case so these are the actual costs so the quest free here is 800 so it's double the price of the u.s list price um we are lucky lucky enough and i say this thank you xrk for having a partner here in australia that will do this um you will have to pay 990 for the x arcade and stand wow nothing that's just the xrk in the stand yeah um and that's the the price um there is a small delivery charge on that but we're talking like i think 30 bucks so it's like i didn't bother talking about it so call it about a thousand and you got yourself the XRK. The headset. That's ridiculous. A loan? A loan is $50 here. Yeah. So it's $150 here in Australia. And the two batteries, it's about $66 each, so $132. So $2,000 is how much you're going to have to pay hardware-wise in Australia to get on VR. That's the cost. Yeah. So compare that with the 1-2 or something like that in US dollars. This is the Australia tax that we're dealing with all the time here in Australia. And it's brutal. It is absolutely brutal. But in saying that, and I'll caveat this again because we're really transparent here, Exarcade hooked both of us up with our controllers, and we are so eternally grateful for that. because I would not probably, I would have had to really think hard about this money here. And now you can't think of playing it without it. Yeah, and I know it sounds almost contrite of me to say it, right? Because I got mine for free, right? Of course it's going to be better. this is not a shill or any of that. It's like, really, if you get this, if you decide that instead of trying to find a $5,000 real pinball machine, if you can even find one for that in Australia, and then have access to $50,000 worth of Belly Williams equipment in your house, in your garage, and play through MR with the XRK controller, with the Quest 3 512 gigabyte thing, $2,000 is cheap. Like, it is a cheap amount of money compared to how much it will cost to get even a clapped out belly dmd um so like for your delectation folks if you're in australia and you're going i don't know man that seems like a lot of money it's worth the expenditure if you are keen on playing pinball and literally a whole lot of other really amazing stuff on vr as well it's not just pinball yeah like this is the gate way drug to VR if you've not tried it before. Once you've tried VR, you'll actually go, wow, there's so much cool stuff on here. So do we have any other category beyond that, Jared? I don't know. Let's have a look. Look at all these labels. Lots of blank pages. Tell me what to buy. No. Yeah, well. Honestly, it is... There's so many factors that it's up to you to decide. if you are literally deciding i'm going to go with one of these two um you're not going to go wrong but feel good in that um if you are somebody had a different purpose yeah if you are somebody that suffers from the headaches of vr can't do 3d uh doesn't want the isolated experience then don't go the vr route don't feel bad you're not missing don't don't have that that fear of missing out right you'll be fine here yeah you'll enjoy the arcade the the the the actual cab that that games cab um scrolling through the titles on the alp is so much quicker than walking yourself through an arcade in pinball effects vr i don't do that anymore i just use the um the map the favorite table position and just swap it out okay so quick all right yeah um you know so i guess that's not an issue i haven't gotten to that point yet i'm still like let's walk through the arcade um it is definitely you're right though people are already saying that on pinball effects now they're going on the discord they're going how how are you gonna solve this problem when there's 100 games in there yeah like you know and it's i think it's all going to be about the ability to walk to tables in that map feature um or to do what we said way back in our very first video about this let me do it in mr and let me just cycle through right there yeah just like pick a pick bring up the category list pick the table and put it in and honestly that same mechanism exact it's exactly how that favorite table position works oh okay so if you haven't tried that out yet give it a go it actually it's really great and is that the table that's right there at the front in the uh in the okay okay great yeah it's really not it's it's a very fast way of like just selecting games and playing like okay it's a really neat way of doing it actually yeah but you're right like having a ui like on because i've seen the at games one having a ui being able to favorite and customize it and then having the buttons there to interact with it like just you know you're just using flipper buttons or the joystick if you've got that little up down left right thing yeah um that's really nice as well so uh speaking of graphic fidelity there jared so you like if you are going to go down the path of pinball effects in vr you you really do have to put on quest games optimizer um at least now be at the point of recording this video and the reason why i say that is that the uh on the pimple effects discord um hard rock who's one of the um qa testers i think uh has been like really transparent and really generous in what they've been sharing about the challenges that they've been finding with pimple effects vr and that every time they release a new version and add more content with it the performance degrades and they are targeting they're trying to keep the game running at 90 frames per second which is the 90 hertz um if you're in vr land and that's their that's their target so similar to how in fx flat they're looking at doing multiples of 60 so 60 120 and that's their target um in vr it's 90 so what they're doing is to to reach that that die on this hill thing they have to sacrifice graphics fidelity they have to um uh tweak around with what they call fixed fobiated view which is um the focal point that they're actually rendering the the game at high resolution then around that area that goes fuzzy so they're messing with that and they're messing with a whole lot of other stuff that um we kind of have a bit of exposure to in quest games optimizer but there's probably a bunch more stuff that they have when they're actually doing the build themselves we're not even aware of that they have access to tweak and that's at the um the engine level so the unreal engine 5 level so they are playing a constant game of cat and mouse and for that reason they have to be really careful with how they lock in the graphic settings now with quest game optimizer you can set everything to ultra and it looks amazing and it drains your battery that's the other compromise i have to make as well like they have to go well you know people are going to complain if the battery drains in 30 minutes so we have to balance that with the like so many different levers they're having to pull right so you need qgo to make this game not look all jaggy not look like really fuzzy in some areas it needs it at the moment and yeah it's it's table stakes you gotta have it um but if you do it's it's amazing like it is worth the