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AtGames, hear us out

BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 23m·analyzed·Feb 24, 2021
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.034

TL;DR

Blockade analyzes AtGames and Arcade1Up pinball cabinets: demand, quality issues, pricing strategy, and licensing opportunities.

Summary

Chris Freebus and Jared Morgan discuss Arcade1Up and AtGames pinball cabinet shipping, quality issues, and market demand. They examine AtGames add-on pricing strategy, licensing opportunities for Arcade1Up/Zen, and analyze an AtGames owner survey. The hosts praise both companies' demand success while offering constructive criticism on hardware design, software update stability, and value proposition clarity.

Key Claims

  • Arcade1Up Star Wars cabinets arriving with DMD and monitor quality issues including missing pixels, contrast problems, and color issues

    high confidence · Chris and Jared discussing customer reports from Facebook forums and YouTube

  • Arcade1Up cabs lack software-accessible brightness/contrast controls; AtGames has this feature

    high confidence · Chris noting Arcade1Up should offer this; Jared confirming AtGames does have nudge sensitivity adjustment

  • AtGames recently released a software update that bricked units, preventing any gameplay until rollback

    high confidence · Jared describing the bricking incident as making units unbootable for games, requiring factory reset and rollback

  • Both Arcade1Up and AtGames are experiencing demand far exceeding initial projections

    high confidence · Chris and Jared discussing pre-order waves; AtGames on fourth wave, Arcade1Up likewise surprised by demand

  • AtGames is on fourth wave of pre-orders; wave-four customers expected delivery around May, with retail launch June

    medium confidence · Jared citing expected timeline based on AtGames announcements

  • AtGames Legends Pinball apron modular playfield control panel is priced at $200 US

    high confidence · Chris reveals price after Jared guesses $100, calling it exorbitant

  • Zen-developed pinball tables on Arcade1Up cabs were designed for landscape orientation, not portrait, affecting perceived playfield size

    high confidence · Jared explaining design intent and comparing to landscape screen viewing

  • High demand for arcade/pinball cabs opens licensing opportunity for premium IP like The Addams Family on Arcade1Up

    medium confidence · Chris speculating on licensing strategy and risk reduction with proven market demand

  • AtGames Legends Pinball is positioned as a loss leader with profit realized through expensive add-on sales

Notable Quotes

  • “Software's hard. Rolling updates, even if you control your own hardware ecosystem like AtGames do, there's always going to be some problem.”

    Chris Freebus @ N/A — Contextualizes software bricking incident as an industry-wide challenge rather than singular failure

  • “You're not selling this cabinet with the software that's in it. You're selling this cabinet for the potential of what software it can play based off of how people plug into it.”

    Chris Freebus @ N/A — Core critique of AtGames value proposition—hardware extensibility should drive design decisions over bundled software

  • “I truly believe that the Legends Pinball, it's a loss leader. They knock the price really low because now I'm seeing the prices of all the add-ons, and the prices on the add-ons are like, 'Holy crap, you've got to be kidding me.'”

    Chris Freebus @ N/A — Identifies AtGames pricing strategy: subsidized hardware offset by high-margin add-ons

  • “The problem you have is when you're looking at these Facebook forums, it's usually negativity or problems...You're right, Chris. The problem you have is when you're looking at these Facebook forums, it's usually negativity or problems. Sometimes, depending on the forum, it is positivity.”

    Jared Morgan @ N/A — Acknowledges confirmation bias in online complaint forums; highlights difficulty assessing true defect rates

  • “I wonder if you could optionally say, 'Let me install updates when I want rather than automatically deploy them.' Because if that was the case, I would almost be the cautious consumer and enable that feature.”

    Jared Morgan @ N/A — Proposes user control over automatic updates as risk mitigation for future software failures

  • “It makes it a lot easier to approve [licenses], knowing that hey, there's a big customer base waiting for exactly that.”

    Chris Freebus @ N/A — Argues demand surge justifies licensing investment; reduces risk for premium IP placement on Arcade1Up

  • “The whole point of a pre-order. Exactly right. Saving yourself a headache. You're going to get it sometime.”

Entities

Chris Freebus (Shut Your Trap)personJared MorganpersonArcade1UpcompanyAtGamescompanyZen StudioscompanyThe Pinball ShowmediaStar Wars (Arcade1Up cabinet)gameMarvel (Arcade1Up cabinet)gameAttack from Mars (Arcade1Up cabinet)game

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Online complaint forums biased toward negative posts; positive customer experiences underrepresented, making defect rate assessment difficult

    high · Jared: 'People that love the product don't sit there and go, Oh, yeah, my contrast is perfect. And that would be their post because nobody wants to read that.'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: AtGames hardware ports positioned in ways that create poor cable management; design prioritizes aesthetics over extensibility despite hardware being sold as platform for add-ons

    medium · Chris: 'You're selling this cabinet for the potential of what software it can play based off of how people plug into it. So put the plug in a place that works when connecting to a computer so that you're not seeing these gross cables coming off the top of the machine.'

  • ?

    event_signal: AtGames conducted National Owners Day event revealing new product pricing and add-ons; survey to owners about future direction closed around Friday of episode recording

    high · Chris: 'AtGames put out a survey...I believe it's actually closed now, officially. They were taking responses up until Friday, I think.'

  • ?

    licensing_signal: High demand for pinball cabinets creates opportunity and reduces risk for premium IP licensing (Addams Family, Jurassic Park); justifies licensing investment

    medium · Chris: 'Paying for that license would make so much more sense because you know that that cab would sell like hotcakes...takes that risk away from them in terms of having to pay what might be an exorbitant price for the license.'

  • $

    market_signal: Arcade1Up and AtGames experiencing demand far exceeding projections; both companies on high pre-order waves

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.251

0:00
blockade pinball podcast this is the blockade pinball podcast i'm your host chris freebus aka shut your trap joining me as always halfway across the world why it's jared morgan howdy ho all right so um folks we had a little bit of a um a gap you might say with our recording and it's all my fault it is all jared's fault but that's okay i had scheduling issues yeah so um so the fact that jared has scheduling issues we wanted to get onto a schedule that works for jared uh just giving you guys a heads up we're going to be pretty much now on an every two week schedule every other week, which means, unfortunately, I'm sorry to say, yes, Zen is going to be having another one of their, the pinball show this upcoming week. We will be reacting to it, just not as quickly as some of you might hope for. Yeah, that's right. So we'll be doing it. Yeah, we'll be doing it. It'll just be the week after it comes out, just in case any of you. I want to get that out of the way right now.
1:21
yeah because what's interesting is we saw well i was having a bit of a look over the uh the youtube stats chris and that was a very popular episode like us dissecting out the information from from the pinball show so we'll obviously keep doing that for you folks because you seem to enjoy it um our our rampant speculation from from a show we can we can i reckon we'll be able to get another 60 minutes out of a 20 minute show. Oh, I'm sure that we'll be up for that.
1:53
And it also kind of depends. I mean, I guess the thing is, I don't think that we're going to be getting any super hot news this time around. Like having a new Pinball FX drop. That obviously requires an immediate response. Yeah, that's right. We can't muck around with that. But I don't expect that Zen's going to be doing that kind of a drop every single episode. I mean, it'd be great if they did. It would be, for us, especially for content, yeah. Yeah, perfect.

medium confidence · Chris's interpretation based on low base price and high add-on pricing observed at AtGames Owners Day

  • Arcade1Up's port placement on Legends Pinball (presumably) is poorly designed for external connectivity

    medium confidence · Chris criticizing cable management and port location in context of hardware design feedback

    • Jared Morgan @ N/A — Defends wave-four customers accepting shipping costs for guarantee; normalizes pre-order trade-offs

  • “People that love the product don't sit there and go, 'Oh, yeah, my contrast is perfect.' And that would be their post because nobody wants to read that.”

    Jared Morgan @ N/A — Identifies sampling bias in online reviews; emphasizes need to contextualize complaint-driven data

  • “They are blowing through. They're on their fourth wave of accepting pre-orders...The risk they took on this product is well and truly paying off.”

    Chris Freebus @ N/A — Validates AtGames and Arcade1Up business gamble; frames demand surge as market validation

  • “Who thought that pinball would be doing this? Obviously, both of them were probably basing their numbers off of, you know, their arcade cabs, I would think.”

