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Reacting to Epic Pinball FX News

BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 15m·analyzed·Mar 27, 2021
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.035

TL;DR

Zen rebuilds Pinball FX on Unreal Engine; FX3 purchases don't carry over to new platform.

Summary

Blockade Pinball Podcast hosts Chris Frebus and Jared Morgan react to major Pinball FX news: Zen Studios is rebuilding the entire pinball table library (100 tables) for Unreal Engine, launching on Nintendo Switch, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and Epic Games Store (Steam later). FX3 table purchases will NOT transfer to Pinball FX; players must repurchase. Only The Walking Dead and Portal are being dropped. Tables will launch in two phases with bundled licensing collections (Marvel, Star Wars, etc.) to reduce pricing shock.

Key Claims

  • Pinball FX will launch on Nintendo Switch, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and Epic Games Store (not Steam initially)

    high confidence · Chris and Jared confirm official announcement from Zen Studios pinball show

  • All 100 pinball tables from FX3 library must be completely rewritten and remastered for Unreal Engine

    high confidence · Direct quote from Mel (Mel Kramer, Zen co-founder): 'We are totally rebuilding and remastering these tables, some of which date back to 2007, in a new engine, which is a massive undertaking.'

  • FX3 table purchases will not carry over to Pinball FX; players must repurchase

    high confidence · Explicitly stated in opening segment and attributed to official announcement

  • Only The Walking Dead and Portal tables will not be remastered for Pinball FX

    high confidence · Mel quote: 'The exceptions are those for The Walking Dead and Portal'; Walking Dead based on defunct Telltale Games, Portal by Valve/Steam owner Epic competitor

  • PX engine was introduced nearly 10 years ago and has become a maintenance burden

    high confidence · Chris and Jared discussion of Mel's quoted reasoning for engine switch

  • Tables will release in two phases: 50% at launch, 50% a few months later

    high confidence · Mel quote: 'Right now our plan is to release the entire library in two phases: half at launch and the other half roughly a few months later'

  • Licensed collections (Marvel, Star Wars) will launch simultaneously as bundles

    high confidence · Mel quote: 'All tables in a certain collection could launch at once, so for example Marvel and Star Wars would all be the same time'

  • Unreal Engine will enable ray tracing, HDR, 120fps, and real-time dynamic lighting improvements over FX3

    high confidence · Mel quote: 'We get access to an awesome engine that can power next-gen graphics, exciting new tech like HDR and ray tracing and so much more'

Notable Quotes

  • “it's become harder and harder to keep a game engine up to date with the demand to support new platforms and devices”

    Mel Kramer (Zen Studios) @ early in announcement section — Core justification for engine migration; explains technical debt problem

  • “Sometimes you have to look at things and ask, at what point is maintaining these older systems stopping us from making something really new?”

    Mel Kramer (Zen Studios) @ justification section — Philosophical shift toward clean break; analogy to FarSight/Pinball Arcade Android legacy support problem

  • “We are totally rebuilding and remastering these tables, some of which date back to 2007, in a new engine, which is a massive undertaking.”

    Mel Kramer (Zen Studios) @ repurchasing justification — Explains why FX3 purchases don't transfer; frames as HD remaster equivalent (Kingdom Hearts analogy)

  • “We're also looking at ways to bundle and price the older tables—which we can now refer to as legacy tables—with first parties, that would be your Sonys and Microsofts, to make the whole process as painless as possible.”

    Mel Kramer (Zen Studios) @ pricing/bundling section — Zen negotiating with platform holders and licensors to reduce consumer sticker shock through bundling

  • “All of our focus and energy will be on Pinball FX going forward. It's just not possible for us to build new tables in both Unreal Engine and the original PX Engine at the same time.”

    Mel Kramer (Zen Studios) @ final section — Confirms end of new FX3 content; resources fully committed to Pinball FX development

  • “This is a good clean break opportunity. And by doing this hard break, as much as it sucks to know that you can't carry over your things, but to make a hard break means boom—now you're starting at square one.”

    Jared Morgan (Blockade Pinball) @ mid-discussion — Host perspective justifying engine migration despite consumer pain; console lifecycle alignment

  • “It's like, they didn't... it wasn't a free patch for you to get the HD version, you know? Um, so yeah, apply the same logic.”

Entities

Pinball FXproductZen StudioscompanyMel KramerpersonChris FrebuspersonJared MorganpersonUnreal EngineproductPX EngineproductPinball FX3productThe Walking Dead (Pinball FX3)productPortal (Pinball FX3)product

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Platform holder fees (Sony, Microsoft) require repurchasing; Zen opted to absorb costs for FX2→FX3 migration but declining to do so for FX3→Pinball FX transition

    high · Chris/Jared discuss: 'Sony and Microsoft, they just want to be paid for hosting on their stores... Zen ate the cost. They paid a big fee and said, "We want our customers to be able to have all the tables." ... FarSight didn't choose to go that route.'

  • ?

    business_signal: Zen negotiating with Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, and IP licensors to provide legacy table bundling, discounts, and pricing reductions to mitigate repurchase friction

    high · Mel quote: 'We're also looking at ways to bundle and price the older tables...to make the whole process as painless as possible.' Chris/Jared discuss licensing fee structures and negotiations with Universal, etc.

  • ?

    community_signal: Zen committing to keep FX3 available indefinitely, avoiding FX2 mistake of complete platform delisting; Mel actively engaging Reddit community to address concerns and provide fluid updates

    high · Chris: 'They're not going to be repeating the mistake of the FX2 to FX3 transition, in that FX2 just went poof, gone... FX3 is still going to be downloadable.' Mel on Reddit: 'this is fluid. We still don't know exactly how all this can go.'

  • ?

    community_signal: Hosts proactively reacting to announcement to manage consumer expectations; acknowledging Reddit/Discord/YouTube community outrage while explaining technical justifications

    high · Chris notes: 'I've been on Reddit. I've been on Discord. I've been on Digital Pinball Fans—of which Digital Pinball Fans got a shout-out on the show, too—but seeing what people's reactions are'

  • $

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.227

0:00
blockade pinball podcast this is the blockade pinball podcast i'm your host chris rebus aka shut your trap joining me as always halfway across the world jared morgan g'day everyone how you going it is midweek for us jared we don't record It is. We don't typically, no, but today we are. Yeah, we kind of... Normally we figure with when one of these pinball shows comes out from Zen that, you know,
0:45
the news is going to be hot, but we can probably sit a couple of days. Not this one. Today needs commenting now.
0:54
Yes. So we're making... We obviously didn't record this past weekend. kind of tipped off that we're probably going to want to have a recording right after this. So that's why we delayed last weekend, so that we could come on this and then go forward here. So, yes, big news about the upcoming Pinball FX game. And if you've been an observer of our channel over the past couple of months, a lot of what we've been kind of hedging our bets on and priming everybody for you shouldn't be too terribly surprised about the information today however we're not going to fault you either for being disappointed in the information today yeah it's okay to not like the news that you're hearing um because you know it has an associated price tag with it which we don't know yet, but we can assume is not going to be cheap. Well, as one person said, today's pinball show was basically ripping off the band-aid. You're going to have to do it at some point, so you might as well just rip it off now. Rip it off, get it done. Yep, exactly. So what are we exactly talking about? You're like, well, what? Yeah, we're going to dispense with all the banter. We're going to go cut straight to the chase. Yeah, we're getting into this. Yeah. Here's the news that you need to basically no and then we'll dive into all sorts of everything but the big news is first off pinball effects is going to be on nintendo switch ps5 xbox series x and s i believe is what they're called and the epic game store not on steam that's a big one right there uh steam i should say it'll eventually be on Steam, but not right away. We'll get to that. And the other thing is that, no, your table purchases from FX3 are not going to be transferring over to Pinball FX. You will, in fact, have to be doing new purchases. That's right. So, new platform, new purchases.

