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Episode 228 - The Uncanny Battle for Concord

Eclectic Gamers Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 6m·analyzed·Sep 15, 2024
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.037

TL;DR

Hosts analyze Stern X-Men and JJP Avatar reveals; X-Men praised for geometry, Avatar's art impressive but feature questions raised.

Summary

Eclectic Gamers discusses two major pinball reveals: Stern's Uncanny X-Men (designed by Jack Danger, $7,000-$13,000, offset layout with three flippers) and Jersey Jack Pinball's Avatar: The Battle for Pandora (Mark Seiden first JJP release, $12,000-$15,000, six flippers with lower playfields). Both games received positive initial sentiment, though hosts express concerns about X-Men's bare-bones code at launch and Avatar's feature density relative to pricing, questioning whether the design justifies the premium cost.

Key Claims

  • Uncanny X-Men is an offset layout inspired by Gold Wings, with lower playfield on the left ('Danger Room')

    high confidence · Hosts describe offset main playfield to right, danger room to left with third flipper; reference Slam Tilt podcast explicitly stating lower playfield ripped from Gold Wings

  • X-Men's code is very bare-bones at launch, which has become standard expectation for Stern releases

    high confidence · Dennis: 'It doesn't surprise me. Is that when the game's first release, the code is about as bare bones as it can get.' Tony confirms Stern releases games and builds code over six months to a year

  • Avatar: The Battle for Pandora is Mark Seiden's first professionally released JJP game

    high confidence · Dennis explicitly states this is Seiden's first professionally released game for JJP

  • Avatar has six flippers: three standard and three mini (two on lower playfield)

    high confidence · Dennis provides detailed specifications from official reveal materials

  • X-Men LE production scaled back to 811 units from typical 1,000 units

    high confidence · Dennis: '811 units you know some earth 811 reference there right uh instead of the 1000 units they had been doing for the last few years'

  • JJP releases games with more deeply fleshed-out rulesets than Stern at launch

    high confidence · Tony: 'JJP does a much better job, I feel, of releasing a game with a much deeper rule set upon release than Stern tends to'

  • Avatar's Kung Fu Action mech suit only moves its arm when the sling is hit, lacking functional impact on gameplay

    high confidence · Hosts discuss how mech was stressed in deep dive but only moves arm via sling coil, described as immersion element without gameplay significance

  • X-Men features a captive ball with elevated vary target only on Premium/LE, converted to leaper toy on Pro

    high confidence · Dennis details toy differences: 'There is a captive ball with an elevated vary target that that is only on the premium LE. It's more of like a leaper toy that you activate on the pro.'

Notable Quotes

  • “I think it's just going to be seen as an interesting thing for most modern players and the players who are just coming across it that we're seeing just because there's been so many new players into the hobby over the last several years who don't have that experience.”

    Dennis @ ~24:00 — Addresses how offset layout novelty may resonate differently with newer players unfamiliar with historical pinball formats

  • “JJP does a much better job, I feel, of releasing a game with a much deeper rule set upon release than Stern tends to.”

    Tony @ ~48:00 — Key distinction between manufacturer philosophies on code completion and rule depth at launch

  • “I see a lot of bent wire forms and I see little plastic like Navi related toys everywhere but when we talk full features like where's the flying monkey mech where's the weird tree where's the spinny house where's the cool crystal ball like I don't see any of that.”

    Dennis @ ~65:00 — Critical assessment of Avatar's feature density compared to Wizard of Oz standard, questioning premium pricing justification

  • “It feels like if it wasn't there, you wouldn't notice or care. It feels like it was thrown in to bring some ambiance, but it's also about the only, like, toy on the field.”

    Tony @ ~62:00 — Critique of Avatar's Kung Fu Action mech as purely cosmetic rather than mechanically meaningful

  • “The long term viability, I think I actually saw someone mention this on one of the Discord channels I'm in, was a question about it's quirky and that's exciting people right now. And maybe it will play well enough that it'll hold up.”

    Dennis @ ~28:00 — Raises concern about whether X-Men's novelty offset layout will sustain appeal or wear off quickly

  • “Everything else feeds to the flipper. So it is a very flow-based game.”

    Dennis @ ~34:00 — Describes X-Men's playfield design philosophy prioritizing shot flow and combos

  • “When I look at this my initial reaction is if you set aside the light show is there really a whole lot going on”

Entities

Jack DangerpersonJeremy PackerpersonWaysen ChingpersonMark SeidenpersonLea FaskepersonKeith JohnsonpersonTaylor SnyderpersonJason AllenpersonKen CromwellpersonTonyperson

Signals

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: X-Men received broadly positive sentiment post-reveal and livestream, though subset of players concerned about bare-bones code and offset layout novelty wearing off; post-livestream sentiment remained positive overall

    high · Dennis: 'overall sentiment has been pretty positive. Post reveal of the live stream, I'd say overall sentiment has remained pretty positive. but a number of people were put off, not by the shooting, but rather by the lack of code depth'

  • ?

    community_signal: JJP invited Eclectic Gamers hosts as media to play Avatar; hosts declined due to scheduling conflicts, indicating ongoing media engagement strategy

    medium · Dennis notes JJP invitation for Friday Chicago play session; states no NDA requirements established; hosts appreciate invite despite inability to attend due to work conference and travel

  • ?

    competitive_signal: X-Men's offset layout and three-flipper configuration represents return to historical format (Gold Wings, Spy Hunter) that may appeal differently to modern vs vintage-experienced players

    medium · Hosts note offset games historically unpopular, Spy Hunter underperformed; question whether novelty will sustain appeal; note newer players without offset experience may view as interesting rather than nostalgic

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Avatar's Kung Fu Action mech suit seen as purely cosmetic animation without substantive gameplay impact; arm movement synchronized only to sling coil rather than integral to game progression

    high · Tony: 'It feels like if it wasn't there, you wouldn't notice or care.' Dennis: stressed in deep dive but has minimal functional role; described as added animatronic similar to Alien facehuggers on pop bumpers

