Episode 784: "Let's Get Tanked Wednesday!"

Kaneda's Pinball Podcast (Patreon feed)·podcast_episode·13m 30s·analyzed·Mar 19, 2023

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.030

TL;DR

Kaneda predicts Galactic Tank Force pricing, distribution drama, and analyzes which new games will succeed in crowded 2023 market.

Summary

Kaneda discusses his trip to Las Vegas for a Dodge event and his plans to attend Texas Pinball Festival. He extensively analyzes the upcoming Galactic Tank Force reveal from American Pinball, speculating on pricing ($12,000-$13,000), production numbers, and distribution challenges. He also predicts which new games will succeed or fail in the current crowded market, arguing Foo Fighters, Pulp Fiction, and Galactic Tank Force will be winners while James Bond, Final Resistance, and The Godfather LE will underperform.

Key Claims

American Pinball distributors don't know Galactic Tank Force's price or production numbers as of reveal day (Wednesday), despite typical 3-week notice
high confidence · Kaneda stated directly that major distributors don't know pricing or quantities; contrasted with American Pinball's usual 3-week notice window
Every single American Pinball game has probably lost the company money
medium confidence · Kaneda's analysis of American Pinball's financial situation; attributed to belief that Mukesh/Ametron is unhappy with pinball division losses
Galactic Tank Force will cost $12,000-$13,000
medium confidence · Kaneda's speculation based on tank cabinet manufacturing costs and special shipping requirements; not confirmed by American Pinball
American Pinball may need special crate/box for Galactic Tank Force shipping and the back box might stick out further than standard pins
medium confidence · Kaneda claims he 'heard' these details; unconfirmed hearsay
Pulp Fiction LE will not ship in 2023 despite October 2024 target; Chicago Gaming Company has poor on-time delivery record
medium confidence · Kaneda's prediction based on Chicago Gaming's history and noting Venom and other games will likely ship before any Pulp Fiction LE
James Bond Pinball from Stern will be left in the dust and sell at bargain prices
low confidence · Kaneda's prediction; opinion that the game lacks interesting mechs compared to Stranger Things
Final Resistance stream had minimal engagement (3-4 total comments) showing low market interest
high confidence · Kaneda directly observed Pinside thread after stream, counted comments
Jersey Jack Pinball uses Mirco Playfields and owners have warranty letters indemnifying JJP from quality issues like warping and ghosted inserts
high confidence · Kaneda references indemnification letters included with every Godfather; cites Mirco Playfields as playfield manufacturer

Notable Quotes

“Every single American Pinball game has probably lost this company money. And Mukesh, who runs Ametron, is not happy about losing money on the pinball division.”
Kaneda @ mid-show — Directly addresses American Pinball's financial struggles and corporate pressure from parent company Ametron
“People thinking they're going to get this tank for less than $10,000, I think you're crazy. I think this tank is going to cost like $12,000 to $13,000.”
Kaneda @ mid-show — Price prediction for Galactic Tank Force; significant given uncertainty in market
“I'm not the best pinball player, but I really can't wait to jump on each of these machines. I really can't wait to see how angry every manufacturer is at me.”
Kaneda @ late-show — Self-aware commentary on his critical coverage and manufacturer relationships
“This game never should have came out. And by the time the sausage is made, nobody's going to care on James Bond.”
Kaneda @ late-show — Harsh dismissal of Stern's James Bond Pinball as doomed to failure
“They told Guns N' Roses owners they would have the replacement play fields for Guns N' Roses. No, they still don't have both the upper and lower play fields available.”
Kaneda @ late-show — Criticism of Jersey Jack Pinball and Mirco Playfields for unfulfilled promises
“I think The Godfather Limited Edition... at $12,000, these Jersey Jack Pinball games are just too much money for a game where you're going to make 5,000 of them.”
Kaneda @ late-show — Pricing criticism and skepticism about Jersey Jack's LE strategy
“I think the big winners are going to be Foo Fighters, Pulp Fiction and Galactic Tank Force.”
Kaneda @ conclusion section — Clear prediction of market winners in 2023 competitive landscape
“It's a grown-up toy. It's so weird that Christopher Franchi has to go into the Pinside thread and actually argue with people about the game and about the poster.”

Entities

Kanedaperson David Fixperson Christopher Franchiperson Mukeshperson American Pinballcompany Galactic Tank Forcegame

Signals

?
business_signal: American Pinball's entire game portfolio has reportedly lost money; parent company Ametron/Mukesh unhappy with pinball division performance
medium · Kaneda: 'Every single American Pinball game has probably lost this company money. And Mukesh, who runs Ametron, is not happy about losing money on the pinball division.'
~
sentiment_shift: Final Resistance (Multimorphic) stream showed minimal community engagement with only 3-4 comments on Pinside thread
high · Kaneda: 'I went on Pinside after the stream there was like three to four comments in total about the stream of the game'
?
competitive_signal: 2023 pinball market experiencing oversupply with too many high-priced new releases (Foo Fighters, Pulp Fiction, Galactic Tank Force, James Bond, Final Resistance, Godfather LE, Queen, Scooby) competing for limited buyer pool
high · Kaneda: 'This has been such an exciting month in pinball. There's more than enough games hitting all at once. We will know if this was a good decision for every manufacturer to hit right now, or if it was a bad decision.'
?
design_philosophy: American Pinball leveraging original IP (no licensing costs) to fund extensive physical toy integration on Galactic Tank Force versus licensed games
medium · Kaneda: 'There's no licensing cost that goes into Galactic Tank Force so everything can go into the physical game itself' vs licensed games like 'Foo Fighters and Pulp Fiction and The Godfather'
$
market_signal: American Pinball distributors receiving no advance notice of Galactic Tank Force pricing or production numbers despite game releasing Wednesday; breaks typical 3-week notice pattern