    Jared Morgan @ N/A — Suggests pinball cabinet demand exceeded arcade precedent; indicates market expansion beyond historical data

    • Legends Pinball
    product
    Ultimate Arcadeproduct
    ArcadeNet serviceproduct
    Legends Gamer Deckproduct
    Midway Legends cabproduct
    Mel Kirkperson
    Cool Toy Dougperson
    The Addams Family (pinball table concept)game
    Jurassic Park (speculated)game
    Mortal Kombatgame
    Costcoorganization

    high · Chris: 'They are blowing through. They're on their fourth wave of accepting pre-orders.' Both companies 'completely threw them off guard' by demand; characterized as validation of business gamble

  • ?

    community_signal: Blockade Pinball Podcast transitioning to biweekly schedule to accommodate co-host Jared Morgan's availability (Australia timezone); impacts reaction time to Zen Studios Pinball Show announcements

    high · Chris: 'we're going to be pretty much now on an every-two-week schedule...we will be reacting to it, just not as quickly as some of you might hope for.'

  • $

    market_signal: AtGames employing loss-leader pricing on Legends Pinball base unit; offsetting via high-margin add-ons ($200+ control panels)

    medium · Chris: 'I truly believe that the Legends Pinball, it's a loss leader...the prices on the add-ons...are like, Holy crap, you've got to be kidding me. They are not cheap at all.'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Attack from Mars Arcade1Up cabinet delayed; pre-orders sold out; expected mid-March shipping based on Twitter intel

    medium · Jared: 'mid-March, I guess AFM might start shipping. That's based off of some date that Jared saw.' Jared planning to scout Costco from March 17th onward

  • ?

    product_strategy: Arcade1Up cabs lack software-accessible brightness/contrast controls; AtGames includes nudge sensitivity adjustment; Blockade recommends this feature be added to Arcade1Up

    high · Chris: Arcade1Up 'should offer the ability to change the brightness and contrast on the monitor.' Jared: 'that's something that AtGames has in theirs.'

  • ?

    product_concern: Arcade1Up Star Wars cabinets arriving with multiple hardware defects: DMD missing pixels, monitor contrast/brightness issues, color problems

    high · Chris: 'DMD screen is having missing pixels, or there's issues with the main monitor, like just plain cutting out or being hyper-bright.' Jared confirms 'real contrast issues and color issues with some of these monitors coming out.'

  • ?

    technology_signal: AtGames software update bricked Legends Pinball units, rendering them unbootable; users forced to rollback to factory defaults

    high · Jared: 'One of the last updates bricked the unit for everybody...it was just making it so that they couldn't play anything on their cabinet...even the things that you were offline, that you had loaded into your cab, you were not able to play.'