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.198

0:00
Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is Sunday, September 14th. This is the 15th. It was the 14th when I made my note. You wrote your notes yesterday. As did I. Yeah. So today we are doing episode 228. I am Tony. I am Dennis. All right. Well, we actually have a lot of stuff. There's been some interesting video game news, and we have the reveals. I'm talking about Concord. And we have the reveals of a Stern and a JJP game. Yes. In terms of going over actual content. So we got quite a bit. But you've been very busy because you have expanded your gaming horizons. Blood for the blood god. I mean, the Emperor protects. I'm playing Space Marine 2, and I'm not playing a Chaos Marine. So that's...
1:12
A regular Space Marine. Space Marine! Hi-ya! We'll get to that Kung Fu action in a little bit.
1:20
But no, it's been fun. I'm not terribly far into it. I've only played a little bit of it so far. I will say it does some seriously fun things with the cinematics. And, I mean, of course, it's a 40K game, so the cinematics are always going to be over the top if it's done properly. And they are. And it has several awesome little set piece things where they just kind of let you go. And it's been great. I love the first Space Marines, so this is just more of the same. Awesome. It's awesome. and the interesting thing though i've not utilized it in any way shape or form is the main game is co-op so you play the main game it's you and two other space marines who are typically controlled with bots but you can bring friends in so you and friends can play oh space marine and friends so so it you can do the hell divers thing with friends when you're playing space marines Yay!
2:22
Cool What have you been up to? Not a lot, playing a little bit of Starfield with their expansion we talked a little bit about that on a prior episode had a work conference the last couple It was your last one of the year, wasn't it? It was, thankfully I'm conferenced out and that's actually going to come up a little bit when we get into the pinball section and then otherwise I have been, as Tony knows separate from all of this so I won't spend too much time on it I've been selling down watches because I was up to 19, and I feel that is too many because I can't wear them all. And there are a few that I just basically keep as collectibles, but most of them I try and wear. You're not going to do the, like, four watches to an arm thing? No. Oh, my God. Or changing them four times a day. No, I don't have the energy for such things. So I've been selling six of them. Four are, like, sold, and I got my money for them. One is in shipment now, and I only have one left that I have not sold. So I'm hoping that I will get that last one sold by the end of the year, and then I can reassess as of 2025. But anyway, that's been a bit of work because there are a ton of tire kickers and packaging and insuring and following all the rules so you don't get cheated and all of that. Right. Oh, and you're talking about stuff that costs that much. Yeah, yeah. I mean some of the ones that I let go were just a few hundred, but like my Omega I sent out yesterday, and that's the one that's the most. Well, no, the Reverso was the most, but I traded that with a secondhand dealer, so I knew that one wasn't going to be a big issue. But anyway, so getting that all cleaned up and such and then doing my channel stuff for that, which has been doing pretty well lately.

Dennis @ ~60:00 — Summary critique of Avatar's physical feature set versus aesthetic presentation and pricing

  • “I think it looks like it shoots pretty well. Like we already talked about, the code seems very lackluster.”

    Tony @ ~22:00 — Separates positive geometry assessment from critical code evaluation for X-Men

    • Dennis
    person
    Zach Sharpeperson
    Stern Pinballcompany
    Jersey Jack Pinballcompany
    Uncanny X-Mengame
    Avatar: The Battle for Pandoragame
    Wizard of Ozgame
    Gold Wingsgame
    Foo Fightersgame
    Space Marine 2game
    Kineticistorganization
    Slam Tilt Podcastorganization
    Space Huntgame
    Elton Johngame
    ?

    design_philosophy: X-Men uses offset layout (left Danger Room, right main playfield) with flow-based design philosophy emphasizing shot combos and return-to-flipper play rather than complex toy interactions

    high · Dennis explains offset design, notes only two unsafe shots, describes everything else feeding to flippers; Jack Danger explained center post addition during livestream

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Avatar features movie-derived art style by new artist Lea Faske with thematic playfield segmentation (sky upper-right, underwater upper-left, themed lower areas); distinct from direct movie adaptation approach

    high · Tony notes Faske's art style is own interpretation rather than 'I drew exactly what the movie'; Dennis notes thematic segmentation by world areas with upper-right sky, upper-left elements, lower-left and lower-right themed sections

  • $

    market_signal: Avatar dropped JJP's experimental Platinum Edition tier from Elton John, returning to LE/CE model; LE 5,000 units at $12,000; CE 1,000 units at $15,000

    high · Dennis: 'They've apparently dropped the Platinum Edition thing they tried out with Elton John. They're back to the LE as 5,000 units... and the collector's edition, which is 1,000 units, is $15,000'

  • ?

    community_signal: Mark Seiden making professional JJP debut as designer; game complexity and feature implementation suggests learning curve integration with JJP technical team

    medium · Identified as first professionally released game for JJP; features six flippers, multiple playfield sections, complex rule interactions including ramp/subway conversion mechanics

  • $

    market_signal: Avatar's $12,000-$15,000 pricing questioned relative to perceived feature density and toy implementation; hosts express concern about value justification without Wizard of Oz-level mechanical features

    high · Dennis: 'I don't see twelve thousand dollars'; compares unfavorably to WoZ mechanical features (flying monkey mech, tree, spinning house, crystal ball); notes flat plastics on LE despite premium pricing

  • ?

    product_strategy: X-Men three-tier model with strategic feature distribution: Sentinel head bash toy raises/lowers only on Premium/LE; captive ball with elevated ramp only on Premium/LE; all three tiers have different art packages

    high · Dennis details Pro version has static Sentinel toy and leaper ball toy, Premium/LE have moving/elevated versions; notes art packages differ across all three tiers (unusual change from recent Stern practice)

  • ?

    product_concern: X-Men flipper gap appears wider than typical, possibly justified by early center-post design decision; ball routing supports short ball times and flow-based gameplay despite initial concerns

    medium · Dennis cites speculation about wider flipper gap (not confirmed), notes Jack Danger explanation of center post addition; compares to Ghostbusters flipper gap as explanation for ball time management

  • ?

    technology_signal: Avatar's lower playfield implementation allocates significant real estate (two sections with limited features) constraining main playfield design; ball size larger than Stewie-scale but smaller than standard pinball affects mechanics

    medium · Dennis notes space constraints from two lower playfield sections; one is pop bumper/target, other is bash toy with two flippers and orbits; compares to Munsters/Family Guy playfield design decisions