  • Zen will maintain its own custom physics engine separate from Unreal's graphics engine

    high confidence · Chris and Jared confirm: 'We are bringing our own physics with us into Unreal Engine'

  • FX3 will remain available and purchasable indefinitely, not deleted like FX2 was

    high confidence · Chris and Jared quote Zen's commitment to avoid repeating FX2 mistake; FX3 will not receive new content updates

    • Chris Frebus (Blockade Pinball) @ HD remaster section — Frames repurchase as inevitable licensing/platform economics problem, not Zen greed

  • “Guys, this is fluid. We still don't know exactly how all this can go. But we're going to try and do what we can to at least ease it a little, reduce the shock, however we can.”

    Mel Kramer (Zen Studios, via Reddit) @ consumer outreach — Zen acknowledging uncertainty and consumer pain; signaling willingness to negotiate terms

  • “Can either suck now or it can suck later. Suck later. It's still going to suck.”

    Chris Frebus (Blockade Pinball, paraphrasing prior show) @ philosophy section — Core philosophical acceptance of inevitable consumer friction in platform transitions

  • “If you're going to have to repurchase again, I'm going to do it on the PC and call it a day. Not have to do it anymore. Obviously, now I'm going to have to do it.”

    Chris Frebus (Blockade Pinball, personal anecdote) @ FX2 to FX3 precedent discussion — Hosts personally experience same consumer pain they're discussing; empathy marker

    • Blockade Pinball Podcast
    organization
    FarSight Studioscompany
    Epic Games Storeproduct
    Steamproduct
    Digital Pinball Fansorganization
    Marvel (Pinball FX license)product
    Star Wars (Pinball FX license)product
    Williams Pinball (mobile)product
    Nintendo Switchproduct
    PlayStation 5product
    Xbox Series X/Sproduct
    Sonycompany
    Microsoftcompany
    Telltale Gamescompany
    Valvecompany

    market_signal: Zen Studios framing Pinball FX as 'HD remaster' rather than sequel to manage consumer expectations about repurchasing; drawing explicit parallels to Kingdom Hearts, Pinball Arcade, and previous platform transitions

    high · Chris: 'I think a good way of thinking of it is calling this an HD remaster... Kingdom Hearts back on the PS2, and remember when you just bought it now because it was, you know, the Kingdom Hearts 2.8 or whatever remaster?'

  • ?

    licensing_signal: The Walking Dead table (Telltale Games IP) and Portal table (Valve/Steam) will NOT be remastered for Pinball FX due to licensing constraints

    high · Mel quote: 'The exceptions are those for The Walking Dead and Portal' with hosts identifying Telltale defunct status and Valve/Steam vs Epic conflict as reasons

  • $

    market_signal: Zen confirming Marvel tables coming to Nintendo Switch for first time; community highly anticipatory for this platform expansion

    high · Chris/Jared note: 'Mel said they are very much working to get Marvel onto the Switch, which is awesome news for that platform, I think. That's the first time he's actually said that out loud, I think.'

  • $

    market_signal: FX3 table purchases will NOT transfer to Pinball FX; players must repurchase entire library; Zen acknowledges consumer pain and attempting mitigation through bundling and negotiated legacy pricing

    high · Mel quote on licensing negotiations and legacy bundling; hosts discuss sticker shock; comparison to Kingdom Hearts remaster and Pinball Arcade/FX2 precedents

  • ?

    product_concern: Hosts identify tables like Tesla and V12 as candidates for code updates or possible scrapping during Pinball FX remaster; suggests quality/playability concerns with legacy titles

    medium · Chris: 'I want a code update on Tesla... Mars and Epic Quest got code updates when they went from FX2 to FX3. I want a code update on Tesla.' Jared: 'Maybe it's just a retheme. Just scrap it.'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Pinball FX launches with 50% of library (phase 1), remaining 50% launches ~few months later (phase 2); licensed collections (Marvel, Star Wars) launch simultaneously

    high · Mel quote: 'Right now our plan is to release the entire library in two phases: half at launch and the other half roughly a few months later' with collection bundling

  • ?

    technology_signal: Hosts speculate Williams Pinball mobile game already uses Unreal Engine based on lighting characteristics; possible experimental implementation testing engine migration

    medium · Jared: 'I have a feeling that's already using Unreal... I reckon that's probably using Unreal already. I have a feeling that that was a bit of an experiment in the wild, that platform'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Zen Studios migrating entire Pinball FX library from proprietary PX engine to Unreal Engine; enables real-time ray tracing, HDR, dynamic lighting, 120fps potential

    high · Mel quote: 'We get access to an awesome engine that can power next-gen graphics, exciting new tech like HDR and ray tracing and so much more.' Direct confirmation of engine change and graphics pipeline modernization.