Topics

Galactic Tank Force reveal timing and distribution strategyprimaryAmerican Pinball financial struggles and pricing decisionsprimary2023 pinball market competitiveness and game performance predictionsprimaryJersey Jack Pinball quality issues and Mirco Playfields criticismprimaryPulp Fiction LE production delays and Chicago Gaming Company track recordprimarySecondary market scalping and deposit strategiessecondaryTexas Pinball Festival upcoming games and tournamentsecondaryManufacturer-media relationships and critical coverage impactsecondary

Sentiment

negative(0.25)— Kaneda is critical of multiple manufacturers (Jersey Jack, Chicago Gaming, Multimorphic) and pessimistic about several game releases. However, he expresses genuine excitement about three games (Foo Fighters, Pulp Fiction, Galactic Tank Force) and maintains respect for some personalities. The tone is mostly analytical but carries frustration with quality issues, poor communication, and market saturation.

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.040

There's a thousand pretty women waiting out there. They're all living, the devil may care. And I'm just a devil with love at spare. So viva Las Vegas! Ah, yours truly, Kaneda, is heading to Las Vegas this evening. I'm on a 9.30 flight. And then I'm going to be in Las Vegas for one day. I'm going to be there for the Dodge event to see if I get a chance to buy this 1,000-horsepower Demon Slayer. And then I'm on a red-eye flight out tomorrow. But I'm so committed to the Canada Club that I wanted to come in on Sunday and give you guys a podcast to listen to because you're not going to get one tomorrow when I'm in Las Vegas because I'm not even bringing any carry-on. I'm just walking onto the plane in my all-black Canada gear, and I'm just bringing, like, a fanny pack with, like, my license in it and my cell phone charger. And that's how I'm going to the event. I love traveling light, ladies and gentlemen. All right, so this is going to be the week where we finally see Galactic Tank Force. And look, I thought this game was going to be released this weekend at Jack Bar. Clearly, there's some delay in getting this game out to the world. And here's the weird part. If David Fix is going to hold the reveal till Wednesday of this week, he might as well just hold it till Friday and reveal the game at Texas Pinball Festival. Like you're just two days away from this huge festival. Why are you going to reveal it on a Wednesday? And I think the reason why is he's going to have this game on location in a few places. And I think he wants to have this game like in Chicago, in New York, like in different locations while Texas Pinball Festival is going on. So that's what I think is going to happen. I think you're going to see this game on location revealed Wednesday. And we've been seeing more and more teasers from Christopher Franchi and the people over at American Pinball. And I just want to say this. I've been liking all of the teasers around this game. There's been a lot of idiotic commentary around the tank itself. They put out a poster with a campy line like fold and fight action or something like that. No, when this tank folds down, you do not play the game while the tank is folded. It is just meant to look really campy and silly. It's a grown-up toy. It's so weird that Franchi has to go into the pin side thread and actually argue with people about the game and about the poster. Like, they're just having some fun when they say, for the first time ever. Because last time I checked, I've never seen a freaking pinball machine look like a tank. Now, the big question is this. How much is this tank going to cost? And how many are they going to make? Here's the scary part. This game is releasing on Wednesday, and none of the major American pinball distributors even know. They don't know how many. They don't know how much it's going to cost. Usually, American pinball gives their distributors three weeks' notice before a new game comes out. And here's what I think is going to happen. This is just Canada guessing. I think David Fix is really struggling because I don't think he wants to leave any money on the table, but he's got to find that balancing act, right? How much do we charge for this thing? We can't overcharge for it. But he also probably struggling because he like I don want to say there only going to be 200 or 300 tanks and then 800 people want them Because he better not do what he did with Legends of Valhalla And that up the number of games after he says it going to be this many units So I really hope on Wednesday when American Pinball says this is how many tank games we are making. They do not go back on their word again and then up the number. And here's the pressure over at American Pinball. Everybody, remember this. Every single American pinball game has probably lost this company money. And Mukesh, who runs Ametron, is not happy about losing money on the pinball division. And I think they know that they finally have a game that has a lot of people excited. They finally have their best shooting game. It is packed with toys or enough toys in this marketplace in which almost every game it doesn't have any toys anymore. And I think they're struggling to figure out, like, how do we make money on this thing and not give a good idea away for free? If you're them and you're seeing what Stern's getting for, like, their LEs and Jersey Jack is getting for its CEs, and you're looking at how much stuff is actually in Godfather from a toy standpoint, it looks like there's more stuff inside of Galactic Tank Force. Now, look, it's an original IP, and that's the problem. You know, everyone knows it's expensive to make IP games like Foo Fighters and Pulp Fiction and The Godfather. Like, there's a licensing cost that goes into those games. There's no licensing cost that goes into Galactic Tank Force so