    • 4:04
    Speaking of doing pretty well, pinball, finally, after the doldrums of summer. I mean, technically, we are still in summer, but there were doldrums for most of the summer. We were struggling mightily for content and in particular on the pinball section. And now we actually have some stuff. So as we talked about on the last episode, we knew that Stern was releasing the Uncanny X-Men. They have finally done the full reveal. So we know basically everything that there is to know about the game at this point. I'm going to quickly cover some of the basics. I do have a link in the show notes to Kineticist. There is an article that goes into a lot of this sort of deep dive style that you can go and read about and get even more information than what I am providing. But here are the basics. Game is designed by Jack Danger, who designed Foo Fighters. Art by Jeremy Packer, a.k.a. Zombie Yeti.
    4:56
    Code is by, I might mispronounce his name, I think it's Waysen. Waysen Ching has done the programming. There is no price change on the models. This is a Cornerstone, so it's a three-tier model. The Pro is $7,000, the Premium is $9,700, and the LE is $13,000. The LE this time, though, they scaled it back. 811 units you know some earth 811 reference there right uh instead of the 1000 units they had been doing for the last few years some of the key game details and you'll want to look at photos to fully understand because this is an audio medium and it's we're not gonna i absolutely hate it when podcasts try and describe everything on a play field because i think most people can't in the upper right corner it's purple with shades of yes of other it's almost impossible to do it right. Honestly, I'm not sure anyone can do it right. Maybe, maybe a good orator could do it. But anyway, some of the key stuff. Game has three flippers. It's an offset layout. So it's kind of like Gold Wings. I've seen a lot of analogies to Gold Wings. In fact, I've seen like on Slam Tilt Heard, I should say, on Slam Tilt Podcast, they flat out said this lower playfield is straight ripped from Gold Wings. So you've got the offset main portion of the playfield to the right. then to the left is what they call the danger room and it has a has the third flipper there so you can interact with that sort of stuff um two pop bumpers uh the premium and le versus the pro the sentinel head bash toy is on both versions however on the premium le edition it actually raises and lowers into the play field all of the iron monger and iron man and it's a static bash toy on the pro model. There is a pretty interesting ball lock feature on the left wire form as it feeds to the main left flipper, where a little swinging post kind of pops out and holds the ball up there for ball locks, rather than a post from the playfield shooting up like how Elwin likes to do it, like on Jurassic Park. There is a captive ball with an elevated vary target that that is only on the premium LE. It's more of like a leaper toy that you activate on the pro. And I'd say those are the key differences. Art packages are different on all three, which is not something that we had been seeing lately. A lot of times there was some sharing of the art across the three versions. Not, not of course, including the play field, which does pretty much look the same. If not exactly the same for all three. So, uh, Tony, you and I both have seen elements of the live gameplay that, uh, Jack danger hosted. So we've seen the game shot. Uh, We've seen the photos and let's just have a discussion. What are your initial thoughts about the uncanny X-Men? I will say that broadly, when the game was revealed through the teaser and then right after the teaser, the true reveal trailer, overall sentiment has been pretty positive. Post reveal of the live stream, I'd say overall sentiment has remained pretty positive. but a number of people were put off, not by the shooting, but rather by the lack of code depth, because it is a pretty early release. And that's what we've learned to expect from Stern at this point. It doesn't surprise me. Is that when the game's first release, the code is about as bare bones as it can get. So anyway, we're going to probably mostly judge it off of the geometry and the other aspects. Right. Again, the animations and stuff, they are where they are at as well in terms of the code and the callouts likewise. likewise so what'd you think overall of the uncanny x-men i think it looks like it shoots pretty well uh there's a few uh interesting things on it i do like that on the le my boy colossus is front and center on the le's back class and gets the proper respect that colossus deserves yes that this is actually something that came up with uh my discussion with zach many over on the pinball show he when it came to the play field mentioned he really would wish rather than these really small images of all of these x-men that you had like some set piece style stuff where you'd have like a big one like colossus throwing wolverine as a example i don't think he used that particular example but an example like that and my counter argument was i understand what you're saying but if you do big things like that that means less x-men will appear in the game because that space that now has four X-Men becomes two. It's not like you gain space to stick the other two on, and they're trying to appeal to everyone who has a, as you know, Tony, different people have different X-Men as their favorite X-Men. Some people actually like Rogue. Yeah, sure. I've met several of them. She's very popular. Yes. Like I said, I've always liked Colossus as a character, so that's why I always go with Colossus. Yeah, I liked the back glasses. The LE was my favorite, personally.
    9:53
    And I thought the sides of the cab looked pretty good. I would say, I guess, in terms of art, the Pro was my least favorite overall. Yeah, but that's... Actually, I was about to say that's pretty normal but it's not, actually. A lot of times I really prefer the Pro art. But in this case, it's very... I've never done a full analysis. I don't think I have any particular rhyme or reason to it in terms of which one I would like more or less. I think what I've come to expect is the pro usually is the most montage of the versions, which in some ways I would say that is probably a fact that if you're assuming that arcade operators are mostly going to get pros, why not get the one that features the most various disparate aspects of whatever show, comic, movie you're doing so that people will. gravitate towards putting quarters in.
    10:44
    Okay, what do you think about the gameplay? The gameplay was interesting. Like I said, I thought it shot well. Like we already talked about, the code seems very lackluster. There were a couple things that I noticed primarily, again, as we've talked about, that kind of offset bottom is something we've not seen in a while, the whole offset. It's been a long time since we've seen anything like it. And I have no problem nostalgia-tripping bringing old stuff back, especially if it works in Place Fun.
    11:15
    I would like to see a return of a Center Pop. I mean, but that's just me. That's way back.
    11:22
    Interesting. Well, now, how do you think that resonates broadly? Because most people historically didn't play the offset games. They weren't very popular. I mean, Gold Wings was a Gottlieb. And we're talking solid-state Gottlieb, so most people never played it. And Spy Hunter did get more, I think, play back when it was based off of a really big video game at the time. But Spy Hunter is not a very good game. No, and I don't know how much that'll be because there is no real – I don't think there's really going to be a super huge nostalgia draw for it. I think it's just going to be seen as an interesting thing for most modern players and the players who are just coming across it that we're seeing just because there's been so many new players into the hobby over the last several years who don't have that experience. I think that's going to be the real question, though, is that offset space, is that left side space that could have been for other stuff going to cause an overall issue with how it plays and how people view it? And I don't know that we'll know until it actually gets out on location and we start getting more feedback on it. Yeah, it's a good point. The long term viability, I think I actually saw someone mention this on one of the Discord channels I'm in, was a question about it's quirky and that's exciting people right now. And maybe it will play well enough that it'll hold up. But at least a few people have started to ask, given there's a there's an assumption that there's a reason why we don't see this format. And will the novelty wear off faster than right? Or will it remain like, oh, no, this, you know, I like shooting this just as much as I like shooting Foo Fighters. It definitely looked like it shot pretty well to me from the straight. Right, and I think that could be an important bit of it. Right. And the stream, it did not look like the ball times were super long either, which was an initial concern of mine. Now, setup can control a lot of that. And I heard a part of the live stream where Jack Danger was explaining why he has a center post in. There's actually a post over off of the Danger Room, and there's then the quote-unquote center post between the two main flippers. I could call them the main flippers. And that was the one he was kind of explaining was