    • 3:11
    We'll get into all sorts of justifications and reasons. I mean, I've been, after the show, I've been on Reddit I've been on Discord I've been on Digital Pinball Fans of which Digital Pinball Fans got a shout out on the show too but seeing what people's reactions I was looking at all the live chat reactions for the YouTube video so I've got a there's a good sense of many of the aspects that people are interested in and complaining about or going I understand so we're going to try and walk through all of this in whatever manner we can. Right, Jared? We're going to work our way through it. It's lots of information to cover, but you know us. We'll get through it. All right. So I guess we should start right here at the beginning. Right here at the beginning, it's basically on why pinball effects,
    4:05
    why the new technology. That is, it's become, this is all Mel Kirk quotes. It's become harder and harder to keep a game engine up to date with the demand to support new platforms and devices.
    4:22
    Fair call. So essentially, you've reached that point where you're spending so much time supporting the backlog of stuff that going forward becomes a monumental task in and of itself.
    4:37
    Yeah. Essentially, when you support and make your own game engine, you're actually a game engine company more than you are a development studio. So, like, you know, it's diminishing returns if you have to use an engine. I mean, when the PX engine was introduced nearly 10 years ago now, it was the only way they could do what they had to do in the FX platform.
    5:07
    But now there's just better options out there. Like, there's a huge developer support network with the Epic and Unreal. And, you know, why wouldn't you plug into that ecosystem when literally everyone else is? Yeah. Right? Yeah, and in case you're wondering what we're doing here, folks, because if you're anything like me, the first time you watched the video, it just kind of was like a wash of information. so we're going to kind of focus in on some of the things you might have missed some of the the more salient quotes um it's it was essentially the that's because fire hose when you get like bomb when it's like here is the information that you need so related to what jared was just saying here's our next quote sometimes you have to look at things and ask at what point is maintaining these older systems stopping us from making something really new if you've again watched the show with any frequency back in the day when we were all about farsight and the pimble arcade my god jared how many times did we say can you stop supporting the five-year-old android platform and start being concerned about what the current best generation platforms are yeah like stop supporting devices that are literally so underpowered that they couldn't even probably run flappy bird like just stop doing that stop hamstringing yourself with platforms and hardware that just don't make sense today like there's going to be a point where you have to disappoint customers and say hey look sorry your five-year-old android device running custom firmware because you can't get any more security updates isn't going to be supported anymore you have to rip the band-aid off chris right so again it just kind of makes sense with this uh you know at some point you may stop maintaining these older systems and we kind of called it that it was this is a good clean break opportunity and by doing this hard break as much as it sucks to know that you can't carry over your things but to make a hard break means boom now you're starting at square one you're starting right at the start of a console life cycle which means you're in a good place for that console to go on at least for a long time so it does make a fair amount of sense there it certainly does like you know you it's there's always going to be you know no one wants to have to spend money on stuff they kind of already have entitlements to. I noticed I didn't say own because you never own it. You only have entitlements to it.
    7:51
    But, you know, it sounds like the reason why they're doing it is, and we'll get into this probably later, but there are good reasons for doing it. And if I can see as far as the proposition that someone tells me, it's like, well, here's some bad news, but this is why it's bad news. and these are the good reasons why we have to do it, then I go, yeah, okay. Unfortunately, I think people hear the bad news, and they just stop listening. Yeah, they go, oh, bad news shock. And that's what I think. I mean, it happened to me while watching, right? Where I just like, I heard what I heard. I went to the, looking at the comments. Meanwhile, I'm missing all the reasoning that's going on. Yeah, all the actual reasons why it's a good idea, or why it's justified. yeah so just in terms of more of the reasoning about uh why they felt the need to shift uh platform um basically to you know go from pinball fx3 which was working you know by all accounts fairly fine it wasn't as feature riches uh or its age was showing in terms of feature rich aspects but nobody was going oh my god this game needs an overhaul like again like we were saying with Pinball Arcade, we're at a certain point where this game needs an overhaul. Nobody's really calling for FX3 to have an overhaul, so it does become why in the hell are we getting one now? So, we're going to look at just the idea of using the Unreal Engine. We can focus engineering bandwidth, when they say bandwidth it's personnel.
    9:36
    We can focus engineering bandwidth on Pinball FX platform development instead of working to keep the engine up to date let's just focus on that for a second there yeah if you can instead of pooling some of your resources to have to make the game constantly function to be able to use a game engine that you're not responsible for it's now that maker's responsibility to make it function so yes that's right yeah you know if if Sony decides to do some kind of an update to their system that causes your engine to not work as well with whatever they're now doing. Or maybe it's a case of... I mean, think about your first generation platform... or platform... games that come out when the console cycle first starts versus, from the same studio, a game that comes at the end of the console cycle. obviously they've figured out how to milk and work the platform, right? Yeah, absolutely. So rather than Zen now having to be the ones to figure that out, they're going to hand this over to Epic and the Unreal Engine 4 to figure it out.
    10:54
    The neat thing about that too, sorry for interjecting, is that the fact is everyone is on a level playing field as well. So all the technical advances that other studios do with the engine,
    11:10
    that information is going to be out there, and potentially some of that information can be used by other studios, potentially Zen included, to optimize the way their graphic pipelines work, to maybe squeeze a few more frames per second out of things. you know particularly on consoles which have constrained hardware and that sort of thing like being able to milk as much performance out of an engine as possible can only be good for the platform that you're developing and for the game that you're developing so this is a good thing right yes which we've been again we've been commenting about how if they switch to a new engine that would be a good thing so this is kind of just like you know confirming everything that we were speculating on um so second we no longer need to chase first party support by first party support again they're talking about sony xbox nintendo um we can let epic worry about and focus on more important tasks and finally we get access to an awesome engine that can power next-gen graphics exciting new tech like hdr and ray tracing and so much more yeah i've seen so many comments from like real massive pinheads that you know we want ray tracing and we want we'll definitely want hdr and we want 120 frames a second you know this could be a possibility now like maybe not on release but well there's a possibility and it's not going to be up to zen to figure it out about they can worry about the game rather than worrying about the the little graphical bells and whistles that you're you're interested in just tuning because that all comes down to game game engine tuning and that's the most expensive part like doing that get like getting the 80 or the 90 that's not the hard bit it's that last 10 of tuning yeah that's really time consuming and really costly yeah so yeah not not having to worry about that will save them literally weeks of development time a year yeah uh going on to obviously people immediately thought, oh, well, if they're using Unreal Engine, what's that mean for their physics?
    13:24
    We are bringing our own physics with us into Unreal Engine. That's what that means. Yeah. So, the physics engine is different from the graphics engine. They just need to integrate the two and then they're good to go on that.
    13:39
    Again, the graphics engine is going to be a performance. hopefully will make the game run even more efficiently on performance yeah which will allow better graphics on things like the switch which are going to be graphical power horses but on the other hand turn it the complete other direction and now maybe yeah like you said we'll get 120 frames per second gameplay ability you got your ray tracing you got hdr you've got uh more dynamic lighting which they showed off they showed off a comparison between the fx3 version of Wild West Showdown and having it run in Unreal 4.
    14:20
    And it's subtle, but it's also subtle because you're watching a YouTube video. That's right. When you're in-game with a big old screen in front of you, it's going to look massively better.
    14:32