    • 2:24
    So anyway, that's the heads up. I had a couple of people message me going, what's going on with you guys? Are you dead? What's going on? We're just aligning the show to match scheduling issues, because again, life gets in the way, and it doesn't help us being on literally opposite sides of the world. It is tricky. hey I don't know Chris if you've noticed the new addition to the artwork behind me at the moment. You know I saw a post that you did that obviously shows them in much clearer view but yes Jared's decorated his room with some Rick and Morty and some Beavis and Butthead but there's things inside their heads yeah there's stuff on top of their heads and it's from this Art is for Losers exhibition that was at Netherworld and Something about the posters, the art, you could buy the prints for like $25 or the framed originals for $80 and they were gone. Like the $80 ones were snapped up probably I think on the day of those prints because they're very popular.
    3:28
    But yeah, the prints were $25. So I just went and got the pigeon pairs and went down to Ikea and got like the really nice frames for $15. And there you go. I've got a nice little art collection there now for less than about, I don't know, 160 Australians. So not bad. If you want a better view of those, well, that's where you go. Get onto my Insta. You go onto his Insta or because I don't really do my Instagram, but I saw him on Jared's Twitter. Yeah, I was on Twitter, yeah. I posted it in both ways. So check out the little thing down the bottom there. Sorry, this side. Yeah, there you go. There you go. I know it's hard when you don't mirror yourself. Backwards. This way. yeah yeah something so yeah get to come out they're really cool so um i hope they do more art installations like that because i've got bare walls i need to fill uh what else has been going on in the in the gap there um i for those of you you know i'll mention these things now and then uh things that i've been watching um for those of you that uh in these covid times have just you're at wit's end and you need something to really brighten your day but still not pandering to you, I highly recommend that show, Ted Lasso. It's like a bright... Oh, it's so good. It's like a bright ray of sunshine. It is never mean and yet it is thoroughly adult. Oh, it's properly adult and it's not about soccer. Oh, sorry, football if you're in the UK.
    4:58
    It's based around that sport but this was what put me off the show initially when watching it but then so many people told me, you have to watch Ted Lasso. And I did, and I went, why did I wait so long? Like, it was such a good, good show. I don't know if they're doing another one. No, I'm sure they're doing another season. But it's not just that the content is good. Like I said, it's also one of those just, you're never feeling a sense of dread while watching it. Instead, you're kind of like, oh, I wonder how it's going to work out. It's not, oh, I wonder when things are going to turn bad. it's no how are things going to work out yeah because because the thing is that like the show's when it starts it's already pretty bad so they okay they could only go up from where they start the uh the series yeah um you know so it's it's about the rise to glory i guess um and it's great yeah it's very nuanced it's very it's fantastic so i just wanted to throw that out there for those of you that are looking for some viewing that will uplift you but not pander to you at the same time. Absolutely. Definitely two thumbs up. Two thumbs up. There you go.
    6:12
    You're doing the two thumbs up. I don't know if you guys over there in Australia, I don't know why you would know of them, but back in the day, Siskel and Ebert, they were famous. Oh, yeah. That's my reference to it. Okay.
    6:24
    Somebody has gone and found their old movie reviews for classic movies like Empire Strikes back, Raiders of the Lost Ark. Wow. And they've tried... They've been at it for a long time, Ron. Oh, God, yeah. They were... Yeah. Very long time. They tried to... They found the best video source, you know, of theirs, you know, trying to clean up the VHS waves and, you know, all that stuff. But then whenever they go to the movie clip, they throw in the full, you know, HD version of the movie clip that they're talking about, which is kind of jarring, but it's kind of cool at the same time because and i don't know if they're showing exactly what what they were showing um i mean it's definitely the same moment but i don't know if they were showing that long of the clip that they were doing but it's still kind of cool to just see it like oh oh hey that's that's much better than watching some bad wavy pan and scan version of what they were talking about exactly you know it's funny we've got a similar sort of couple movie couple here in australia called Margaret Pomerantz and David Stratton. And they've been doing this show on the Special Broadcasting Service, or SBS as it's known here, for years as well. Probably not as long as those two dudes, but still a very long time. They were doing it when I was a kid, and now I'm 41. So they've been at this for a long time. And their show is called The Movie Show, and they have just reviewed a pile of movies. Like David Stratton, he's just the movie critic for Australia, I think.
    8:02
    And there you go. So there's the extent of our movie talk and entertainment talk today. We're going to dive into our typical pinball talk. Today's show is going to be a little bit critical, possibly. It is, and I'm sure we're probably going to get flack for it. Yeah, so pull up your britches. But this is not meant to slam anybody. It's more meant to try and, hey, give a listen and try and improve. It's constructive criticism. Let's put it that way. So it definitely will be. I think we'll both pick each other up if we're being too negative, but I think we know the pattern that we want to go for with this, so I think we'll be okay. But the thing is, the subject we're going to be talking about, there's definitely, I guess, a pattern out there that this company does actually listen, and I think based on that, there might be a hope that perhaps some of our thoughts may... I mean, we are just two people. Obviously, they will need to listen and listen to this with a grain of salt and do what they want with it, if they even listen at all. But it's still going to be interesting, I think. Spoiler alert, we're going to talk about at-games. Yeah.
    9:25
    But let's first talk about some issues that are kind of coming up with both ad games and Arcade 1-Up with their pinball, and that is shipping and delivery.
    9:37
    It's not easy. No. Currently, with Arcade 1-Up, the Star Wars pinball cab has been arriving in people's homes. They have been getting those shipments.
    9:50
    Unfortunately, some of those people are then going and posting that their DMD screen is having mixing pixels or there's issues with the main monitor, like just plain cutting out or being hyper-bright.
    10:07
    Yeah, some real contrast issues and color issues with some of these monitors coming out. And I don't know if... I'm hoping this is just a rare occurrence, not across-the-board occurrence. It's hard to tell when... Because who usually posts these things? People that are complaining. People that love the product don't sit there and go, oh, yeah, my contrast is perfect. And that would be their post because nobody wants to read that. No one cares. Nobody cares. That's the problem. You're right, Chris. The problem you have is when you're looking at these Facebook forums, it's usually negativity or problems. Sometimes, depending on the forum, it is positivity and, hey, look, I love my game.
    10:47
    The Toy Shop forum actually is normally pretty positive. There's a lot of happy customers with that. But then everybody goes, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're a homer.
    10:54
    It's in your home. Of course you're going to love it. Yeah, exactly. yeah so but you know there you go take it as you will but i do want to just point out something that i know is not available on the arcade one-up cabinet um this would be a software thing so hi zen um there should be actually the hardware end would be uh arcade one-up you should offer the ability to change the brightness and contrast on the monitor that should just oh absolutely I don't know why that's not a setting. Yep. I don't know how they would do it, like whether they just have physical control somewhere or whether they're working on the software. Do they do it on the arcade one-ups? On the cab that I have, if you go into the back and you reach up, there is actually contrast and brightness that you can mess with. It's not easy to get to, and you would need literally two people, one person standing at the front going, yeah, I like that, and the other person physically doing the control. It's like tuning the aerial on the roof. Yes. Someone going, yeah, that's good. Okay, a little bit to the left. Yeah. So not ideal. Just put it in there as… Accessibly. Accessibly so that people can change it accordingly. Because I did that indeed. The Street Fighter, it was way too washed out for me. It was blown out. Yeah. And so I knocked it down quite a bit and got it to more my liking, sacrificing the lower end, like how much you move your head, what is still showing. But I mean, there are sacrifices you make, but I still think it should be a software option right there in the options. Yeah, if there's some way of tying it into the actual software itself, they actually have an interface into the monitor. But I mean, I don't know if... There's one thing we're not sure about with the arcade one-up screens is if they do have the um the tuning controls on the monitor whether it's just a panel and that's it right um hopefully someone will actually flip the top up i'm sure mel could tell us because he's got he's got one of these cabinets we could probably ask him a question to see if there is tuning controls on it the uh now the part that i wish that zen would step in because i'm hearing this and seeing examples on youtube uh the nudging and the sensitivity of it I really do think that you should be allowed to tweak the sensitivity of your nudging as opposed to just being on or off and the reason that I say that is even when you're using a controller and you go ahead and you do your nudge, well if I do a harsh nudge it does a full strength nudge if I do soft, it does a soft nudge on my Pinsim cabinet, I actually went into Windows and I was able to tune what the accelerometer sensitivity was. Because at first it was literally, if I pushed the button it would tilt.
    14:02