an early thing he decided to add. I did see some people speculate – I don't know if it was confirmed or not – that the flipper gap is wider on the main portion, the two flippers, than is typical, which could both justify the center post and also help explain shorter ball times. That is honestly the biggest reason why Ghostbusters tends to have short ball times is that flipper gap is fairly large. So that could be a feature of it, but it could also have just been their setup deliberately designed to drain out. I have seen others note, also having watched the live stream, that if you're making your shots, there are only two unsafe shots. Everything else feeds to the flipper. So it is a very flow-based game. And so conceptually, unless you're bashing the Sentinel, and then I think the other thing is probably one of the pops or whatever, everything else is just going to feed right back. So you can, in theory, can have very, like a Steve Ritchie game, you can have a very long ball time because everything is just setting you up. for comboing um so if you like that and i think a lot of people do they'll gravitate towards that what i think what's interesting is even though the danger room takes up so much space still because the right hand side is following more fan layout rules there actually are a lot of shots still in the game and because they're so far back from the flippers you it's not it's not like crushing your soul like walking dead with the well walker and the drops right in your face You've got a lot of distance, really, on the right-hand side to go for your shots. Yeah, and that was one of those things that when I first saw the play field, I kind of wondered how tight and constrained it would make stuff. But actually watching the gameplay, it didn't seem to be a problem at all.
    15:13
    Animations, did you look at the display any while they were doing their play? I watched a little bit of it. It was one of those things where I had it playing, and I was kind of looking at it and writing notes and doing other stuff as well. I deliberately tried to watch it a little bit It's fine I can't say it was impressive It somewhat reminded me of the Avengers It's the comic style But you can see Where they get away with not doing much animation I'm mentioning this because Avatar Was a very different reaction But that's also the difference between Having movie assets where you're Just directly pulling video That is a very very good point and that is a huge you can hide behind a lot when someone's already done the work right because it's a lot easier when you're just like oh we need a four second clip of this gunship shooting missiles okay let's do that oh yeah as opposed to animating stuff so anyway um overall i i really look forward to playing the uncanny x-men it looks like it is quite a bit of fun uh was there anything else you wanted to add to it not until i actually played it yeah we'll follow back up as we like to do once we actually get some time on the game which probably will be relatively soon as long as we make an effort to get out and play it because I sure we will get at least one probably more here in the Kansas City area Right. Because that's sort of our standard. Okay. The other game that got revealed was Avatar.
    16:44
    And I have to remember the proper subtitle. So it's Avatar, the Battle for Pandora. it features both of the movies that are currently out. So let me go ahead and run over these stats really quick. Again, another link in the show notes, also to The Kineticist, which has a deep dive article on this. This is designed by Mark Seiden. This is his first professionally released game that he has done. Art is by Lea Faske, I believe is how to say her name. Keith Johnson's on code, along with Taylor Snyder and Jason Allen. This also is no price difference from their prior game, which is Elton John. The limited edition, now that is a change. They've apparently dropped the Platinum Edition thing they tried out with Elton John. They're back to the LE as 5,000 units, and that's $12,000. And the collector's edition, which is 1,000 units, is $15,000. Some of the key game details that I believe are the same across both versions is you've got six flippers. There's three standard-sized flippers and three kind of mini flippers, two of which are on a lower playfield. There is UV reactive elements to the playfield, like the playfield decals. Think kind of like Stranger Things a little bit.
    18:02
    There is sort of the scoop jump ramp. There's magnet usage. There's a vertical up kicker. It's got a subway system. It's got three slings, six ramps, 16 stand-up targets, and there is an opto spinner. I believe it's up at the top right of one of the ramp shots. so yeah it's like a weird weird spot like jump spinner yeah and there and it was highlighted uh tony and i both watched you i saw most of but not all of the deep dive i watched the whole okay so there's a part where ken cromwell was sort of explaining that that was like a key shot that you would do um i don't want to go into all the rules but the rules felt more baked out than what i was aware of for x-men like in terms of bonding with the animal you know there's just a lot of things to do with it uh like you would like you would expect uh from a jersey jack game um so before going into your thoughts i do want to say that tony and i were invited to uh as media to go and and try out the game on friday and we did not do that uh i did not and i guess this is one of those things where uh it was very nice of them to ask and we've don't we've never really set any sort of expectation, I guess, per se, other than we don't do NDAs. Right. So for me, it was a moot matter because I had a work conference on Thursday and Friday, and Friday was the day we were going to do this stuff in Chicago. So I couldn't do it no matter what. So anyway, but very kind. And for me, it was one of those things where I just recently back from a trip. I've got another trip coming up. So anyway, we weren't able to do it. But thank you for the invite. We do appreciate it. Um, so with that out of the way, Tony, let's, uh, let's go in. Um, I, I guess in terms of differences between the LE and the CE, I, I know there, I know there are differences. The only thing that really stood out to me is the CE like had a really, really elaborate topper and the LE had a not so interesting topper. Right. Because the really elaborate topper uses that whole angled glass hologram set up thing. And it looked really cool. Yeah, I thought it looked cool. It looked really cool. And the other is your typical molded colored plastic. Yes, yes. Flat plastics. Molded plastics. I want to say the first thing that really jumped out to me is simply the fact that they went with the art by Lea Fasci. And I think it looks amazing. I really like her art style. I've looked at some of her other stuff, and I really like the style overall. It's very different compared to the actual movie stuff. You can tell that it's not just a, I drew exactly what the movie, it definitely has its own style. And I think overall it looks pretty good. And I also just, I like when we get new artists into the pinball. So it's not just always the same. that's why like when zombie yeti first came in and they they first started bringing in some stern started bringing some other people in it was nice to see new artists entering the thing and i continue to like to see new artists come into the realm yeah i uh i really like the art as well i think and and it is thematic like and it was explained the like the upper right is the sky area the underwater is the upper left i think they did like the space stuff or something i don't know They named something. I didn't know what it meant in the lower left and in the lower right was another element of the world of Pandora. So it is kind of like themed out in segments.
    21:44
    And the lighting, I want to go ahead and jump to lighting real quick and say, as is usual, like JJP is kind of on the lead when it comes to RGB use. They do have a problem with kaleidoscoping you out. And that even showed in the, in my opinion, showed in the deep dive, like way too many, let's just flash everything. Like I can't. Right. You do need to be able to see the shots, but their integration with like the effects and what's going on in the game and stuff. Like it's not just, hey, let's just make this thing cycle. They do really, really tie it in.
    22:21
    The. What do you think about the gameplay, though? The rules seemed better fleshed out than X-Men. And I think that's – JJP does a much better job, I feel, of releasing a game with a much deeper rule set upon release than Stern tends to. Where Stern tends to release their games and then build their code up over the course of six months to a year to the point where some games have gone from being complete turds to excellent games by the time they roll out the finalized code.
    22:54
    JJP has always done a much better job of releasing their – I mean, we've seen the pictures of their games. little manuals where they have for your mode manuals that have the giant branching paths, the deep dives and all that stuff. I think they do a much better job with that.
    23:10