    So more dynamic lighting is definitely going to be a thing. But it's also... Think about all the chrome that is on a pinball machine and how the light bounces and reflects on that and the shadows, that's where you're really going to start noticing a difference and that's going to bring you more into that realistic feeling of playing actual pinball. That's right. I mean, you've already noticed on the FX3 platform, they've already got things like shadows to an extent. Like when you, for example, the light casting out underneath slingshots and stuff like that, there's definite light casting happening in there. And so taking that one step further and applying the Unreal's lighting engine to it, it will just, number one, it's going to be real time. Sometimes I wonder if some of that lighting is baked in. I'm not sure if it is or not. Yeah, I don't know either. But, you know, if it is actually being rendered at the moment, great. But if it's currently sort of baked in to an extent, perhaps on the lesser platforms as well, like mobile, it may have to be baked in, which I'm thinking, like mobile, for example. Although, you know, as a shorter side, I actually did fire up Williams Pinball on mobile the other day, and I was reminded at how good the actual overall package is from a graphics perspective on that. And it makes me wonder, I have a feeling that's already using Unreal.
    15:57
    Oh, do you? Yeah, I reckon that's probably using Unreal already. I have a feeling that that was a bit of an experiment in the wild, that platform.
    16:08
    because have a look at the way the tables render. They've got definite lighting characteristics to them, and the way that the lighting works on mobile in that particular version is very different to the other platforms that are out there on mobile. Okay. So if you can get Williams Pinball to say something like the Doom Pack, for example, the lighting is different, and it's got definite shadows and it's got definite, like real natural looking bloom on things like, um, flashes and stuff. I've got to think it's an unreal, an unreal experiment in the wild. Hmm. We'll have to inquire. We will. We'll have to go. That's an interesting theory there. so what is this hiding in plain sight? Right. Um, right. But what I was going to say though, is just for those of you that have it, boot up FX2 and pick a Xen original from there.
    17:11
    You know, if you want to boot up Mars, if you want to boot up Epic Quest, I don't care. Mars is a good one to boot up, actually. Yeah, boot that up and then, or shoot, even go with the free table. Go ahead, boot up Sorcerer's Lair and then open it up in FX3. You're going to see a difference in the lighting and in the graphics, because that was the last overhaul to the PX engine that happened. So you're going to have that same kind of overhaul happen going into Unreal. And when you look at FX2 and then look at Pinball FX, it's going to be night and day, just like, holy crap. So I did have to laugh at some commenter. They're like, I don't ever want to play in dark mode anyway. I'm like, well, congratulations, but you're still going to appreciate shadows and glimmers and bright flasher lights.
    18:02
    So basically all the stuff that Pro Pinball did by pre-rendering everything, that is going to be that but more because it's going to be real-time and your ball is going to interact with things real-time. It's going to be quite an impressive look, I think. so then we get into basically what this means switching engines and that is every table in our library has to be reworked updated and optimized for unreal engine so we're talking about basically a complete rewrite of 100 tables so i think a good way of thinking of it is calling this an HD remaster you know Like Mm Yeah And I just Unless you blew right remaster I think probably Remember when you bought kingdom hearts back on the ps2 and remember when you just bought it now because it was you know the kingdom hearts 2.3 or whatever remaster that's what you're gonna have to be kind of getting in your noggin as to what is going on here you know they didn't it wasn't a free patch for you to get the hd version you know um so yeah apply the same logic and i think your analogy about like hd remaster or even blu-ray remaster because this is sort of like the level it's at like really this is what we're talking about here and that's that's quite a good thing to say and you know you've got the opportunity um to decide to pay for that remaster or not so yeah yeah your choice as a consumer your choice and then of course because of I mean again here's where we get into the suck part which is you're going to have to repurchase or you know rebuy these things so let's see what they say what Mel says about his on why past purchases won't carry over into pinball effects we are totally rebuilding and remastering these tables some of which date back to 2007 in a new engine which is a massive undertaking 2007 eh? wow Those tables, I'm going to be looking forward to seeing what they look like remastered, because there is some atrocious, muddy messes back there in 2007. So let's go a little bit of inside baseball here.
    20:27
    I'm sure we've talked about it at some point, but at the time when we were going from the PlayStation 3 cycle and the Xbox 360 cycle into the next gen, So X-Bone and PS4.
    20:42
    Zen made the decision that all of your table purchases will flip over into FX3. Because they put out FX3, I think, almost at the same time.
    20:55
    Because I know Pinball Arcade, also, they were a launch title with Pinball Arcade on the PS4. Yes. with zen they let you port over everything done everybody's like yay with pimble arcade didn't happen you had and basically fireside gave us like a i want to say it was like a one month window to be able to purchase all the tables at like half off and that was it so they only gave a discount well here's the thing that you may not know sony and microsoft they just want to be paid for hosting on their stores yeah they want the money they want the money and they're saying hey we're a new console pay up. We would like more money, please.
    21:58
    So Zen ate the cost. They paid a big fee and said, we want our customers to be able to have all the tables.
    22:09
    And so long as Sony and Microsoft are being paid, they said, sure. Farsight didn't choose to go that route. Farsight made the whole argument of, hey, we're redoing things we're putting it it's a new platform new graphics uh because basically they were doing the dx11 version on ps4 yeah and so therefore that's why you're having to to pay again i mean it's a massive cost it's a massive cost they were pretty much using exactly the same argument as as zen is now yes they they felt that the work they were putting into uh dx11 was enough that it warranted I'd repurchase. And back then, my choice of why I had abandoned the PlayStation arcade, Pinball arcade, on the PS3 and had switched over to PC was because I suspected that exact thing was going to happen. I didn't want to have to repurchase again. So I was like, if I'm going to have to repurchase again, I'm going to do it on the PC and call it a day. Not have to do it anymore. Obviously, now I'm going to have to do it, well,
    23:20
    look we get codes for beta testing so am i going to have to purchase one more no but i feel the pain believe me um yeah i i it doesn't mean i'm not consumer friendly um well that's right i mean you know we know the harsh reality of it is that you know if we do get keys whatever that still doesn't like we we know what repurchasing and things like is like and it sucks and it's expensive So don't think for a second that we don't empathize with people who are in that position and who have to make a really tough decision about, is this something I can actually afford to do? And Zen is looking into it, as is with the next quote here. We're also looking at ways to bundle and price the older tables, which we can now refer to as legacy tables, with first parties, that would be your Sonys and Microsofts, to make the whole process as painless as possible. So that's them negotiating with the Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo to say, hey, look, what can you do by the way of discounts, promotions, things like that? It also might be because they're specifically saying this is our legacy tables, that it also might be in terms of the companies that they have licenses with for the license tables for them to also go, look, guys, these are old. You can't expect people to want to pay full price once again. So we're going to still sign a new agreement with you guys, but for these older tables, we're going to be allowed to sell them at a lesser price and not have to pay you the full price version of your cut, basically. Yeah, the license cut per table per se. Yeah, that's right. Exactly. so um i also there was a lot of comments on reddit uh mel had popped on there so to a coach um just like guys this is it's fluid we still don't know exactly how all this can can go um but we're going to try and do what we can to at least ease it a little reduce the shockers what however we can i mean they don't want to i mean i'd imagine the last thing they wanted to do is is upset consumers they know this is a big deal which is probably why they're telling us now yeah like they're really giving us a long runway to get our heads around this and trying to say look you know we know this is going to suck and we're going to try and do whatever we can to make it suck less but we understand it's still going to suck so i'm really sorry as i think you so so eloquently put it in uh i don't know if it's the last show or the show before it can either suck now or it can suck later. Suck later. It's still going to suck. That's right. Yeah.
    26:25
    Now, the good news is when it comes to what tables are going to be available, looks like we're only losing two. The vast majority of our tables from Pinball FX 3 are being remastered for Pinball FX. The exceptions are those for The Walking Dead and Portal, which is really, really not a surprise because The Walking Dead was based on the Telltale Games game and Telltale isn't around anymore.
    26:53
    Yeah, right. And Portal is, you know, Valve who runs Steam who probably went, what, you're going to Epic? Yeah, see you later. Bye-bye. Bye-bye, you know. But do you know what I find funny there? It's like the vast majority. that's not all games except that's the vast majority of so do we need to read into that further and say are there anything any other ones that maybe the studio is hedging their bets on at the moment because they're still trying to work out the the the t's and i's that need to be dot dotted and crossed i don't know um because otherwise you would say that will be worded as all tables are coming over except for these two but the vast majority means something very different well you're right i mean maybe they finally decided that nobody wants to play rome and yeah i don't know tesla um it's although you know i'd actually like to see tesla redone because i think if it was redone it might actually be more enjoyable to play it'll be done also maybe with a rule i was just saying i want a code update to tesla yeah it needs like because mars and epic quest got code updates when they went from fx2 to fx3 i want a code update on Tesla. And I would say, for God's sake, do a code update then on although you need to do even more on V12.