    I'm like, all I did was I pushed my button so I had to knock down the sensitivity on that. So I know that it functions and plays and you know, that should be, they should do some degrees of nudge, I just think. allow it and that's something that ad games has in theirs oh yeah right yeah well that's yeah i think that's definitely something that rk1up should sort out i think this sounds like there is a calibration option in the the rk1up cabinet although not having used it i don't know what it does like whether the whether it will actually level things out for you if you actually calibrate again when it's installed i don't know so because you know we don't have the cabinet so we can't trust it so unfortunately we're living vicariously through everyone else at the moment which by the way it can be exceedingly frustrating because a lot of the comments that we read and hear were like clearly you've never played these games on pc or you've never played digital pinball at all at all or you don't understand uh what they're trying to achieve and so i know that one of the things that jared uh was commenting on this past week uh somebody was complaining about oh it's in the arcade one-up cab in theory is really only a 15-inch monitor because that's how much of the actual play field is filling up and they were talking about star wars cabs yeah i just couldn't quite get that it's like no because they were complaining there's too much dead space in the apron well here's the thing it's a wide body table you know it's a wide body table most of the star wars tables are wide body tables yeah they are and not only that but like they were designed for pc play they were designed for ps4 and xbox like and what they've done is they've gone and put them into a pinball machine using a like a adjusted cabinet mode but these machines were fantasy tables they were made up tables that zen have done and they're not the same as a regular standard size apron belly williams table for example so right it's part of the aesthetic of these tables that yes you do have a lot of apron area because they often put a lot of animated characters and features onto that apron like it actually acts in a lot of places like a stage for these characters to interact on so it's purposely designed like that and while you may think that the play field is smaller it doesn't actually detract from the gameplay at all like the way that they've designed the game and the shots and the shot making everything like that it's designed to work within that form factor flawlessly so while your visibility or your play area may be reduced they've actually catered for that in the design of the table yeah um because you know remember that these tables when they're originally released they were designed to be played in landscape format not portrait format so just like if you've never played these before as a consumer uh and you're wondering what it was like on a landscape screen think think about that like you're actually if you're using that analogy it's probably like a like a five centimeter play field if you think about the way it's actually oriented on a landscape screen. So I don't really know how to answer that question except saying that it's by design.
    17:31
    Well, and quit comparing it to things that were designed for their reproductions from an actual cabinet kind of thing. I don't know. I mean, the option would be to have a wider cabinet, I guess. I don't know. That's where you're dealing with trying to cram something into the confines of a 16x9 monitor.
    17:52
    Yes. All right. Those are the issues that Arcade 1-Up is having right now. Nobody has received their Marvel pinball yet, and nobody really knows when their Attack from Mars cabinets are coming, which sold out like that on Best Buy's pre-order. other than Jared you seem to have seen something I did actually see on Twitter and I think Mel actually retreated saying that's hot but it was Marvel and a Star Wars cabinet side by side with some topper oh that was cool toys Doug's yeah he'd done both of his side by side just kind of showing off his fandom yeah yeah yeah and that looked really nice like having him together like that oh it makes you go i might i don't know if i could just have one because he got the he got the marvel cab for review and then he had ordered the star wars cab so that's why that's right that's why he's got that's why it was true yeah yeah that's right uh so who knows there's possibility that mid-march i guess afm might start shipping that's based off of some date that jared saw well put it this way i'm gonna be uh having a look around costco every day um around from of about 17th of March onwards to see if I could spot one of these things in the wild and if I see one, I'll absolutely take photos of it for you guys. Now on the flip side, I should point out we heard some numbers about Arcade 1-Up and what the demand for these things are.
    19:33
    It's rather astounding. Completely threw them off guard and And it's nothing but good. We'll get into why it's nothing but good in just a moment, because it's also nothing but good for AtGames. Same situation.
    19:48
    They are blowing through. They're on their fourth wave of accepting pre-orders. Pre-orders, yeah. Fourth wave. They've got to be happy about that, right? Yeah. The risk they took on this product is well and truly paying off, just as IK1UP's gamble was. Exactly. like almost like round of applause to everyone right for backing it because this means it opens up a huge amount of opportunities for these companies to innovate in this space so now unfortunately they're still only taking payments from the wave one people well the way for people i don't think i think they said that they could maybe expect sometime around may that they'd be catching delivery. Here's the bummer with that. They're supposed to hit retail in about June. Now, obviously, you want to pre-order so that you guarantee you get it rather than stocking a store waiting for their shipments to come in to be able to potentially get one But it is kind of a rub that if you doing that way for and you get yours in May and you paid the to of shipping on this thing only to then find out that oh, I could have just gone down the block and picked it up myself and saved myself that money. That's kind of a bummer. That will sting a little bit. But I think the people who are hanging around, like the people who are actually going, I want to get in on wave four, probably already understand, you know what? I'm doing this pre-order so I can guarantee to get it, and I'm going to wear the $200 shipping or whatever it is, $100, just so I get it. Yeah, I mean, that is the whole point of a pre-order. Exactly right. Saving yourself a headache.
    21:36
    You're going to get it sometime. Unfortunately, headaches have hit some of the users in terms of, so AdGames is constantly, from what everybody posts, they're constantly doing updates on this. I guess one of the last updates bricked the unit for everybody. Yeah, that's not ideal. When I say bricked, I'm not saying that it completely foobarred it to the point of now it doesn't work. It's not Red Ring of Death bricking. Yes, Red Ring. We haven't heard the Red Ring of Death in a while, have we? That's right. Yeah, that's a blast from the past. But instead, it was just making it so that they couldn't play anything on their cabinet. Yeah, it just wouldn't boot. You could access the update bootloader system, but you couldn't play. There was something wrong with it. And the sad part is that means even the things that you were offline had loaded into your cab, you were not able to play. So people were having to basically revert to default initial factory setting, and then... Roll back. Roll back, and then waiting for the next update to roll out so that they could tweak and go forward. I mean these things happen I've only got one thing to say about this software's hard rolling updates even if you control your own hardware ecosystem like AtGames do there's always going to be some problem so you know that being said it is a little worrisome the fingers of AtGames constantly poking at your unit well yes I don't know whether you could and anyone within that games cabinet, please do confirm this. I wonder if you could optionally say, let me install updates when I want, rather than automatically deploy them. Because if that was the case, I would almost be the cautious consumer and enable that feature. So I could basically have all the bleeding edge early adopters confirm that the thing doesn't brick my system. Yeah, exactly. That's the pro tip. If it's available for me, that's what you do. having fallen victim to that several times with software updates.
    23:50
    So let's get to the good news with all this. Obviously, both these companies are far exceeding what they thought that the demand for this stuff would be, which is fantastic. I mean, who thought that pinball would be doing this? Obviously, both of them were probably basing their numbers off of you know, they're arcade cabs, I would think. Yeah, well, that's the only bit of actual data they have, so they'd probably be doing that, yeah, I would think. So it's interesting that the pinball cabs, I don't know if they're doing necessarily better right off the bat from what the arcade cabs did, but it seems to definitely have caught them off guard.
    24:33
    I think so, yeah. I think they're a little surprised at how much people want one of these things. So what does that mean for us? Well, let's look at it in terms of, let's start with arcade one-up and what that means, especially with Zen involved.
    24:50
    You can almost guarantee that there's going to be a, I would say they're going to brand it Jurassic Park just because that will sell in retail. But it's a universal licensed table with all the universal stuff in it. I can almost guarantee that that's growing forward. And people have found box art that indicated that. I don't know if it was photoshopped, but... Well, probably. The internet is pretty good at photoshopping. Yes. It's hard to believe when you don't see it directly from the source.
    25:23
    Yeah. But it also means that... Can you imagine... This would make purchasing something like, let's say, Adam's Family... family you know paying for that license would make so much more sense because you know that cab would sell like hotcakes and the stores would probably want that actually in their stores um i i i wouldn't be able to predict how many units of those they would sell i don't think there would be a ceiling to it like they could they could mint thousands of them and they would sell right so basically it takes the risk from zen and from arcade one because they would have to also secure the licensing but it takes that risk away from them in terms of having to pay what might be an exorbitant price for the license to know that hey there's a big customer base though waiting for exactly that um so it makes makes it a lot easier to approve yep that sort of thing it also i think opens up the door for again take it take adam's family boom you pay for that license you put that on slap that on a cab now what other tables are you going to fill on with it here come your zen originals that are unlicensed you know yeah you You throw those on. Those just become the bonus gravy. You know what I mean? Exactly. Like, you've got your core table of Adam's family, and then maybe one other Belly Williams table to complement it, and then a whole lot of other ancillary tables. And, you know, we see that model with Arcade 1, with their cabinets with multiple versions of, pardon me, Pac-Man on, and then some random game. Well, just look at what they did with, what are they calling it, the Midway Legends cab with the Mortal Kombat, and it's got all these Midway titles slopped in. I mean, it's a 12-in-1 cab.
    27:32
    That thing has just been, like, according to the app game, I switched between these so easily, sorry. Quit naming your companies with both starting with A. A, it's hard. Too many A's, man. Too many A's. Anyhow, so, yeah, RK1UP, like, announced they were a little bit surprised just how well that product was received in the marketplace and they go like you know it's it's like so in demand so that's a really good indication that people want these like really quite marquee label brands and why shouldn't that translate to pinball like you know it's it's such an obvious thing you're right like it makes a lot of sense so there's where it's a good thing for Zen having the licenses that they do or the ability to go after certain licenses that they do that it makes it less dangerous that they're not going to earn their money back for the outlet. It reduces risk dramatically. With AtGames, I think it opens up the whole possibility of what people are willing to pay for their hardware.
    28:41