    But what of the geometry, the shots themselves? I mean, this is Mark's first game for JJP. It is, and I saw nothing that really jumped out or grabbed me. I couldn't really get a grasp of how well it actually shoots. it looks like it's okay but it doesn't feel like anything super special but uh there were a couple interesting things i'm curious on stuff like they had uh there there's a shot that is both a ramp and a subway that it like converts it lit the ramp lifts to give you and then there's that jump shot to the opto spinner which i just i don't know it's going to be one of those things until i actually shoot it to see because even in the deep dive they were talking about it's designed to be kind of a hard shot right and that's right always a concern when something is designed to be a hard shot how realistic is it for average players to get it and it makes me it reminds me a little bit of jersey jack's dialed in game where the sim card was really important but it could be pretty difficult especially put a cliffy on then it was almost impossible to get the ball in consistently but but of course that was an optional choice that uh people made uh like the game the game to me when i look at it makes me think it's a flow game now it was pointed out in the deep dive that the game actually is not easily categorized it's got elements that are flow and it's got elements that are stop and go which again with jersey jack's fondness for game state change like subways into ramps and things you know diverters like godfather was a good case in point where you had like all these like 26 different shot options because the feeds could change and stuff so one shot you know like an orbit might do something different depending on the state of the game um and it does have six flippers so i'm not too surprised that we would see a variety of that here's the thing one of the things i think it was in the deep dive where they said something about this is the most feature-rich game since wizard of oz from jersey jack pinball but when I look at the game, I don't see it. I see a very open play field. There's Kung Fu Action Robot on the left. We're going to get to Kung Fu Action Robot. I see a very open play field. I see a lot of wire forms, but I see a bunch of shots in the back,
    25:30
    and then I see, oh, yeah, we got a flipper in the upper left to be able to shoot inner orbit, inner loop. I see a flipper in the upper right, kind of like where Steve Ritchie would probably, maybe he said, put that there. Because he isn't with TJP. Put my flipper in. So there's that flipper to shoot something over on the left-hand side. And then there's a lower play field.
    25:54
    It's not placed like it because it's offset to the right. But you compared it to the Stewie play field on Family Guy. And I've compared it to Munsters. The ball is bigger than that, but it's smaller than a normal pinball, and it takes up a lot of real estate. Obviously, you can still play above it, but there's nothing above it because you have to be able to see it.
    26:19
    Well, and the fact that there's two lower play field sections. Yeah, yes, there is. And one of them is just a pop bumper to hit target. Right. Random thing. I guess you nudge it. Right. But that's more space that you can't put anything on the play field because you have to be able to see it. I will say, yeah, it's kind of nice where they're like, well, we're going to have all these shots in the back. Let's go ahead and do some lower play field action so that there's something to have happen there. It's just, all right. Again, I need to play it. I have never really enjoyed those lower play fields in general. The one with the crab suit or whatever, it was noted as being fully featured, but the full feature is it's got two flippers, it's a bash toy, and there's an orbit on each side. It actually doesn't have very many. It has fewer shots than the Munster's playfield does.
    27:10
    But maybe they decided to do that because the ball size being bigger might be more satisfying because those little Stewie-sized pinballs, a lot of people just don't enjoy shooting them. which but there were a lot of shots on the stewie and shrug and donkey playfield it you know it was just a fan layout so so it wasn't again it was very very basic um here it's just i see a lot of i just see a lot of bent wire forms and i see little plastic like navi related toys everywhere but when we talk full features like where's the when you do a comparison to waz here's my issues like where's the flying monkey mech where's the weird tree where's the spinny house where's the cool crystal ball like i don't see any of that i see i see play fields out of black hole and i see wire forms and so i don't when i look at it i don't see twelve thousand dollars right and i mean there's even even on the le there's still a lot of just flat plastics yeah it's i mean so gameplay is king for me so i mean that that is what it is but when i look at this my initial reaction is if you set aside the light show is there really a whole lot going on and i think a good case in point is let's talk about the the stabby mech suit because you really wanted to talk about this so talk about the stabby mech suit well i mean it's It's about as simple as you get. It's just propped up there, and when you hit the target under it, it has kung fu action with the arm and the knife. And it's just – it feels like if it wasn't there, you wouldn't notice or care.
    28:57
    It feels like it was thrown in to bring some ambiance, but it's also about the only, like, toy on the field. Right, right. So the thing is, it was really stressed in the deep dive, which I think made it a little odd for us because, as Tony noted, they have this toy and it moves, but it's just one arm that moves since the kung fu action aspect. And it just moves when the sling is hit. So it's designed so that when this coil fires, this thing also actuates. I get it from an immersion perspective, and I suppose, in a way, we should credit them for that because very few companies would bother to do that. But to me, it was like Alien and the facehuggers that would pop up and down when you hit the pops. It's like it's just an added animatronic sort of thing on top of something that's already moving. So I think my issue is when I look at it, I'm like, okay, that mech is cool. But let's remember the X-Men mech where it was you were shooting. Like, it was like a key shot where and I'm not saying they should have made the mech suit a key shot, though. They themselves stressed that it was a key part of the first movie. Right. So it's sort of like a it's not a bash toy. It's not an identified shot. It's on a sling, and it just feels like a, oh, well, we really should have this. So they stuck it in, and then they decide, well, we're J.J.P., so we're going to make it move. But it's in no way going to change your gameplay experience. I mean, and it's not that X-Men has a ton of toys. X-Men has, like, the Sentinel head. Yeah, X-Men hides behind the Sentinel. It's like, here's our giant bash toy that on anything other than the probe raises and lowers and the mouth opens, and it does all sorts of stuff. but it's a bash toy and then there's like a wolverine in the back corner that doesn't do anything and then you've got like the sentinel hands coming around uh just for ambiance where you can see them uh but they don't do anything either so it's neither of these games are like a huge amount of toys which gets back to that prior conversation we had what a couple episodes ago from one of our listener emails which was what's up with all the lack of toys and pinball i definitely see a higher bill of materials in avatar than for sure in x-men absolutely but that comparison to was which is for those that don't know is wizard of oz jjp's first game those added aspects were visual things that moved around in more interesting fashions than a knife in a in a robot hand so and that's like the only toy that i noticed here that again there's a lot of just sculpted toys that are you know zip tied on you know the weird birds and stuff i it's just now there is one thing that we haven't mentioned uh directly we've only mentioned it indirectly by talking about the light show is the black light uv stuff on avatar which does look amazing um uh the way they showed it in the deep dive video the way everything looked that looked really cool how it all works and the kind of under play field ball lock where it looks really interesting just from a matter of being able to see it and the way it lights up and stuff.
    32:19
    That's true, though. I do need to note that the collector's edition is the one that has the art in the three UV inks, and then the regular LE version just says it's bioluminescent. So it's like if you don't get the $15,000 one, you're not going to have nearly the same level of impressive UV. Now, it looked great. It still looked good. And I want to go ahead and touch on the display, which John Paul DeWin is still overseeing their animations. Again, this is where I think JJP shines is lately it's been, hey, you want like all the assets? We get you all the assets. And because they have like all these movie clips and call outs and stuff they their their screen looks so much better than X It does And again though they can hide behind a lot of movie elements and stuff but just the integration and stuff in general, I just thought it looked a lot more impressive. The thing is, I don't buy games based off of how the display looks. So, but good job. Yeah, no, it looks way better as usual. John Paul, the wind is like at the, he's, he remains at the top of the animation game. There's the integration and everything looks really, really good. So I am interested in playing this, but seeing this, the layout doesn't interest me as much as X-Men, I guess. And I can't help but compare them because here we are in the same episode having to talk about both of them. This would work a lot better if you guys split it up about a month apart. Yeah, Zach and I, Tony, talked about that, and it's like, should they? How do they know? I mean, it gets all weird when the release – I mean, J.J.P. probably needs to. Even though Elton John was pretty popular, it didn't move very well initially, I didn't think. And what do you think of this before we move on? I did want to ask you, what do you think of this subtle decision here to drop the idea of the unlimited platinum and go back to calling it an alley and saying we just won't make more than 5000 of them? Which is, to my knowledge, never been an issue beyond maybe Guns N' Roses.