    28:14
    I don't know if that's... I don't know if that was salvageable. Maybe it's just a re-theme. Just scrap it.
    28:24
    So, yeah. You're right, though. That is interesting wording, but that might have just been the way it came out of Mel's mouth, too. It may have been.
    28:35
    But the other thing I was going to say... Those are the only two tables that have their own column and never had another table underneath. That's true. They're very brand-specific tables. They were one and done.
    28:47
    So getting rid of those is good because it essentially cleans up the menu. It's not that it's good, but it's understandable.
    28:57
    Portable is a fun table. The Walking Dead. I didn't really like it. Although it looks great in the yard. oh yeah it actually yes and it does actually look great in vr they also want to make a point that they're not going to be repeating the mistake of the fx2 to fx3 transition in that fx2 just went poof gone yeah fx3 is still going to be downloadable tables are still going to be purchasable they're not losing the license to sell them if they are at some point going to Lucid license, they're saying that they're going to give plenty of notice so that you can go ahead and purchase ahead of time. But for all intents and purposes, FX3 is going to be very much still available.
    29:44
    Just not updated with any new content. With any new content. Who knows if that means... It sounds like only that last massive bug fix quality of life update will be the last update it receives. Maybe. But, you know... Yeah, we'll touch upon that at the end of our slideshow here.
    30:03
    Let's move on to the next thing, because as Jared has said when we were talking about VR and tables coming,
    30:11
    that it would be more likely that we'd get released in small packs, small packages, because the sticker shock would be massive if it was just like, here's everything. So along those lines, right now our plan is to release the entire library in two phases, half at launch and the other half roughly a few months later but then mel goes on to say like they'll release all the star wars tables at the same time and all the marvel tables at the same time so it'll be kind of it'll be interesting to see how many packages there is yeah um of note and this was again on one of the other forums and wasn't in the pinball show Mel said they are very much working to get Marvel onto the Switch which is awesome news for that platform I think that's the first time he's utterly actually said that out loud I think you're right and so many people on that platform are just gagging for that license to be put onto Switch, it's such a logical fit yes yeah um so that's good to know that and then let's go ahead and move on to the next one oh yeah that's exactly what we were just saying here all tables in a certain collection could launch at once so for example marvel and star wars would all be the same time and grouping these collections together would allow us to offer lower pricing for these legacy tables yeah so again it might be that idea of hey we sold to Nintendo when we sold Star Wars it was what was it 20 bucks or 30 bucks for the whole thing but they could use that same kind of pricing idea rather than saying oh we're charging $3 per table yeah that's right I think bundling it in this case is an easier sell for them to negotiate a flat rate price reduction in the markets. Otherwise, it's like... And also, they're managing so many more SKUs as well. Like, if they're releasing the packs the way they are, like in FX3, they had to have a different SKU for a software... I forget what the K means. Unit. Software something.
    32:31
    Anyhow. Software something, yeah. So, because they're doing that, they'll only need to maintain only a few SKUs per platform well per console and all the other platforms so that's going to make their life a lot easier not to mention and here's the dirty secret that we all know there's plenty of tables that people would go I'm not buying that again no matter what I'm not going to buy that again but But if it's included in the bundle, you're buying it again. You're getting it with your legacy bundle. Yeah, and that is really appealing to, let's say, your Universal.
    33:21
    And then all of a sudden here comes Zen saying, hey, we're going to do this legacy bundle. And the universe goes, no, we don't necessarily want that. And then Zen comes back with, well, then you're probably not going to sell a whole lot of that ET table. Yeah, probably not. Probably not. You're not going to get the licensing fee from, or the, yeah, you're not going to get that from that. So if we put it in a bundle, though, then you will get the money for that. Yeah, in which case then the universe will be like, you're on to something. Yeah, so I think that's also the idea of doing these mass bundles so that people aren't cherry picking. It's you get it all or you don't. And that goes back to when Farsight was doing the seasons.
    34:12
    That's right. It made sense to just pre-purchase a season, not even knowing everything, because you knew you were going to get ten tables, and that four of them could be that you don't even like them, and you're still going to come out breaking even. Yeah, it doesn't even matter. It was more cost-effective to get four junk tables with the other ones you may or may not like. It was a good deal. Yeah. So bundle them up. Give me all the tables.
    34:39
    Also, too, you don't want to have any empty slots in your menu. Like, no one wants that. Even though you say, I don't want to play those games, as soon as a 50% or 75% sale comes around, you're going to be filling that slot because it's going to trigger you. You know what's funny? I own all the Marvel movies except for one. I don't own Incredible Hulk because, well, you've changed actors. It really has no bearing on any of the other movies.
    35:09
    It's disposable as far as I'm concerned. I don't need it in the collection. But it does bug me now and then, knowing that it's not there. And if I came across it for five bucks, I would probably be like, all right, fine. Yes, I'll throw that in there. I may never watch it, but at least it's there.
    35:28
    The slot is filled. Yes. All right. Let's move on to our next pulled quote here. all of our focus energy will be on pinball effects going forward. It's just not possible for us to build new tables in both Unreal Engine and the original PX Engine at the same time. This was something that Farsight never learned. No. This was something that pretty much most of their consumers who were fans were telling them, just stop doing this. You're spreading yourself too thinly. On PC, they were doing two builds. they were doing a dx9 build they were doing a dx11 build it was two different codes they could literally two different code bases they couldn't just do the dx11 and then port it over to dx9 it didn't work and the problem was is it was introducing bugs to both of them then they would have to chase down and spending just a lot of time trying to oh it was it was a hot mess oh my god so yeah yeah it was just like why are you still catering to who on pc is playing dx9 get rid of it you know yeah what what do you have stats on who is using dx9 probably not but you know there's somebody there's one person very very vocal going i have an 18 year old computer that will only run this i'm exaggerating with the 18 years obviously but you know it may as well be 18 years old and i don't want to upgrade because i can't so therefore don't make me rage on the internet and call you many different names under the sun because I just can't play this game because my computer is under spec. That would be the reason. Because, you know, Farsight, you know, for all the foibles they had, they did at least try and keep the customers on side with purchases. And that's why they were, to their detriment, keeping these older platforms around because they didn't want to have that difficult conversation with their consumers about, hey, sorry, we're cutting this release. Now I also read in some of the threads that Mel basically said and this goes in line with all this they also increasing their employee count Yes So not only are you pulling people off of having to deal with the PX engine team, so now you're gaining those employees. They're also hiring more.
    37:59
    So, there's a massive influx. Thank you, Embracer Group, and your... And your money guns. Yes. That's right. So, yeah, again, it makes perfect sense that they're just, again, they're making a clean break of things. They're doing a complete, like, I was going to say they're doing an organizational shift, but it's probably not really even that. Because organizational shifts can be scary. This is not one of those. This is just, hey, we can actually, like, sunset this platform team that we no longer need. And they can just go straight on into any other number of projects. and I'm not just talking about pinball. There could be holes for them in all the other new things that they're able to do with the Embracer Group money. It may not just be FX, although it would make sense to put them on FX given their experience with the platform. We don't really pay much attention to the other games Zen makes.
    39:00
    I don't even have any insight into what they've got in the works, but I guarantee that they've got stuff in the works. It's not just pinball. They won't just be working on pinball. But again, there is a pinball division, and then there's the Zen Games division. They're not pulling one off the other for anything. It's literally this influx of people is going to the pinball side of things. That's right. There's the Zen Indies division, which is like Operencia and all those ones. Yeah, Dread Daunticle. Dread Daunticle, yep. And then there's the FX. so there is a clear delineation between the teams alright, next piece of bad news it's releasing on the PS5, Xbox X, Nintendo Switch and the Epic Game Store it's a one year timed exclusive on the Epic Game Store for PC so it's launching on all those other systems and then one year exclusive on Epic before it would come to Steam which is kind of the standard thing there. What do you notice that's missing there, Jared?