    Because that's really the value proposition that AtGames is all about, they're not necessarily about the software included. They're about the possibilities with the hardware, and that's really their selling point. So you're right. It's going to be very interesting. Because hopefully they will invest more in that initial design phase or just further design, maybe in terms of, I mean, I keep on coming back to it, but just like that whole idea of where they put their ports on the legacy pinball. That needs a bit of reconsideration. Come on. You know what you're really selling. We all know what you're really selling. You're not selling this cabinet with the software that's in it. You're selling this cabinet for the potential of what software it can play based off of how people plug into it. So put the plug in a place that works when connecting to a computer so that you're not seeing these gross cables coming off the top of the machine. Everywhere. Yeah. That's 100% true. So spend a little bit more on the design phase.
    29:50
    Get those features that make it so much easier for those add-ons that people are wanting to do. And we're going to get into... AtGames put out a survey.
    30:03
    Yeah. This survey is rather telling in terms of where AtGames' head is at, and I think especially knowing what their marketplace is, that it opens up a lot of possibilities. So we're going to get to the survey. We're going to take it here. Yeah. We're going to do it live, basically. Yes. I believe it's actually closed now, officially.
    30:23
    They were taking responses up until Friday, I think. Right. Yeah. I mean, I copied it, so no, we're not. I already submitted my thoughts. I'm sure you did. but it would be fun to just kind of do as a, a talking point for us. So we're going to get into that, but there is some things that at games is doing that I think will help inform the survey. And I'm wanting to kind of talk about some of these because the more and more I see these things, the more and more I realized that the at games, And all this is really kind of aimed directly at the Legends pinball. It's not aimed at their Ultimate Arcade, although a lot of this conversation kind of goes that direction. But I truly believe that the Legends pinball, it's a loss leader.
    31:24
    They knock the price really low because now I'm seeing the prices of all the add-ons. and the prices on the add-ons are like holy crap, you've got to be kidding me.
    31:35
    They are not cheap at all. So they just did their Owners Day, National Owners Day. I think it was the second time that they've done this and so they revealed some product and pricing and things like that. So I thought we might take a look at some of those. Let's have a look at the add-ons and stuff. So let's look at the main add-on that is for the Legends Pinball, and that is this. It is a proper joystick control panel with fighting stick buttons and the trackball, basically allowing you to play all those other games that you can play on their ArcadeNet service. Yes.
    32:20
    This is the kind of add-on that we had heard that Arcuda was going to be wanting to put onto their unit.
    32:28
    Yeah, that's right. It's the apron. Modula Playfield. Yeah, that's right. Makes a lot of sense. A lot of sense.
    32:38
    How much would you pay for this item, Jared? I'll show you another picture of this item, which I believe is this one. This is what you get out of the box.
    32:49
    So that would just drop in, plug a cable in, boom, you're ready to go. you know, slap the edges back on and drop it in. Everything, as you can see, all you see is the Perspex top of the thing. You don't see all the ugly, naked wood and stuff. Right. You're going to see it just like that. Yeah, it looks just like that. Nice and clean, nice and neat. I don't know. I reckon, well, it looks like everything looks pretty decent on there, like the buttons and everything. I'd go like $100 US for that. That's what I would tend to think. 100 US would seem fair. No, they want 200 US. What?
    33:29
    Which seems rather exorbitant. Now, I kind of believe what they're thinking here is they have their Legends Gamer deck that just kind of sits under your lap. And I think that's probably about how much that one is. And so it's almost like maybe they don't want to price one too low to devalue the other except for i would say but the only way this thing works is if you plug it into yeah legend pinball that you already purchased um yeah it's got no it's got no embedded games in it it's just a control panel yeah so i'm not sure if i mean probably you know when you think of the cost probably the actual circuit board with all the games on it and that actually isn't that much more it's probably the hardware that is where most of the cost is like yeah but even the hardware you know, you figure the joystick and buttons, you can buy that on Amazon for $25.
    34:28
    The trackball's a way different matter. Trackball costs a little bit more. I don't know, $50? Yeah, but that's, again, not buying in bulk.
    34:37
    Yeah, but would that be how much it would cost to buy one just off the shelf? I think it's around $40.
    34:43
    I mean, they range between $40 and $90. I doubt they're using the really high-grade trackball. No, I don't think so. And this doesn't even have a spinner dial on it, which is also kind of interesting. Like their Legends arcades do. Right. Nor do you have the ability to do two-player.
    35:04
    No. Two joysticks. So I don't know. I think that 200 is steep. That is steep. I do want to point out... It'll sell, though. Yeah, it'll sell. You see this little cutout area here? I believe this is where the exciter goes. Yep, that will be where it goes. There's a complaint people have been having with the exciter, because obviously all you're attaching to is this thin piece of plastic or mason or I don't know what it is, Lexan. Anyway, again, it's a speaker.
    35:36
    Yeah. Speaker's vibrating. Snap. That's right. People have been complaining that if you put the volume on anything but low, all you hear is the rattling. You don't even hear... It's hot all the time. Yeah.
    35:51
    But if you put it on low, then you can't feel it. So, yep. What's the point? I can't really be complimentary about the way they've handled that. I tell you, I think the Exciter was an afterthought. I think that, honestly, I believe that they didn't think that 1UP was going to pull it off.
    36:14
    Yeah, with the solenoids. With the solenoids. I don't believe that they thought that they were going to pull it off, and then all of a sudden 1UP did pull it off, and they went, oh, crap, well, we did say we were going to put haptic. I guess we have to do this. And then they quickly discovered that you can't just put it under wood because nobody will ever feel that. It needs to be closer. And then they wouldn't have factored in the fact that, you know, to integrate solenoids like RK1UP did, you've actually got to code that. Yeah. Or at least have a special interface board, which would have blown out that bill of materials. Which is, I was just going to say, sorry folks, Farsight nor Zacharia coded for solenoids. All they've coded for is controller, Rumble, and the audio. The exciders are based entirely off of audio, which here comes downfall number two. Here's the rub. Charge fights, all their stuff is in mono. Yeah. So there's no positional. You cannot tap into any stereo feed positionally and work out where things to fire. You flipping the left flipper, you feel it still in your right hand. Yeah. It's not stereo. It's not directional. No. This is the advantage that Zen has here is that all the mechanical effects are stereophonic. Yeah. and they are positional, which makes me wonder, I wonder if that's how they managed their solenoid, like positional solenoids and worked out where to fire it based on their mechanical noises. I think it's probably more advanced than that. I don't think they're doing an awful lot of audio. I think it's coding. It's actually probably almost tapping into the switch triggers for each of those objects, because they have very, very deep integration into the software. where that's how they can do pop-up scores and stuff like that when pop bumpers are firing.
    38:07
    As an aside, that's the thing that really surprised me with Belly Williams when I started playing those tables, and you had the score, the first pop-up score set to one, so everything scored. Just seeing the difference in how each of these things scored based on what you were doing in the game was really kind of fascinating to me. Right, because you don't realize where a lot of your score comes from. No. Oh, well, that's actually pretty lucrative if you shoot it up there. So it's kind of really neat. Anyhow, circling back to the original discussion,
    38:37
    yeah, the whole mono bass sound is tricky. Now, I think Zachariah, they do actually have stereophonic effects for their mechanical sounds for memory.
    38:50
    Playing with cans on, I'm pretty sure, like these on, you can hear that the left flippers actually are left aligned and the right ones are right. So perhaps when Zachariah comes along, and folks can actually get those loaded onto the ALP, or that might actually then start to pay off with those exciters, hopefully. But the fact that their design, their underlying design, being that close to the control panel and the vibration aspect, needs to be addressed in version 2 of this cabinet. Yeah. It really does. They really need to put some thought into it. Okay, other accessories that you can purchase for, that you would maybe want to purchase for your Legends pinball also, based on what you have here. They have their light gun.
    39:42
    Right. Now, this is kind of interesting. You're wondering, what the heck is this? Hey, look, more branding.
    39:49
    Guys, really? Enough with the branding. Good lord. do you know what i've found this admittedly was in a um an ik one up forum the aussie one that i'm a member of someone had posted a uh satirical post in there about they had a i think it was a uh an act games cabinet and a um ik one up pinball cabinet but the the ik one up i don't know that it's pinball because it doesn't tell me it's pinball and i don't know who it's made from because it doesn't have... How am I supposed to know who made this item?
    40:27
    How am I even supposed to know that it's pinball? Because it doesn't have pinball plastered all over it. So, yeah, ease up. I guess branding is important when you have a company, but there's a little bit too much sometimes. I think maybe just dial back the logos a bit. It'd be far less obtrusive if that was just black. Right. You may be wondering, what the heck is this thing up here anyway? It's basically a Wii sensor.
    40:55
    It's a light bar for the gun. Yeah, for the gun. Unless you have a very specific type of light gun, you can't use it on LCDs. Yeah. Now, hey, selling something like this makes it good for legacy...
    41:16
    Gun shooters. Well, no, I'm saying for people that already have previous cabinets before that kind of tech came out. So they're making it so that you're not leaving behind anybody that already had. So I applaud them for that. That's fine. It looks like it has a little thumbstick on the back. So for navigation purposes, I'm sure.
    41:38