    34:12
    I think it's an acknowledgement of there's no reason to put in more work on something because they're never going to sell enough to matter. I wonder if calling it platinum, they thought maybe it hurt the sales on it or something. I don't know. It could be. I just thought it was weird. All right. Before we leave the pinball section, we do have one listener feedback. This was actually sent to us on Patreon. So in several messages, because they kept I think they kept hitting enter and it would that would send the message instead of doing a carriage return. So anyway, so but I glued it all together in our internal notes so we could have the conversation. But this is from Derek H., who wrote to us as follows on Patreon. Hey, guys. Regarding your last episode's discussion on Stern's Home Edition pinball table, I figure I would share some thoughts. First of all, I am in agreement in that I see no real way on how this can possibly be a successful product for them and achieve their goal of bringing new people into the hobby. The price is just way too high for the general public, and I cannot imagine someone walking through Costco and thinking, hey, this $5,000 pinball machine looks cool. Let's buy it. Also, if someone does the smallest amount of research, they will inevitably find the used market. And just browsing the first couple pages of 5,000 and under on Pinside, I can easily find a half dozen games I'd rather buy than a Star Wars Home Edition.
    35:36
    As an aside, it's the Jurassic Park Home Edition, just so you know. All right, continue. The one thing that instantly came to my mind for Stern to reach out into the more general audience was if they could partner with someone like Zen Studios and create a Stern virtual pinball machine. Sell those at Costco for $1,500 to $2,000, and they might get more interest. For virtual pinball, you have all the fake tables, as well as some of the 90s Williams classics, but nothing from the latest generation of machines. They need to get these modern tables in front of people, and I can't think of a better way to do it than virtual pinball. Virtual pinball is how I got into the hobby. I was planning on building myself a virtual table to play on, and then made the epiphany that I could actually buy a real pinball machine for about the same cost for me to build the virtual one. Also, the fact that unless you are in a city, pinball just doesn't exist, at least where I am. For me to go to a place that has a decent selection of pinball machines to play, it is over an hour drive. The only time I ever really have a chance to play any new pinball games is when I take my day trip to the Expo once per year. I would gladly pay to get one of Stern's or any other manufacturer new machines on Pinball FX or another platform. The only potential issue I can really see is licensing on some of the titles, but I think that probably could be overcome. I think if Stern is serious about getting new people into the hobby, this is something that they should really be looking into. P.S. Non-isometric Fallout games are for babies. LOL.
    37:07
    Well, thank you, Derek, for the extensive message. I do like the isometric Fallout in addition to the non-isometric. I just like isometric games, period. They've just fallen out of favor. They have. So what do you think about his idea about Stern should really be doing a virtual, like an arcade one-up-esque virtual thing? I think it would sell better, but I don't know about them actually doing a virtual where you can buy the new tables and put it on it. I don't know.
    37:37
    I think they would be concerned about cannibalizing their actual table sets at that point. Do you think a lot of people that want to play real pinball would be like, I'm going to get the pinball effects version instead versus being a like me, like where I might go. I'd never buy Foo Fighters, but if it was a video game version, I would.
    38:02
    I think so, depending on especially if the table cost is low. I mean, if the table cost is, if it's, oh, $50 to get Foo Fighters, then, yeah, you're going to get people. You might even get people who plan on buying the actual table to buy that first and still plan on getting the actual machine. But I think you're still going to overall end up cannibalizing a certain percentage of your sales, especially your early sales, because people will buy this version to play and see if they like it enough to warrant buying an actual machine. Interesting. My thinking would be I do like the idea of the Costco little stand up thing. One of the things they could consider doing would be especially if there was concerns on cannibalization is if they did something like that. But it only did their dot games, their Sam games like, oh, like do Walking Dead and Ghostbusters or early spike in the case of Ghostbusters, you know, Star Trek, that sort of thing. and maybe have like a DMD style display in it instead of – and maybe you just mimic it. Like I did build a virtual table. It could mimic – I used a laptop monitor, but it would mimic dots, just display the dots on a little screen like that. That might be something where it would be like – and then you start exploring. You're like, whoa, they got like LCDs and stuff and Jurassic Park and all this. It's not going to be the same things because they're – are they going to go back and make ACDC again? Probably not. I don't know. Who knows anymore?
    39:32
    I do think that the idea of them actually just getting like table packs into a software package does make sense. And they toyed with this way, way back, back in the Sam era. There was Stern Pinball Arcade that was with Pinball Arcade. I don't know about Zen Studios. The problem with Zen Studios is they do their own version of licenses Stern does. Like Zen has their own Jaws table, for example. They have their own alien table. I know that's not Stranded Penball Brothers, but they have a different – they have their own – They have a whole bunch of Star Wars ones. So the licensing, yes, can easily be overcome, Derek, in the video game space. Video games work with licenses all the time. Pinball has always been a little more, well, we need all this weird stuff. We want not just the static art, but we also want game play clips and stuff. And here with virtual pinball, it's been more like we just want the access to the characters and some of the concepts and stuff. So I don't know why the deal with Pinball Arcade never winning or like they did Star Trek and maybe I don't know if they did more than Star Trek, but it didn't go anywhere. Now, the Pinball Arcade just had all sorts of struggles. They were always on the struggle bus.
    40:48
    So that Stern could partner with a company to make a Stern specific video game version. And again, they could choose to do things like we're not going to put out a game until it's two years old from production to address your concern, Tony. They could always do that and say, OK, well, yeah, we Jaws and and Foo Fighters isn't available right now. But but Godzilla is, even though it's still in production, they could be like, it's been two years. We've we've gotten our physical sales that we want. And maybe this will juice some additional sales where people will go and they'll buy the black and white version or something. So I do think that it would make sense. All of these things make more sense to me than trying to sell a $5,000 game at Costco. But what do I know? I know one thing, Tony. It's time to go to video games. Video games.
    41:42
    Anna Perina. I was going to say Anna Perina, but this is not about Cat Chow. I mean, no. It kind of involves cats, though, but Annapurna Interactive, which is part of Annapurna Movies, they're a publisher of a lot of big-name games, Stray, Outer Wilds, What Remains of Edith Finch, and several others.
    42:10
    Their entire staff resigned. Resigned. They weren't fired. They all resigned. There's apparently been an ongoing attempt, negotiations to spin the company off as its own independent company.
    42:31
    And the head of Annapurna overall withdrew from negotiations. So the entire staff quit. Oh, so my thought would be they'll probably spin up their own studio. That would be my guess. Okay. but this is interesting because in amongst all the things they're dealing with right now was we talked last week about the outer wilds archaeologist edition problem where they put out the wrong version of the game on the disc on the physical media. And they were just like, Oh, we're sorry. Here's a download code.
    43:06