small amount of hassle you have to go through to install qgo and get it configured but once it's in it's a very nice piece of software that literally works with every other game on quest um so it's worth the hassle uh i will say if you are somebody that is interested in and then this is the one time i'm going to uh to go into this um if you already own everything on pc you're on steam and let's say you already have a pc available to you so of no cost extra it's really easy to hook up to the ad games cabinet um doesn't doesn't take much the only thing you need to be positive of is that your pc is beefy enough to run three screens. Right, so you've got to have three video outputs. Yes. My current PC is basically throttled by my motherboard, so I could only go to a 4060 graphic card. If I run it in 4K on the monitor, can it? Sure. Is it worth it? No. Because it does take it. Mine gives a small performance hit, but it's enough that it's a stutter here, a stutter there, and I don't like that. If I drop it into 2K, I barely can tell the difference. It's the same thing. Honestly, 2K is fine for playing it on this technology, right? It's a 4K screen, but none of the default software on AtGames is running at 4K. No. They have made some of the Magic Pixel stuff run in 4K now. None of Zen. All of Zen is 2K. Does not run in 4K. So, again, why not just keep it in 2K for playing pinball effects? And the PC version, it does look better. There's no doubt about it. There is things that are better. So that is an available option to you. If you are somebody that is interested in going the VPX. I'm using the AtGames as literally three monitors and the interface, then that option's there. Right. And likewise, if you're not interested in focusing on pinball effects, VR, like the shipped version in Meta, if you want to mess around with it, there is Unreal Engine VR on PC PC that you can just literally load your entire Pinball FX Flat library into VR and play it through any headset. And there's other pinball games via Steam that you can play on this. I've already said Demon's Tilt and Xenotilt are phenomenal in cab and I really wish they would support true cab mode for those. I wish they just got native ports over to AtGames. They would sell so many, honestly. You know, you can play Pinball Wicked. I'm pretty sure that you could play. I don't own them, but you could play the Epic Pinball. Isn't that the one with the Time Shock? Oh, Pro Pinball. Pro Pinball. You can play Pro and Pinball on them. So, I mean, you don't even have to be prepared to go the VPX route. There's still commercial software that works fine on the cab. So if that is – like if you're really weighing the choice between the two and cost isn't a factor but that is something that interests you, that's going to tip the scales to go that route. Just know you may not be on your cab for very long before you start shopping for a true virtual cabinet. Yeah. Yeah. so like and this is the thing like that the really i think closing thoughts here yeah like from my perspective if i was in the market and i could buy an at game cabinet and i wasn't sure whether like doing digital pinball like this was the right approach for me this is probably the most capable cabinet at the price point that you can go into and really get a good feel about what digital pinball with a proper cabinet really feels like so if this is your starting point your entry into this area i i would honestly say it is a very good entry point yeah to get a taste of what it might be like if you want to go down and invest five or six grand us in a beautiful cabinet right um so yeah i mean there is that as well and you don't have to like you may be like i'll just go the at games hd route yeah but then you got to mob the crap out of it to bring it up to par you know but this has got all the hardware in it you need yeah it's already it's already got 4k screens in so if you've got a beast of a PC and you want to run down that path and just use that as your box then wow, you've already got the hardware there it's ready to go so that's yeah, that's good summation you can't go wrong with either it's all about how much you are wanting to spend in this arena in space, one thing we didn't cover oh yes, ok, yeah I forgot about that completely. If you're limited on space, by all means, go the VR route. It's compact and gives you a wonderful thing. If you're not limited on space, just know the Gag Games cabinet, even at three-quarter scale, it still sticks out like a sore thumb. Yeah, it's a big bit of furniture. It's a big bit of furniture, and it's an odd bit of furniture. It's just there's no easy, unless you have a game room. You know, I have space in my living room where I put it, and it still is just kind of like a, oh, well, there's that. There's a pinball machine in my lounge room. That's where it is, yep. So, and then it also depends on what graphics you chose to have on the side. Fortunately, the Addams Family is fairly sedate. um you know attack from mars is a little bit brighter that peanuts cabinet and bright yellow good lord that's that is quite conspicuous in your lounge room yeah so anyhow yeah size is a factor size is i mean that this footprint here that's literally yeah all you need yeah so that's that's pretty you can fit that in a japanese apartment and play pinball in there very easily um okay Okay. Wrapping up. We're wrapped up. Oh, so hopefully that helps clarify some things. Again, it's not necessarily a buyer's guide. It's just kind of a pricing guide because for myself, after you start adding up everything, you realize that, oh, there's more in this than what is just purely on the surface. And again, you can bargain shop, and there's ways of getting the prices down, even for what we've displayed. But hopefully this is something that intrigued you all. If it is, let us know, because as more options come available later, which I suspect there will be, we can dive into that too. Yeah. and and we as with all things yeah if there's content that you want us to cover uh let us know give us give us the good ideas so that we can uh do episodes of this nature come over and have a chat to us on discord we've got our own channel um and uh yeah share some show ideas that you got we're still working on the date for interview with mel that's uh sort of stored with all the holidays happening over there at the moment but um i'll be picking up that discussion again to hopefully lock in the date uh so yeah stay tuned for that excellent well until then that is uh our show thanks again for uh watching uh we really appreciate it thanks for those of you that uh subscribed uh we're still picking up new subscribers which is great even when we don't do the call out for them uh so thank you for that and uh next time what are we going to talk about it's a good question but jared has ideas i'll be stuffing things for sure until then folks bye-bye see you later _(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v1)_ --- *Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: a9cb400f-5aad-4ca9-b183-b1d90b9e3d8d*