    Anyway, how much do you think this costs, Jared? um i reckon that it would probably be around 100 it 100 hey i got it right now does that seem like a fair price to you again look it seems a little steep to me well i don't know i i think that i'm trying to think back to the days when i had a ps2 um and i wanted to buy point blank and i needed to buy the namco gun con um i think it was well with a game I think down here it was about 120 Australian and I think you could buy gun cons for about 50 or 60 Australian dollars so with the US tax i.e. the exchange rate added on to that being about 130 Australian thereabouts nah that's probably a bit high if it came with two guns I could see the price two guns yes But again, I'm coming back around to, I'm going to my Guitar Hero rock band peripheral days, where drum kit, microphone, and guitar, and the game sold for $120. Yeah, I think it was about $170, $180 here. So yeah, you could get the whole rock band for under $200. So there's some serious markup going on on this item. I'm going to show you one other picture in just a second but first we're going to go now for those of you that didn't purchase the that you don't own the Legends Pinball but instead you just own the Legends Ultimate well then they sell pinball buttons the pinball kit these slap onto the side of the unit so that you can play pinball that way yeah like from what I've seen they have like little fingers and they just slides up 50 bucks for that. Okay. So that's what?
    43:49
    About $15 a button. A little bit less. I just... I don't know. It looks like a 3D printed quickie. There's nothing nice design-wise about it. I don't know. It just... And I'm going to... Here, let me show you... where is the picture that I want to show? That's that one, that's that one, that's that one. Oh my gosh, where the heck is it? There it is. There's everything slapped on to a cabinet. So you got your light gun here. You got your pinball controller here, which I mean, I guess maybe they made the thickness so that it goes flush, which makes sense. You got your light bar up here. It's just, ah. Oh, it's a light bar. It almost looks like it is wireless. So you charge it and it somehow works with it because I don't see any cables or anything coming from it unless they've deliberately not done that because they look gross and they'll look horrible. I hope it's sort of wireless. Look, you have this USB here. And I think I see a USB here. Oh, you know what it is? What? You might be right. it might be i think i was gonna say do you hook this in and and have it drop down to the to your plugs i hope not oh oh do you think so now you're gonna have to to make your wire like tape your wire to the side here oh please look if somebody has one of these boys getting one Is that the case? Because that's not nice.
    45:34
    Oh, that's really... Oh, no. What do you want to bet? Unfortunately, it would be a lot of money. Because how else is this thing going to talk to the unit other than being Wi-Fi?
    45:48
    It's got to be hardwired. I would think it's got to be hardwired, so I think it's going to be drape your cable and... So would the gun... Is the gun going to be cabled? No, the gun would be wireless. And that module will be its receiver. Yes.
    46:07
    Don't know. I don't know. I look... You know, a little bit of gaffer tape around the black edges of your cabinet would probably solve that problem. Yeah, sure. Why not?
    46:20
    Okay, so right there you've got... So, light gun, $100. $200 for the controller panel. 600 bucks for your Legends Pinball. So we're at 900 bucks right now.
    46:35
    Right? For all this. Now, and this is where I every time I go to the AtGames website, I'm like why you guys hide this stuff? Go ahead, try and find pricing about what the monthly service fee is for your AtGames or the ArcadeNet service. I'll just tell you it's $20 a month you can buy it at six month blocks which will knock it off to half off so you're still talking $120 a year which is significantly more than the $60 a year you'd pay for say the PlayStation Network and the so you're paying for that so that you have access to leaderboards and tournaments.
    47:28
    I still can't justify the price of that much. But again, they seem that it's really hidden on the website, which is like, why are you guys hiding this instead of being clean up front? I agree. It's a little bit opaque on the website, if you like. Yeah. But doesn't it also give you access to games as well? You get games with that too, don't you? It's probably your subscription. You do get games as part of your subscription, but now you start asking yourself, well, is it worth that much? So, for instance, if you're paying that, the announced Zachariah packs, you'll have access to. You won't have to be paying those.
    48:12
    Now, how much are those Zachariah packs going to cost? They're selling them at $50 per volume. There's four volumes, so that's $200. So in a year and a half of subscription to the arcade net, you could have purchased outright all those Icaria tables. And play them on the hardware, locally. Well, apparently you're still going to have to be downloading them to a thumb drive and then playing them that way. So you're still not playing them wirelessly, which is good. I'm glad they did that option. Yeah, because that would not be fun. No. but and the pricing for the Zacharia they is up front they do say that easily I initially thought that the pricing on that was really high until I looked at Steam and I realized okay Steam is saying they're selling their Platinum Bundle which is everything that Zacharia has put out including so it's the original Zacharias, the EMs, the Retros, the Remakes the only thing it doesn't include is the deluxe no deluxe excuse me the Steam package does include the deluxe but the ad games does not Steam selling it for $215 full price it's frequently as it is right now half off yeah ad games selling the same thing they're selling it for $200 they were offering it for $100 if you bought it for the National Owner's Day but it's now back to full price to how often are they going to be running the sale.
    49:47
    I don't know. I don't either. I don't think it's going to be as frequent as Steam. No, probably not. That being said, I'm not an AtGames product owner, so I'm not privy to their discount cycles. Now, the true insult, and again, this does not affect those that bought the pinball cab, but it does affect those that are with all the other Legends products. You want those Gottlieb games? Hey, if you own Steam, 40 bucks gets you all of them.
    50:17
    That's a full price. That's full price. That's not even on sale. 40 bucks gets you all of them. Actually, it's $38.
    50:26
    Pricing ad games? 100 bucks. For all four packs. Well, they're selling it as a two-pack. 50 bucks per pack. But my point being, that's some bonkers markup yeah i mean that's that's ballsy well you know get faucets gonna make the money somehow i tell you the other thing that bugs me is that they're always talking about you know oh it comes with 300 licensed games oh it comes with 150 licensed games good luck finding the list of games i did a google search because it's not on their website as far as i could tell i had to do a google search which brought me to reddit which had a list of all the titles and you go through the titles and you realize that most of them are atari 2600 sega genesis or super nes games these are all the ones that are on your subscription yeah um yeah but there's there's fighting games there too i'm sure that you can get access but there's none of them are name like of the like i just went through the list of 150 that came on their three-quarter scale arcade cabinet that they have with tetris yeah and literally it's probably less than 20 that you would go oh yeah i know that game everything else like from the arcade everything else is home console stuff um and again be upfront about it list your games but you're not listing the games you're just saying it comes with all these licensed titles and it's like why are you being why are you being coy with that because we all mean unless your google food skills are failing you and you can't you can't use the internet to find stuff like if anyone again on the flip side of this to be fair if we're doing it wrong send us a link to where the pricing is and show us how you got there like this you found because we just may be missing it because we're not you know we're not customers we may not be sometimes when when you use these sort of ecosystems you kind of got to understand how they've structured things before you can yeah interact with the site so fair call if we're doing it wrong call us out now all this is to say though we completely recognize that the difference between arcade one-up and at games at its core is what is your intent with the machine the at games customer is plug and play that's all they're interested in that's what they want it for you do have people that are wanting to on the arcade cabinet side not the pinball side yet um are wanting to just toss in their own computer toss in a raspberry pi use it for the form factor only and run and go with that the legend pinball to me it is very much designed for people that have every intent of bringing in all their own pinball it has nothing to do with what they're offering as software there they could easily just ship the cabinet without any software at all and put the interface boards in there without any ROMs and probably no one would care. That's probably a, it might sound like a nasty thing to say, but I don't see anybody talking about how much they're enjoying playing the Farsight software on their cabinets. All I see in the Facebook groups are people going, how do I get FX3 to play on this cabinet? That's literally all I see. So they could probably do themselves a favor and just get rid of the software and then And if people want that particular software build natively available on their cabinets, then they can go and buy that as an extra cost. Well, see, I think the reason why they're putting the software on there, though, is they're making it sound like it's a selling feature because really they're trying to sell subscriptions to ArcadeNet. Again, the cab is a lost leader. It's them getting their foot in the door and then just trying to get the monthly fee out of you.
    54:37
    It really is. and like it seems to be very geared around that and look if that is the business model then that's the business model yeah when you when you purchase this product if that's what they're intending you to do then you go into that fully understanding that when you purchase the product but it's like you know people keep on trying to pit these two against each other as if as if one is xbox and one is PlayStation. No, one is Xbox and one is mobile.
    55:08
    I mean, yes, they play games, but it's two completely different audiences when it comes down to it. Yeah. And we're not suggesting that from the mobile side that's at games, as in like inferior or anything. It's just that different is what we're trying to say here, is that it's not really comparable. like one's literally a cabinet that you can extend to do stuff with that you want to do stuff with the other one is a standalone product that's designed for one purpose only and that is to play a specific build of a pinball system pinball game with a certain amount of interactivity that has been pre-designed to work with that system and that's it so now that we've got all that out of way let's take the survey jared all right survey time time for the survey let's bring this up here is the first question that is the desired scale size of the next at games legends pinball machine do you want it to be tabletop size with no legs and a main display up to 15 inches do you want countertop size with no legs main display size up to 19 inches do you want a three-quarter scale with its own legs and main display size up to 27 inches, or do you want a deluxe version of the Legends Pinball, i.e. the MSRP is hundreds of dollars more? Jared, which one did you select? How did I vote? Yes, how did you vote? I voted three-quarter scale. So you would like to see them do a three-quarter scale version basically of what currently is the Legends Pinball, but just with the form factor size it will match everybody's three-core scale arcades that they've been building up. Yeah, I got the size for that current cabinet. Okay. Like, that's too big for my house at the moment. Give me a smaller form factor with all the features and you got me interested. So I... I was going to select that and then I went and I selected the deluxe version of the Legend of Pinball. Because, again, I think this is who they're gearing towards. They're trying to get the people that don't want to spend $4,000 on a virtual pinball machine.