    But they're actually now they have announced that they are going to be reprinting the disc. but their recommendation is if you've got the old disc, you've got the wrong one return it and when the new discs come out buy it again they're not going to do a return exchange they're just saying if you have the old one return it and then buy the new one once it's fixed and comes back out but I just thought this was an interesting thing to see an entire staff just resign so total staffing is like 25 people because it's a publishing company, not a coding group. But still, to see when the negotiations broke down, they were all just like, okay, bye. Bye-bye now. So I'm sure we'll be hearing from all of them again very soon.
    43:59
    Yes. Well, yeah, that is very interesting. But 25 to resign at once is pretty high. So, well, okay. Yeah. So they moved another co-founder over from the main Annapurna is currently running the interactive and they're bringing in new people. And they say nothing is changing about their schedule and everything else. Everything is going forward fine. There's just obviously going to be a spin up process. So they're probably in dealing with a lot of their other issues. There'll be probably some delays. September of last year we talked about Unity they made their decision to change from their subscription service for developers to their new thing causing developers to pay way more money which cost them a lot of got them a lot of hate and a lot of issues and they backed off of it somewhat and they're like oh okay we're only going to institute this on the new versions of Unity. The old versions will remain. Grandfathered, yeah. They'll be grandfathered in.
    45:08
    They went ahead and backed out of that entirely. They're returning to their old original subscription model because they just got hit so hard and so bad. It only took them a year to make the decision that... Oops.
    45:22
    God, okay. We're sorry that we completely annihilated our pay base and we're in deep trouble now. My bad. That's okay, I'm sure the CEO will probably be dismissed and land at another company Because he knows they always survive He already did He left after the debacle originally when they announced their partial And where did he go? I don't remember Probably running Boeing Probably Sorry, Boeing I have an ongoing conversation with another one of my friends We're talking about Boeing's issues and when the strike was announced, all I got was just a link to the article and wah-ha-ha-ha-ha.
    46:11
    Since many of our listeners probably do not know, Boeing is a major employer here in Kansas. Yes, they are, very much so. And they've obviously had issues in both their space and their airliner version stuff and now their entire factory staff is on strike. Yes. Boeing has been having a bad couple of years. Yes, multifaceted issues. Right. But this isn't the eclectic financials or the eclectic aerospace podcast. So Borderlands, we've talked about it extensively. It finally finished its theatrical run. It's done. We have final numbers.
    46:55
    Did it beat Deadpool? I don't know that it beat Deadpool's popcorn bucket. The final number is $30,975,300 is what the estimates are. Which is, I mean, so $31 million. Not bad.
    47:20
    They're estimating the cost of the movie was around $115 million. And the marketing and distribution was $30. So they made back marketing and distribution costs Yes Yay for this massive failure I guess we won't see a sequel Yeah That is very safe to say That we will not see the sequel First the Halo TV series and now this It's been a rough year for gamers It has And there are more gamer Stuff on the way They just finished Doing we just saw the trailer for Minecraft. Yes. Oh, there are concerns. There are concerns. It reminds me of the concerns we saw following the original Sonic trailer.
    48:11
    Meow? And Sonic ended up, they saved Sonic. That actually was a decent movie. They saved Sonic. I don't know about Minecraft. They saved Sonic. And Sonic got a sequel and is getting a Tricwell sequel. Yeah, they are.
    48:26
    And then they just finished filming on the Sleeping Dogs movie. So we'll see how that works out for them.
    48:37
    Amazon's got that Yakuza project coming out that I'm still unsure how Yakuza translates into a TV series. But we'll see. We will. I mean, once again, if you don't pick up a park bench to beat a horde of mooks to death, it's just not going to feel like a Yakuza game.
    48:59
    I made a conscious choice. Did you? Last episode. About what? When I was putting my notes down for last episode, I consciously decided to wait at least one episode to get more information before talking about the burning pile of crashing whatever that was Concorde. Now whoa whoa whoa You just said this is not the Eclectic Aerospace podcast So what are we doing talking about a supersonic airliner that has long been retired from the Anglo collaboration Sud Aviation Well, we're not. It just sounds like it. Instead, we're talking about the PlayStation and PC live service 5B5 hero shooter. Oh, okay. Yeah. You understood my confusion. I did understand your confusion. fits in perfectly well because when i originally thought it was going to bring it up it was because the sales were very low and the big thing was its total first day sales on the pc side of the release was 600 yes yes so we knew that the sales numbers were terrible they were really you chose to delay i chose to delay because it's like okay so it's it's it's been out a week and some change The sales numbers are real bad. All of it's going to delay. And you know who didn't delay? Sony didn't delay because it's done. It's over. They canceled the game. By the time this episode is coming out, the servers are offline. They went offline on Friday. This game was open for two weeks, and the servers are offline. Two weeks.
    50:43
    They reimbursed 100% of the purchasers of the game. all 25,000 people who bought this game got their money back. Oh, ouch. Borderlands didn't even do that. Eight years of development. Oh, my gosh. Millions of dollars spent. They announced the closure less than two weeks after the game came out. It is just probably. This is the level of flop that we had talked about with, like, No Man's Sky originally. Right, right. In fact, the No Man's Sky, they stayed with it. They saved it. Dutch Pinball Style saved it. But they were much faster than Dutch. But it has actually become a rather popular game. It is. Unlike Dutch Pinball. Right.
    51:34
    Dippix. PX, PX, PX, PX. But Concord, they just cut their losses. They're just like, no, this isn't even worth our time. We're just going to pull the plug. They're like, but the baby was just born. Pull it. It's not even technically on life support yet.
    51:54
    Pull it. And Tony's stressing all of this because, you know, we had a little pushback in the Discord, which link in the show notes if you enjoy the EGP Discord, because people are like, why are you not talking about Concord? This is a big deal. This is horrible. And Tony's like, I was waiting. I was. Because I did not think that they would pull the plug and shut it down this fast. I was like, I felt like my initial talking point would be, hey, this was a pretty big, this game had a lot of people involved, a lot of development, a lot of money, and it has just crashed and burned. And we'll see where things are going to go from here and how they're going to save it. So I was like, I'll wait. I'll wait two weeks. I'll wait until the next episode and talk about it. I agreed with your decision. And then just in this situation, I was wrong. They were just like, no. I'm just going to, no. No. This is like, there was the first blind date, and she leans in for the kiss, and you kind of like peck the cheek, and it's like, I'll call you tomorrow. And then you break your phone in half when you get in the car, and you pick up a new phone with a new number. That's what this was. Thank you, Cricket Wireless. this is why when i'm dating i have this is why i have two phones i have my dating phone which is a burner and the relationship turns into something real then i can give them i can do the whole oh i got a new phone so here's my new number so you know that way i can tell and I can just walk away.
    53:35
    Ghost dog. So, yeah, no, this is just... But here's the thing. Did we need another 5v5 team shooter? I mean, but you know how it is with this stuff. It's like, hey, look, this one was successful or maybe this one's struggling and we think we can... You know, years ago, maybe they were like... They looked and... I mean, I don't remember exactly when they started. It was eight years ago. All right, eight years ago. Maybe they were like, all right, Overwatch is making this mistake. They're going to Overwatch 2. They're trying to make it all PvE. It's never going to work. Let's swoop in so we're ready to steal it from them.
    54:13