    40:09
    A little company called Valve and their platform called Steam, I think. No, we already said that. That's why the whole one-year time exclusive.
    40:20
    No, what else is missing on what it's launching on? I don't know. I can't see it. Not PS4. Not Xbox One. the previous generation of consoles are cut out. Yeah. So that is, that's kind of massive because there's a lot of people that have not been able to get a new console or can't afford to get a new console and are perfectly fine with what their current gen is with PS4. They're not going to be able to upgrade on that. Switch seems to be the only ones that are skating it right at the moment and who knows if that's indeed for the current gen switch or if it winds up being the switch pro that's been rumored to be coming out the the almost guaranteed but not yet released switch pro uh it's got to make sense right and that's certainly the sentiment in the forums at the moment where people going well this would line up with a switch pro release yeah um in that case so maybe this is uh for foreshadowing that but again you don't know But yeah, that would have been, I'd imagine, a pretty hard decision for the studio to have to call.
    41:35
    Because they would know the numbers. They would know how many people are on those platforms. And they would have been going, ooh, this is going to be painful. Now, that being said, since we know that Pinball FX is not releasing until later, again, we've speculated probably not until the end of third quarter. so yeah august september there's not going to be any new games being released on fx3 no so it's not like you're gonna have that fear of missing out yet well no unless you see you know um potentially dlc packs being released through vr and you know vr is going to be the only one is getting anything new anytime soon. Well, and that's only rumored potentially if they're for some reason... No, they're getting Mandalorian in April.
    42:30
    Oh, yes. Sorry, yes. But all the other tables coming over to it. Right, right. You know what I'm saying? Sure, they aren't new, but they'll be new to VR. So, you know. And again, brand new remasters of those tables for that platform. So, yeah. Going down the remaster path. But that's what I'm saying. At least there's... You're not going to be like, ah damn it new tables are coming out next week and i'm not going to be buying a ps5 anytime soon yeah well now you know if it isn't releasing until that third quarter you're probably going to be you know sony and and microsoft are going to have been mass producing by that point you probably catch one before you might even be able to get one in a christmas bundle because that's sort of like getting towards the christmas there end of the scale so it would make sense for them to align with those bundle deals that always come out over in the holidays. So you might be able to snag yourself a console at far less than what they're going for on eBay at the moment.
    43:32
    Just save your pennies. This gives you a runway. You can actually plan out. You can set aside a little bit of money and budget. Or even look at what upgrades you're going to need to make to your PC and get ready for it.
    43:46
    I do have A question at the end that is related to the Epic one-year exclusivity. We'll touch on that also in a little bit.
    44:02
    All right, moving on to what our next batch is here on cab mode on consoles. So there was a question about not just cabs, which Mel was like, hey, we really like the DIY community, absolutely, they'll be cab support. But what about consoles that people want to run as cabs? So we're trying to avoid feature creep at this point, you know, adding extra bells and whistles, which then end up making game development way longer.
    44:34
    So yes, they would like to do it. Will it be a launch feature? Probably not, because if they keep on putting in everything that they want, then the launch date just gets pushed back farther and farther. this is interesting because you know this is essentially like tate mode on um on the switch yeah so if they can do something similar tate mode on these ps5 and these current gym consoles that's like if that's a possibility with this engine then think of all the other games using unreal that could also benefit from that orientation as well like not just not just pinball but like shoot-ups vertical shoot-em-ups um all sorts of games like puzzle games that require a long like tetris for example would require that sort of orientation for for a better experience so all these different games that could use that orientation that could be more than just pinball here um it could be wider reaching so that would be pretty cool yeah we'll see if it uh We'll see if it gets put in or not. I mean, I have a feeling that they're going to try.
    45:40
    Yeah. Especially with how robust both the PS5 and the Series X are, it would make sense to do that. They've got good graphics pipelines in them, and they've got the chops to be able to output different resolution types.
    45:59
    It would just be an option in a menu to flip the screen, basically, and it would just do it. like you wouldn't even need to worry about oh you know like in windows or i've got to scale the screen rotate it it's a pain but if it's just like a button boom you're done i think you've seen that in um uh the uh oh the name escapes me now the um demon silt they've actually got a tape mode built into that where you can just click a button and it just flips the screen for you yeah and then it's up to you to actually rotate your monitor to support it but it's all there in the code so i can imagine it's going to be like that if they do release it on console eventually what i the one thing that i know a lot of people are asking this and i hope they address this with their cab mode um they need to provide the backlash art and they need to make it really and they need to make it animated and i hope that they do that um because it's i don't think it's fair to make the community come up with their own backlash no especially now that you can do the thumb up on the Williams tables and see the back glass, that should be a given. That should be included in CAD mode with everybody having multiple screens.
    47:13
    I want to see how they will do multiple screens on console. Are you saying that these next-gen consoles have two HDMI outs? I don't know. I don't have one, so I can't say that for sure, but I'm saying at least for the PC with the new CAD mode and pinball effects, please, for God's sakes, put in your own Zen Zone back glass and make them animated with Light Show. Yep. You know.
    47:44
    It would just make the cabin experience look so much better. And consistent. For sure. Consistent across everything. I'm sure your licensors would be happier, rather than seeing people with different artwork of their own choosing up there.
    47:58
    Yeah, all ripped off from the internet, essentially, on license. Exactly. They'd be a lot more comfortable with an agreed package, I would think. And another aspect that goes into that is what we're going to go into this next quote with, but just when they go with the VR route, hey, it's usually VR. All you have to do is tilt your head and you're going to be seeing these things. So you're going to have to program it. They're going to need to do it. Yeah. They are absolutely going to need to think about it. But bad news for VR. Any new VR development will happen in Unreal Engine. We kind of suspected that. We said that in our VR show, that your choices are Unity, Unreal, or build your own engine. We knew that they weren't going to build their own engine, so it was down to those two, at least in terms of what Oculus can natively support. Correct. But because they're switching to Unreal, so we cannot take previous VR releases and push them into pinball effects. So that pinball effects to VR, you're going to be under the same situation where if any of those tables wind up getting a VR release, you're going to have to repurchase them. There's not going to be the carryover nature. The thing is that they're not. Like the FX2 VR package is, for all intents and purposes, a very nice piece of no longer developed software. It's not going to be getting any more updates. Like there's been a longstanding issue in that with the menu. Like all the menu words sort of overwrite themselves and they bunch up into one spot. And it hasn't been patched for months. and there's been reports in it in there so like they're but like it doesn't affect your ability to use a menu it just looks a bit weird so and if they were going to do any work on fx2 like they would have done that by now it's not a hard fix so the other thing and this was again a statement from mel in one of the forums uh probably the discord forum because the discord forum really asked a lot of vr questions so or not the discord uh the reddit forum so if you're all interested in the future of VR with pinball effects, I really recommend seeking out the Reddit forum that was related to episode three of the pinball show. A lot of stuff VR related. A lot of complaints just in terms of people saying, this kind of goes into the number one complaint I was seeing was, I don't want to have to rebuy my tables. And I don't think that the reasons that you're giving us, that there's nothing you're going to show us that's going to make me go yes i need to rebuy the tables but if you included vr then i would because that's where i'm only playing anymore um but the comment was basically we can't do that due to licensing yeah which is interesting isn't it you think that it wouldn't be a problem with that if you get the license you should be doing in vr as well it's just a different format but but it's a different platform yeah because your headset oculus is obviously a completely different store and it's going to require completely different licensing agreements so i have a feeling that it relates to that but that's why you're not going to have again zacharia pinball is there's no license tables no so them being able to do just the switch the button and you're in vr switch the button back and you're out of vr they can do that but once you introduce licenses apparently that's going to be where the issue is that's a problem and yeah we keep on saying that licensing ain't no joke yeah licensing is hard let's go to the mall yeah so yeah all right let's move on to then what questions we still have not had answered basically or what new questions we have number one are the new tables also going to have a one-year exclusivity on epic before going to steam or is it just the Pinball FX platform? So what I mean by that is, let's say the platform comes out in September and comes with a launch title. Great. And then two months later, you have a new title that gets released. Well, is that going to then start 12 months exclusivity starting in November? Or is it when that exclusivity comes around to Steam that any table that has already been released will now also be available?