    57:39
    And I think that if they can come in at a much, much lower price point, that is a much better entry for people.
    57:52
    Here's the thing, though. that I worry about what their deluxe version is. What makes it deluxe? Is it that it comes with that control top panel and it comes with the light gun? Or is it that they're going to be making it so that it hooks to a PC so much easier, that it has a true DVD display in it? I think that that is where they are going with it. Because remember that they are developing, or they have mentioned on a number of separate occasions that they are developing, like an interface board, that will allow you to more easily integrate your PC with the cabinet. So you can utilise that second screen and that sort of thing. So at the moment, you have to go and take the back off, get this interface board from the internet, from a shop on the internet, and then you plug your second monitor into that, and it's a bit of a hassle. But they are making it so that you can just plug and play in a future board revision. And that's that whole open ecosystem thing that we're talking about where all the other like VPX developers can come in and use this board interface to integrate haptics and stuff with all their titles. So they're moving towards that direction already. So I think if they were going to do that, what they'd end up doing is roll all those things in together and that will be the premium offering with probably a bigger display or perhaps the entire back glass as a monitor. and then a region for the display. So you can just do what you like on the back. Right. And that's what they're going with there. Which is what I'm hoping. That's why I went that way. Because I was like, yeah, no, go just full hog. Embrace that audience that you're trying to go with and have. That being said, go ahead and do a tabletop. Sure. Why not? Sure. Why not? Yeah. again arcade one up has done that with their they've got their tabletop pac-man and you know dig dogs and stuff sure there's there's a whole there's room for it um yeah you know what not everything well you know i don't know what i'm saying go high go low don't go middle and i think they went three quarter that's just going middle that's going you know you're trying to you're hoping to steal some thunder from the market that is clearly going one direction yeah okay all right let's go to the next question next question minimum number of licensed built-in games tables to be an attractive purchase option uh 10 with an option to play purchase stream more through legends arcade platform or 12 or 15 or 20 plus or other where'd you go uh i i think i just went with 20 plus i missed 20 plus and and that was prior to me looking at what games they currently have and then i just went oh yeah you're you're giving me crap so give me more crap yeah load me up with crap uh 20 20 plus crap please yeah yeah 20 of junk is junk. If they really wanted to screw you, they'd give you 40.
    61:13
    That's right. That was a modified Dennis Miller joke for those that know that one. Let's move on to the next one. For the pinball machine's exterior artwork, I want multi-cade style artwork, which is basically what they have right now, primarily based on one authentic IP design. Again, they did that with their Tetris cabinet. Doesn't matter as long as it's easy to replace. Basic Black with minimal flourishes or other... Yeah, signing up for Basic Black. I went with Basic Black because they clearly proved to me that they do not know how to do multi-cade style artwork peacefully. Just keep it black and get rid of the Legends Arcade branding off it. Oh my god, seriously. Put it somewhere. On the side of the cabinet, fine. Just keep it off the back glass. We don't need it up there. Because again, they're not going for... the nostalgia factor with the licenses that they have is not going to pique my interest so no just nice and simple you could do a really elegant job of a nice simple black design just blacker give me blacker next on the survey in a lower cost three horror scale machine or smaller is a secondary back glass display a requirement for you to purchase jared your interpretation of that secondary back glass display. Do you think it just meaning a DMD, or are you talking about the full display?
    62:40
    Well, it's unclear. It is unclear. The question is poorly worded but I assumed that it was like the full back glass display and I went with yes and it needs to be included Yes so for our audio listeners the choices were yes but it can be optional yes, and it needs to be included, no, but I would want the option, and no, I don't need the option. Well, if you don't need the option, then you probably bought Wellplayed's arcade cabinet that doesn't even have a score on the back glass.
    63:13
    That's right. For it to be optional, well, I really don't need them to charge me $200 for an accessory of a monitor, as we're seeing that they'll do with other options. So, yes, I put you need it to be included. Absolutely. Put it as part of the bill of materials up front so we don't have to go and add it off to the fact. Correct. All right. Next one. It is, in a lower-cost three-quarter scale machine or smaller, is haptic feedback or the equivalent. I thought that was an interesting in-parentheses there. a requirement for you to purchase and once again it's yes but it can be optional yes and it need to be included no but i would want the option and no i don't need the option or other well yes and it needs to be included absolutely it does yeah otherwise and again if i if you're talking about the tabletop kind of thing well if it's not included now we're getting into that market where I can just slide in an iPad and play that way.
    64:13
    Absolutely. No, be different. Be unique to the marketplace or to the space. That is a selling feature of a product, like having haptics built in that you just can't get with one of those iPad arcade style things.
    64:29
    In a lower cost three-core scale machine or smaller is a spring loaded plunger a requirement for you to purchase? Yes, I don't like plunger buttons. No, a plunger button is fine. Or other... Yes.
    64:43
    You need to put one in. Yes, indeed. Especially since you're going to have 105 Zachariah tables and they were all designed with a plunger in mind. Oh, all those Gottlieb tables, other than no good gophers, basically. All designed with a plunger in mind. You need the plunger. Yeah, that's right. They have going nuts in there. because that's just button. Well, that's auto launch, actually. Yeah, that one's just plain auto. It's not even an option at all. So yeah, it's plunger or nothing. The only way that I would accept a button only is if a single tap on the button moved the plunger back a little bit incrementally so that I could just go tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, and then a long press, and then that does the launch. But this business of holding it in and watching the plunger go, because the plunger just goes too fast. you're never going to get that skill shot ever. Like I've, I've tried using the button method on Zachary pinball. And it's like, yeah. And it literally goes like that. There's no way you can get an accurate plunger shot on that. Although to be fair on a lot of the Zachary pinballs, there's actually no skill shot on them. Anyhow, you're just launching the ball into play. Yeah. But you still can do a soft, a soft launch and have it drop in earlier towards the table, as opposed to going all the way around, you know, the, the loop. True, true, true. Well, actually, on some tables, there is actually a plunge drop zone. Like, you've got, like, the... On some of the ones, they have, like, an upper sort of ramp that the ball drops through onto the lower play field that will award you points. So, yeah, there is a skill set element to some of them. So you need to be able to accurately shoot for that because, you know, just like Roger Sharp did, you can't break the lock on gambling with pinball machines if you have a button. next up for a tabletop size pinball machine with no legs and main display of up to 15 inches and the features you indicated you want how much would you be willing to pay uh i think i 15 inches and below it's like basically a large tablet yes um i think that i would be willing i think i went up to, so this is for me, this is with the back glass, with the haptics, with the plunger, I went up to $200. That is where I landed also.
    67:11
    And I mean, because, look, I could easily say, oh, I only want to pay $100, but it's going to be crap. I do understand building costs.
    67:20
    It's reasonable. There's money in those parts. Yes. So, no, yeah, that's why I went, $200 seemed about reasonable. And that's also, and again, I'm looking at what Arcade 1UP has done with their tabletop units with like, I mean, I think their Pac-Man is only a 10-inch screen.
    67:43
    Oh, yeah. That's in that one and they sell it for $200. So, you know, I'm going with what market rate is. It seems reasonable. I'm sure they could work it out. Yeah. For a countertop-sized pinball machine with no legs and a main display size of up to 19 inches and the features you indicated you want how much would you be willing to pay well we're talking about extra four inches here yeah um correct so i'm really only going to be going up to about 350 for that i think i went to 300 did you i think that's all i was willing to go to because i don't suspect that the back glass is going to be any larger um for the display i I think it would literally be just your main display being different, and that's about the extent of it. I think you're probably right there. That seems fairly logical, because all you'd do is you'd just increase the size of the box to accommodate the larger screen in the bottom half of the play field, and then your back box probably would be a standard back box for those particular build types. yeah so i mean you can even even though the back box you know for for um i want to say perspective that's not the right word um scale for scale yeah that uh that it's going to maybe get bigger i still think the monitor that would be inside that box box would stay the exact same it would be a marquee wouldn't it like i think they they surround in some sort of bezel or marquee yeah and i think you know that would be perfectly reasonable for them to do that because, again, they have to mount the thing inside the cabinet, like inside the back box, so there's going to be some rough edges that they need to cover up anyhow. It won't be a slot-in sort of thing. So, yeah, fair call. If they had a marquee or bezel in the back box, they could use that to their advantage and actually cut the cost there. That's possible, right? And then, you know what? If you were able to buy your own pinball legs and attach them to that, they're going to run you about $80 for those, and now you're up to $400, which is the same price as the Toy Shock. The well. Yeah, the Toy Shock. So.
    69:52