    And, I mean, oops. Marvel Rivals did better. Right. Well, I'm assuming. But it's going to be free to play. Right, where this wasn't. Right. That was probably the thing that they did the most wrong was the decision to charge for this thing rather than make it. That's my guess. people would have tried it if it was free to play right but i i just think with valorient marvel rivals overwatch i mean it's saturated but we saw the same thing you know what 15 20 years ago with world of warcraft and then everyone had to have an mmo right but what mmos are left world of warcraft and final fantasy 14 and eve online yeah elder scrolls i yeah kind of but yeah i guess i don't know all of them they're like they're all alive guys what are you guys talking about they're all they're definitely still there no it's not it's gone leave it alone i did that yeah the start the star trek one's gone too leave it alone actually i think there was that superhero one where's the superhero the superhero one is gone yeah uh some people like that one but star trek online is actually still running oh okay okay they're all around still but i think i don't know that it how how healthy it is yeah but it's still running yeah uh the suluban have taken over most of the sectors worst thing ever i quit watching enterprise um all right well this is probably the only issue that sony's facing right now would be it's totally sony's only issue i mean they've got new hardware coming out everybody loves new hardware they do people love hardware people love hardware they have released the playstation 5 pro oh so this is like they they just i thought microsoft made a big mistake doing the series s and the series x because all these developers are struggling with like it's hard to make anything work on this s right but i mean so tell me about the pro because so the pro is an upgraded version of the ps5 it's got a more powerful GPU. It's got enhanced ray tracing and machine learning hardware to do upscaling for better video. Basically, the goal is to make it look better and run 60 FPS, you know, like computers have for decades. We don't need your computer BS, okay? The console people deserve rights. The console, yeah. I've heard the discussion. I've heard console people tell me that the human I can only see 30 FPS and the 60 FPS or higher is just not important. It's not. So I'm telling you that it's not important. Get over it. So they've got this beautiful new machine and they have this launch for it. That the best way to talk about hardware is to put out a hardware specialist who talks about hardware in a very hardware specialist way. Yeah, it was super, super.
    57:16
    Not exciting. Well, but this is for the hardest of hardcore. It is, for the really hardcore people who are willing to spend. Because you may be surprised, but some console people do know about specs and stuff. They do. They might actually own computers and just play on their TVs. For some reason. Because it's more relaxing. I guess. You wouldn't know. I wouldn't know. You sit in your little office chair. I do. And you play your games on your three monitors. I only have two monitors. That's right. You've fallen apart. I have. I replaced my three monitors with two larger monitors that are as big as my three monitors put together were. Yes, all part of the plan. All part of the plan.
    57:57
    Okay, so the announcement reveal was a little rough. It was a little rough. It did not help that doing the announcement video, thanks to the pain of Internet compression, and the algorithms on YouTube for compression and the way everything comes out,
    58:22
    you couldn't see any difference in any of the video. That is always a risk. It's like trying to understand the dynamic color range of HDR when you're not looking on an HDR device. Right. Or my favorite is, let's film Vantablack, and it looks like black.
    58:40
    But it's better in person. I mean, I believe you, but you chose to film it, and it looks like black.
    58:46
    And that's where this ran into the issue, is I have heard from people who've actually seen them side by side. There is a very visible difference. You can tell, especially on third-party games.
    59:03
    Unfortunately, you can't tell in any of the videos they released, which is going to make it very much a harder sale, because the PS5 is still $500.
    59:15
    The Pro is $700. Unless you like physical media, then you have to buy an add-on optical disk drive for an extra $80. Oh. Because it doesn't come with what? Oh. Oh, dear. Oh, my. So to get something To get the PS5 Pro To play like your PS5 You need to pay $780 Before taxes Yes, of course before taxes To match up to your What you get with your $500 PS5 But some of this stuff looks better You just can't tell You just have to take their word for it Ouch Yeah, it has definitely not been the greatest for them. And they've also had some talks, Sony has recently, that they feel like their first-party franchises are weak.
    60:29
    And that they've had some issues that have come up that they feel like they're light on the first-party side of things. out. Well, they used to be very strong on the first party side, but when you think about it, their first party franchises at this point are like God of War, Horizon Zero Dawn, and a few others, but it's definitely not the depth of bench that they used to have.
    60:58
    So it's been kind of a rough little go here for Sony because unfortunately, Concord's not going to help them out with sale. No, that's too bad.
    61:12
    And that's what I have for this beautiful video game update. I hope people enjoyed the Concord update because they were pushing for it. They were. I felt so bad when the comments started coming in. I'm like, oh, my God. I literally had the notes typed up, and I was looking at them, and I was looking at everything, and I'm like, you know what? I'm going to hold off an episode. I want to see how this kind of grows and builds out.
    61:37
    Terrible decision. Almost as bad as a decision as to release the game. Yes. Well, what isn't a terrible decision is people who want to reach out to us, emailing eclecticgamerspodcast.gmail.com. You can also go to facebook.com slash eclecticgamerspodcast. If you want to support the show, you can go to patreon.com slash eclectic underscore gamers. And I did want to make a notation because this has also come up in the Discord. and I probably should have done an announcement. I just didn't really think about it because I don't use an iOS device.
    62:07
    Apple is charging a 30% fee that they have when you use iOS to make Patreon subscriptions. Sad. So here's the thing. Patreon gives you the choice and the default choice, which is the one that we have done for Eclectic Gamers is you will pay this fee. I am not paying your fee for you because we mostly have people who pay us a dollar a month, and I'm not giving another 30 cents of that up to cover your poor decisions to use Apple products. So here's the thing. My recommendation is that you go to the Patreon website, and you just pay direct, and you don't pay with iOS because that's what I do. And then there's no fee, because we already pay Patreon fees on the money we get. I'm not paying Apple fees. I don't own Apple products. And I don't know very many podcasts that are going to have chosen that option. So we did get the announcement. I probably should have put something out. I just didn't even think about it until someone in our Discord mentioned the 30% fee. And I was like, oh, crap. I didn't actually even really sit there and think about anyone all of a sudden seeing this massive increase in cost because now it would be $1.30. Right. So if you were at $1. And obviously it's 30%. So it scales the more up you go. So honestly, the answer is not to do it through iOS. It really is. But so I encourage you not to do that and subject yourself to those fees because if you're subscribing to multiple Patreons like I do, it will probably. Oh, yeah. And especially can you imagine if you're those people who subscribe to the places that have the like really crazy high Patreon? Yeah. So it's just like I know some people that I don't subscribe to their high level Patreons, but I'm like do like the low level stuff. But they've got high levels that are one to three hundred dollars. Oh, sure. Yeah. So it's – yeah, definitely consider just moving away from that because I highly doubt any podcasts are going to just eat the fee. I mean it is an option, but it's like – and I get it because people are going to see that. And some of you might just unsubscribe instead, which of course is an option that you can do. But if you want to do the support and not pay that fee, just go to the Patreon website and take care of it there. so anyway but those are the those are the plugs that i normally do yep we're also available on twitch and instagram and click to underscore gamers and we'll be back in a couple of weeks i don't know we'll have another pinball reveal rumor is american pinball's game is close so but that it's concord oh that's the thing i forgot about concord what oh i forgot something about Oh, no. How can you forget?
    64:51
    Amazon has an anthology animated series coming out called Secret Levels. It's by the producers of Love, Death, and Robots, which is an anthology series on Netflix that are little short animated videos of sci-fi stories. So what they're doing are a series of 15 episodes. Each one is a short episode set in a different game world and just telling a background story in it. one of them said in Concord. So it's just going to be like a character in like a blackness, right? A black screen. Well, it's already done. So they're going to have something, but there's just no game. Okay. All the initial reports are, they're still going to release the episode because they made it. Yeah. Why not? And all of that. Okay. But it's like, wow, this, this looks really cool. I want to go play this game. Oh, no, no dumpster fire.
    65:45
    Oh, So sad. Crackle, crackle, crackle. The marshmallows. But until next time, I'm Tony. I'm Dennis. See ya. Goodbye.