    52:11
    That's a good question. You can make an assumption about it, but it would be better to actually... No, that's right. You don't want it because it's actually a really valid question. Like, is the exclusivity period timed per table pack release? Yeah, because I think that's going to play a part in people's decisions of... Right now, there's a lot of people that are going, screw you, I'm never joining Epic. I want no part of Epic. I don't like them as a business. I'll wait for Steam. but if all of a sudden it's, I'm going to wait for Steam oh, and by the way, you're also going to be waiting an additional year for that title that just released a month prior to the Steam release of Pinball FX coming out that's going to affect people's buying decisions. That is going to do it, yeah. So that is question number one that we have. Question number two actually got answered in the show and I didn't catch it the first time, but are updated physics only for pinball effects or excuse me i'm talking a number uh that's number three number two excuse me all right our updated physics only available for pinball effects has fx3 seen its last update and new table it sounds like they've seen their last new table that seems like one got thrown in the sand with no we're not developing we're developing for unreal not px engine so therefore that's right no new tables but with the physics what about those williams volumes one through three are they gonna get an update and is there going to be a there's quite a few bugs that have been out there for some time with fx3 yes that people have listed and posted and have been going what have you been doing this entire time zen not only are you not giving us tables you're not giving us bug fixes, Mel did post that there's going to be a large patch to FX3. So they're not officially done with FX3 on that front. So that's good that there's going to be a patch, but no mention about whether the physics would be updated on those Williams Volumes 3. I don't expect them to be implemented on all the tables. That was kind of like... Williams. But Williams I do. But not for all the other... So what do we got in Williams? We got 20, 19 tables? I don't know how many. But, no, for the other 80 tables, I never expected those two to get it. But the fact that they did it for the arcade 1-up cab to me means it should be a rather simple drop-in.
    54:48
    Yeah, if it's on the arcade 1-up cab, then I think you can put money down, it's going to be in the patch. So, we'll see. I would think. We'll see.
    54:58
    number three what unreal engine is being used okay so it's unreal 4 not unreal 5 unreal 5 is the brand new spanking one that we all had our jaws drop over the demo reel that got shown um that was incredible yeah so it's unreal 4 again i saw that with the when they showed the wild west showdown uh table um it was clearly labeled fx3 version unreal 4 so that's what we're going um but are we going to get adjustable lighting or are we still only going to have whatever zen wants us to have in terms of lighting and yeah so here's where you can look at pinball wicked because pinball wicked is made using the unreal engine and you do have uh the ability to change your ambient lighting in that and so i'm hoping that it's just a function of unreal that is rather easy to apply um hopefully it's just like an extra framework that they would need to wire in because again by and large i've been quite happy with zen's choice of lighting yeah look it's it's nowhere near as terrible as farsighted no no but it's really it's it's balance and it works. But there are those tables I always go back to attack from Mars. Damn, I want that in night mode. It needs strobe multi-ball. I want that in night mode so I can have strobe multi-ball. Yep, absolutely. It's such a cool feature and it needs, it really does need dark room for it to like go nuts with Yeah So I hope that it there as an option and i don need you know the absolute slider where i can pick the percentage or everything just give me dark or light basically yeah dark yeah the room at night the room as we've determined it you know and if you want the bright daylight version fine throw a bright daylight version I will never touch it, but throw it in there. I will say this, though. Zachariah does this quite well. They actually have three presets, I think. Three or four presets. Yeah. And adopt that approach. Use that blueprint because it actually works quite well. Can you imagine? I will say this, though. Would you like winter sun or summer sun? Yeah, that's right. Would you like a dappled life? A chilly fall day or... Yeah, that's right. Exactly. Just give me like, you know... I think their options in Zachariah are like stormy. Yeah. So stormy environment. there's daylight, there's night. But that's for looking out the window, because you have that window that you can look out. But it also affects the ambient light inside as well. Sure. But, yeah.
    57:40
    So give us a few pre-baked options, and that will probably make it easier for them to implement as well, because it's preset. All right. Let's see. Number four. So what about South Park Super League, Ninja Gaiden, Street Fighter, or any of those early Zen tables, like way back in 2007, that were only on Xbox and never came to PlayStation. Is there any chance of those getting remastered?
    58:04
    Now, regardless of licensing, is Zen even interested in bringing those back? That's my question. Well, that's a good question. I'm not sure. Yeah. Because they might just be like, really, we didn't, I mean,
    58:20
    it's not like the Ninja Gaiden table was amazing gameplay. Well, see, I can't comment because I've never played those games. They were before my time, before I jumped over to Steam. I have no experience. Right. I would still have liked to play Plants vs. Zombies, but, I mean, PopCap is no more. Right. So, yeah, good luck trying to negotiate that one with EA. Yeah. Far out. So that's what I'm curious to know is, is there even an interest from Zen in bringing any of those back? I personally would say bring them back, but remaster the crap out of them. Redesign them. you know, just do that. Think of it as the difference between Black Knight and Black Knight 2000. Essentially the same, but better. But better. Oh, yeah, exactly. Or High Speed and The Getaway. That's right. A perfect example of not changing much, but changing enough. Even the Vault editions of all the Stern games, like, think of Iron Man Original versus Iron Man Vault. Yeah. Like, there's some notable improvements there to reliability and everything so put those in yeah and new rules so yeah put those in too like uh give them a bit of a spit and polish yep number five are the williams tables still going to be censored for the consoles and if not what's the new esrb rating that they're shooting for that is going to be a really important question for console owners because they hate the fact that they're censored. They hate it. And if now you're making them rebuy, you better get that cleared up before you watch. They rebuy. Because that's going to tick a lot of people off if they rebuy and go, oh, wait, we're still going to deal with the censorship? Because now there's no sense in... I mean, obviously, there's no intention. If you don't get this solved now, you're not solving it. Period. The end. Yeah, it's basically no longer an argument. It's going to be like this for the entire time. Yeah. So I want that out there. You hear me?
    60:28
    Zen? Anybody? Hello? Just hang on. Not that it actually affects us in any way because we're PC users. But I feel the pain. But we know. But it's no good. I mean, the thing that I just don't quite understand sometimes is that I don't even know if I would actually miss the adult themes that are being cut out of the games. Maybe on something like Scared Stiff, if it was in the platform, yes, absolutely. But on the tables that are there at the moment, it doesn't make a lot of difference to me. The only one that bugs is what they did with Medieval Madness. They used the family mode, and so the DMD also is altered. Or it just throws a censure over it.
    61:19
    That's obvious enough. Yeah, okay. That's probably jarring enough that you'd be annoyed with it, and that's very cool. But you're right, a lot of the table art, I don't even notice until I'm looking for it. I couldn't tell you what the censored things are on the table I could not tell you I'm sure there are people out there that do know that answer that in one of your upcoming shows guys number six does supporting DIY cabs because Mel specifically said DIY cabs also mean supporting retail cabs such as VP cabs because again if you're dealing with that cabinet people and dealing with cabinet codes, if it turns out that you're only supporting those that people make themselves as opposed to what you're purchasing retail, because that's kind of an issue for the cab community that I'm sure they would like some sense of not having to wonder. Yeah, reassurance. There's a word for it. Thank you. Yeah.
    62:31
    Because I've been getting a lot of, I shouldn't say a lot, I've gotten three emails from This Week in Pinball audience asking for my recommendation on pinball cabs, full-size pinball cabs.
    62:46
    And, you know, one problem is I've not put hands on any of these that are out on the market right now. So I can't comment on that front. But my other thing is, before you make that giant purchase, you're going to want to know if Zen, who obviously is the leader, if you're planning on using Zen's product, is Zen going to be supportive of the product? That's right. Because you don't want to lay out $7,000 and find out, nope.