    Yeah. All right. For a deluxe version of the Legend Spinball machine and the features you indicated that you want, how much would you be willing to pay? Up to $1,000, up to $950, up to $900, up to $850, up to $800, or just not interested? because it's hard to work out what they're going to put into it and what's not going to be there i'd say look up to one thousand dollars but for that one thousand dollars it'd better be pretty schmick i went ahead and went 900 i think you need to stay away from the 1000 work it's a huge and especially if you're talking about throwing in shipping you need to be below yeah you're over that thousand then and if we're talking about what we were talking about having it be with the deluxe there's not going to be much more I mean yes the back glass might have a bigger monitor in it but I don't think that your main play field is going to have a bigger monitor per se I think they're going to be fine with that 32-inch that they already have in there, unless they really scale up the cab. But they're talking about a deluxe version of the Legends pinball. So I'm saying they're going to use that same cabinet. They're going to use probably all the same hardware, all the same buttons.
    71:19
    That main play field is going to be the same monitor. They'll change out the back glass, put in a DMD, maybe move those inputs, make it so that you can mount a computer inside. you know make it put a door on the back or something like that so you can directly into it yep 900 bucks that's what i'm talking about 900 a yeah right yeah you know i think if that was what they were going to do then that'd be fine but if they were going to upscale that to more of a traditional um pinball cabinet size a 42 inch monitor and a larger everything then well and truly that would be $1,000. And I think if they were going to go down that route, that's my idea of premium because they've done a good job with what they've got for that price point. But that's what we're talking about, $600, right? Yeah.
    72:11
    If you sort of like get up to nearly double that, then there's a bigger cabinet, I think, would be something that people would really go nuts for and like a larger monitor in there. that would be a lot of people just be, they couldn't throw money at the screen hard enough for that product. I don't think. Yeah. But again, you're talking, there's, it's that there's a certain break in price points where it's hard to justify the money after a while. You know what I mean? Well, when you look at a full price digital pinball machine for over $4,000. Yeah. But what I'm talking about is none of these people are in the market for it. They want one, but nobody's in the market for it.
    72:53
    I don't know. I think that people would go if they could knock out a 42 inch monster version of the arcade legends for around a thousand and even if that meant they had to sacrifice some of the things I wanted on my wish list people would be lining up for that they would want it hard if they could get their hands on one for that because that would mean that their mates when they go over to their place and look at their swanky $4,000 digital pinball machine they could go yeah I got that for a quarter of the price through AtGames. Well, here's the other thing. You're still going to have to pay for your own computer.
    73:29
    That computer with the graphics card the necessary to run this, you're still going to be at about $600 for that computer. So that's going to be an add-on price to that. Now, if you're at $1,000 for their cab and their choice of monitors and you throw in that $600, there's a lot of people that do DIY with a 42 inch or 40 inch monitor for two grand. So that's what I'm saying. You start getting into that range where, well, now you can just do it because you're already in that tinkering mode. So if you want to get the largest audience for this kind of thing, you're going to have to come in significantly lower than what is available already for better. because otherwise you're going to start getting into direct comparisons where people are going to be going, hey, look at my VP cabs unit compared to this, and the Legends is going to look like Toy Shock in comparison. So there is that. It's the car market, you know what I mean? and you can't you got to realize who your audience is not who your audience wants to be but who your audience actually is and there is luxury within that audience before bumping into a whole other category so it's the people that will trick out their Honda because they can't afford a BMW and they're coming they're butting up right against the price of an entry level beamer but they're not there and I don't know. That's just where my head is thinking. It's going to be really interesting to see what they do with this data and where people sat on it. It'd be interesting if you've done the survey as well and you're listening to this. Where do you sit on the scale? What do you think feels right in this current market with those questions? For me, if I'm reading between the lines, we're going to see a three-quarter size pinball machine this year from AtGames. Like, that line of questioning that they're going for in the survey? Yes. They're seriously eyeballing the three-quarter scale. Absolutely. Yep. All right, let's go on to the final question. Okay, what is the final question? What would your desired use cases be for this type of product? To mostly play the built-in pinball games? To play multiplayer pinball with other Legends Arcade family devices? To play arcade and other non-pinball games on the vertical screen? to play games from other devices, PC, Raspberry Pi, etc., to have an easily transportable pinball option? I don't know yet. And other?
    76:24
    So I really couldn't care less about the built-in pinball games on them. I think we've covered that pretty extensively. Certainly not that question. To play multiplayer pinball without a Legends arcade family devices? No, because streaming. to play arcade and other non-pinball games on the vertical screen. Nice feature. Not the primary reason because I'd want to play games from other devices on this product. And that's all I want to do with it. It will be a cabinet for my other things that I've got.
    77:00
    That's it. That's the purpose of this product. Okay. What's your... I'll say I put to have an easily transportable pinball option.
    77:09
    because... No, I guess... You're saying that you would move around Legends Pinball in the current form and decide, I'm going to take this with me. It's not that it's taken with me under my arm, but I don't like any of these answers, to be honest.
    77:29
    Do you reckon they're really strong enough? My answer for wanting a virtual pinball cabinet by AppGames would be basically to be playing Let's Be Truthful. You're going to be sitting there going to Visual Pinball and downloading those things. And so I want it to be the easiest, functionable way of playing those. I don't care about the built-in pinball games they're offering. I don't think they're the best built designs out there. I mean, I'm not discounting Zachariah. I think they've done a bang of job. but in terms of if I wanted to play Gottliebs, I'm pretty sure that there's better builds in visual pinball than what Firesight did. Yeah. And then I want to play all my Bally Williams. I'm going to be going visual pinball on that.
    78:24
    That's the answer that I really want. Yeah, the thing is that you can't play any visual pinball tables except the ones sanctioned by AtGames through their services. So you are going to be basically playing games from other devices on your computer in that case. Which is where it becomes I don't care about their services. Yeah. That's not a factor to me because... You're just plugging your PC. So when you say transportable, is your interpretation of transportable as in a flexible solution? Not physically I can move it from one place to another place.
    79:03
    Pretty much. See, I've interpreted that question because... I was thinking in my head, you know, again, hey, if I want a large machine that has a thousand pinball games on it, well, it's much more easily transportable in one box than it is to have, you know, a thousand physical machines that you're trying to transport. Oh, yeah, that's true. I mean, I probably should have selected other, and I didn't really think about that. Yeah.
    79:31
    I interpret it transportable to mean, like, If they're angling more towards the three-quarter pinball size or the tabletop market. Honestly, I think it's more the tabletop market. Would that be what that is? That's what that question seems to cover, although it's broad in the way they've asked it. They didn't really design the survey super well. I guess it's easy to say. Creating surveys that are good takes a lot of skill. Yeah. And it's hard to get them right. So the thing we shouldn't be focusing on is the construction of the survey. And the thing we should be focusing on here is the fact that they are asking their customers these questions openly so that they can actually feed back to them what they want as consumers for the future of the product. And that should be commended. That's really good to see. Which, again, circles back to when you've got these kind of pre-orders coming in and how excited people are for this, it allows you the opportunity to stretch and go beyond and try and hit all your customer bases and give them all these options. And that is a very good thing. A very good thing. So kudos to AtGames for going down this path and doing this because it's a really good thing to see them thinking about this and getting good, accurate customer data back that allows them to make a good, logical decision about the future of the product lines. Good on them for that.
    81:03
    So like I said at the start, yeah, we're going to be critical, but we're trying to be constructive, critical. hopefully this episode has come across like that I think we've managed to do it I guess the YouTube comments will tell us if we have I'm sure that we'll get our thumbs down within 5 seconds of it premiering anyway because how dare us mention ad games in our show whatever it's just like you guys are the zen hack boys how dare you talk about ad games whatever Yeah, exactly. Yeah, whatever. Please, we will give you a thumbs down anytime. Bring it on. Well, no, I don't want him to bring it on because that does affect our YouTube channel.
    81:49
    Yeah. Yeah, I don't like that necessarily. I understand if you give us a thumbs down for a reason, feel free to comment. But if you just throw us a thumbs down and walk away, that's just a cheap shot.
    82:04
    Yeah. All right. anyway, that's our show for today, folks. Do hope that you enjoyed it. Thank you for sitting through all of this and, uh, walking through this journey with us. Um, please go ahead and sign up for this channel. Go ahead and hit us up on Twitter and follow us there so that you can, uh, see all the, uh, info that we collect throughout the weeks while we're on our downtime. Um, and like we said new schedule we're going to be basically doing every other week um we will be touching upon the pinball show and what they talk about this upcoming week when they their show airs but our show will be the following weekend um that's right we'll give you all time to digest it yourself before we bombard you with our opinions it'll probably also help us be able to you know kind of see what the take the temperature of the community and what this is said and what they're thinking of. We can help you guys out with your feelings.
    83:12
    Yeah. We'll see how that goes. But until then, we never know what our next show is going to be because we never know what the news is going to be. But there's one thing that we can guarantee our show will be about.
    83:31
    Stuff and things. Not stuffing things. Stuff and things. Stuffing things. Alright folks, until next time. Bye-bye. See you later.