    63:14
    Yeah, you don't want a $7,000 brick on your hands. That's not good. So that was that one. The thing is, though, on the other side of things, though, like while we would never condone this at all, because piracy is definitely a bad thing, the only thing that that would do is force people to pirate the game and make it so that they could actually play it on their $7,000 cabinet. So I think going down that path and just blocking them from doing it, people don't stop at being blocked at software. They will just find a way to do it. so you know that would be a bad decision on zen's part to really restrict what cabinets that it actually is available on if it look if you've got competitive product that you're not happy with and that's fine but all of these generic four or five thousand dollar pinball cabinets like they're clearly a professionally made cabinet they look unique enough i think if you were to take a photo of that and say, this is my cabinet. It was produced by this company and send them like evidence of a receipt that you purchased it from there or something like that. That's probably going to be enough for them to go. That's a legit pinball cabinet. That's not a competing product that doesn't impinge on any of our copyright. So there you go. We'll have it. Maybe there's just a few extra steps you might need to jump through, but again, clarify it. That will be the easiest way to solve the problem.
    64:44
    And then final question that we have here, Will new tables come to the Williams app, so mobile, or is mobile going to need a whole new app for Unreal Engine also? Which Jared is theorizing that it might already be running Unreal. It may very well already be there. That's right. However, on the, I don't know which thread. Anyway, one of the threads. Mel said that they can't comment on mobile at the moment and won't be commenting probably until the second half of 2021.
    65:21
    So that's a question that's going to linger for quite some time. Sounds like they're working some things out still. Yeah.
    65:32
    So, that was the episode, for the most part. there was one other thing that I just had to laugh at. They hinted that they've got a Zen original in the works, beyond Mandalorian, an actual Zen original. And then they went, would you believe, we have three Zen originals, to which my response was, yeah, we knew that two years ago.
    66:01
    Yeah. If you go way back in our channel, you'll probably find an episode where we talk about, with Mel,
    66:12
    him specifically saying that, oh, instead of, it's one of our Mel interviews, oh, instead of it being a two-pack of Zen Originals, it's going to be a three-pack of Zen Originals. We've been waiting ever since then to know what it was, and that was the funny part, was that then they went, what do you think the theme is going to be? Jared what's the theme that we think it's going to be well to anything epic like Fortnite perhaps maybe it could be geez or what we were saying back then Dreadnoughtical all of their own IPs yeah of course it is where's my disco dodgeball pinball right bring that on or infinity golf with pin golf yeah bring that on I just played ping golf the other day it was a blast I just had to have a laugh at that where I was like really this is your breaking news we broke that so long ago this old and moldy yep you're more you're resurrecting it from the dead more than anything yeah all right that's I mean that's a lot of information yeah it's a lot of information the main thing like again it does suck there's no doubt about it i prefer playing in steam i like all my games yeah me too i it bugs me indeed when i have to open up the epic store to go another a different game um that's not available on steam no i like it all centralized by feel that believe me um Yep, I'm the same. I installed Epic the other day because I felt I had to, and it didn't feel good. I didn't like it.
    68:02
    But I completely understand Zen's reasoning, and I would hope that that's what this breakdown helps do, because, again, you probably heard the bad news and just tuned out. Switched off. It went straight to Reddit.
    68:18
    there's business reasons behind this. And there, you know, some people were like, Oh, it's a cash grab. I'm like, how is it a cash grab? The cash grab was putting out an inferior product just to, you know, quickly just to milk some money, not redoing everything.
    68:37
    You know, it's not like no small effort has been put into this. And it's also setting them up for multiple years down the line, as opposed to just, you know tread in water exactly yeah it's this is laying the groundwork for years to come so getting this like essentially bedrock laid is super important to get right for them so i would hope yeah i would really hope that uh zen does kind of manage to do what i know what Rock Band and Guitar Hero managed to do, which was whenever they came out with their next, you know, when it went Rock Band 1 to Rock Band 2, you were able to pay $10 and get most of the songs ported over so that you could still play them. You didn't have to go back to Rock Band 1. You could just play them all in Rock Band 2. And then when Rock Band 3 came out, they did the exact same thing. Again, pay your licensing fee. Boom. It'll all shift over. I hope that Xen is able to work that out. I'm not confident that that will.
    69:50
    But I hope. If they can even get something close to even a little bit of a discount. For example, when I'm in the Quest 2 store and they offer discounts on Game of the Day, essentially, they'll do one. they're not big discounts like they're 20% off they're certainly not the 50% off that we're spoiled for with a lot of the Zen things at the moment but you know a bit of money off will just help a little bit with that sticker shop but I think also if the Zen Legacy packs again most of the time right now you can find whenever a Steam sale goes on the Marvel tables are almost always at least half off. Yeah, that's right. So if when going into the Epic Store and they released the Marvel pack, if that bundle equates to just like retail price, you might say in Epic Store, equates to what it was 50% off over on Steam, that would be a huge thing. And why would they, again, it's renegotiating with Marvel because what happens is when you knock a table down on sale, zen has to eat the cost of what they pay to marvel marvel's still getting their same cut whether the game was on sale or not they're not getting discounted it's what it's basically zen discounting their cut so but if you repackage it and redo the deal then zen's not taking the hit on that and the license is you know being cool with it so i think i think that's what they're talking about with doing these legacy pack pricing um yeah and then and then if it goes on sale in the epic store then it would be even more now i don't know how often epic does sales so the other interesting thing about epic is um they offer a free game um every now and again and in the discord forum one of the members said that the the one tomorrow if you're listening day of podcast will be creature in the well which is a pinball-esque dungeon crawler so that aside you should get that if you're on epic it sounds like a really good game it's one i've actually got shortlisted on steam so i'm going to be grabbing that for free thank you very much um but if you think about that model i wonder if zen could somehow negotiate a sweet deal with epic because you'd imagine that those free games of the day, that's not the hit on the studio. That would be, I would think, Epic taking a hit on that. That's Epic. It's absolutely Epic taking the hit because when Epic put on Grand Theft Auto V, that was them taking it. It wasn't Rockstar. Rockstar, yeah, that's right. So think about that. This is another opportunity that you get with exclusivity for a year. maybe this could be the way that they work around some of that sticker shock they might say for a day only you can download this pack for free and that gets you on board free maybe even you get the FX base pack, the FX platform plus a certain number of games included for free these are things that they can do on that platform we'll have to see the other thing that I really hope and again, just reiterating what already was said, but that Zen does do, and this would be a good bit of goodwill, is Williams volumes one through three, put in the new physics. Yep. Update those. As part of the quality of life pack, when there's some sending that platform, I think that's going to make a lot of people happy. And, you know, a lot of people are going to be going, okay, we can keep playing on PS4, Xbone, and that'll keep us going until such time as perhaps we can look at getting another console. Yeah. So, yeah. Fair cool. All right. So that's it for our breakdown of the show. We've got more to talk about regarding this. Some of it just in terms of, you know, just teasing it out here. But how many of you really are just going to give the finger to Zen and be like, nope, done, I'm out, never again with you? And how many of you are just posturing and will cave the second you see a title come out that you're like, yes, I need that. and then you're going to go ahead and pop onto Epic and buy.
    74:25
    That's just one of those aspects that we're going to touch upon. Going to be keeping up on the forums, reading everything, and seeing what people are interested in us discussing. And clearly, send us tweets to at Blockade of what you want us, what are aspects that we're missing, what are aspects that we didn't talk about in this that you want us to touch upon in our next episode because we will absolutely hit this because we're not done with this announcement by any stretch, I don't think. No, this is just the... There's more meat on the bone. We just wanted to get the information out and react to what was being said. To the broad strokes, if you will. To the broad strokes, yes. All right, so we're going to be talking about that next time, but as usual, we'll also be talking about Jared's favorite things.
    75:14
    Stuff and things. All right, folks. Until next time, thanks again for supporting us. Thanks again for watching. Thanks again for giving us a thumbs up to combat all those trolls that like to give us thumbs down. All right. Until next time, bye-bye. Bye-bye.