everything can go into the physical game itself. Now, where there has to be incredible costs is making this tank cabinet. Like, this can't be cheap. People thinking they're going to get this tank for less than $10,000, I think you're crazy. I think this tank is going to cost like $12,000 to $13,000. I also heard that American Pinball needs to make a special box or crate to send this game to customers because this is not a standard cabinet. And that also is going to come with a lot more costs. I'm a little bit nervous. I'm a little bit nervous because think about it. This company has never had a ship a game that has all of this stuff on it. I also heard when the backbox is up, it might stick out from the wall more than a standard pin. So we shall see what happens. I mean, they're going to have to tell us everything on Wednesday. And it's been a very long wait to see a game that we've already seen. I would have dropped the official reveal when all of the stuff started to leak. But that's just me. All right. So this is it. So bad and clean up is Galactic Tank Force. And now everyone's sights are on TPF. I'm headed to TPF. I'm going to be there Friday. I am super excited to play all of these games. I have not played any of these new games. And you know, Kaneda, I'm not the best pinball player, but I really can't wait to jump on each of these machines. I really can't wait to see how angry every manufacturer is at me. I feel like the only place that's going to be nice to me is like Stern Pinball because Jack Danger and I are friends. David Fix will be nice to me because David Fix is a really nice guy. I think Christopher Franchi wants to kill me. I think Jersey Jack Pinball wants to kill me. I think Jerry at Multimorphic wants to kill me. We definitely know Marty and Damien want to kill me Who else wants to kill me I think the guys at CGC will be nice to me as well Ryan White might want to kill me because I been saying he has the worst communication track record in all of pinball But Ryan White is a nice guy. He's like, Chris, you don't understand. We got to order these like special train pods for the LE. The gang over at Spooky Pinball, they're not going to want to kill me. The spooky guys are always really nice. I think I've been pretty fair on Scooby-Doo. I haven't really said anything negative about the game. There's been some quality issues. But for the most part, I think Spooky Pinball did a really good thing in locking in their money early on. Now, speaking of locking money early on, I've been talking to my friend Don over at Don's Pinball Podcast. He's all bummed out he didn't get a Pulp Fiction Limited Edition. And I'm here to tell everybody right now, you are not going to have a hard time getting a Pulp Fiction Limited Edition. I know it seems like it right now because everyone grabbed all of these, like, spots. But there are 1,000 of them. And this game is like 10 months away from production at the earliest. And we know CGC's record of getting games on the line in time. So I don't even know if we're going to see a single Pulp Fiction LE in 2023. And I mean it when I say it. By the time a single Pulp Fiction gets made, you're going to see Venom. You're probably going to see Jersey Jack Pinball's next machine. And there's going to be more new pinball in the world. And that's not to say like people are going to fall out of love with Pulp Fiction because I do think this is a juggernaut theme. I think this thing is just like an art piece. It is like you are owning a piece of Pulp Fiction memorabilia. And I think this thing is going to stay in people's homes. But we are already seeing someone try to flip a Pulp Fiction LE for $2,500 on top of the deposit. And I think that guy has like over 150 downvotes on Pinside. What's up with that, people? What's up with that? No one's allowed to scalp anymore. And trust me, here's what's going to happen. You're going to see a lot of distributors hold back some of their Pulp Fiction inventory. And then all of a sudden, they're going to be selling them for $15,000 a year from now when everyone realizes this game is going to be bolted to the floor. Time will tell. Time will tell. But what an exciting time to be in pinball. I think that's the main thing. This has been such an exciting month in pinball. There's more than enough games hitting all at once. We will know if this was a good decision for every manufacturer to hit right now, or if it was a bad decision. I definitely feel like there are games that are going to be left in the dust. Game number one that is going to be left in the dust is Stern Pinball's James Bond. Not the Keith Elwin one, but the regular James Bond game. That game is so far behind everyone else's excitement. I don't think that game is ever going to be what Stranger Things turned into. It doesn't have interesting mechs or moments the way Stranger Things does. I think you're going to see James Bond pins selling at bargain basement prices by the end of the year. And that's Stern's fault. This game never should have came out. And by the time the sausage is made, nobody's going to care on James Bond. I think this final resistance game by Multimorphic, I mean, they just stream this game. And Scott Danesi, people love Scott Danesi. But the numbers don't lie, as my competitors say. The numbers don't lie. and they streamed this game and I went on Pinside after the stream there was like three to four comments in total about the stream of the game And one of those was from Scott Denisey And one of those was from Buffalo Pinball Those were the two guys in the stream. So nobody really cares about this game right now. And at $11,700, nobody's throwing that money at Multimorphic. People are keeping that money for Pulp Fiction. They're keeping it for this freaking tank. They have to spend that if they want Godfather LE. And that's the other one I think is going to be the big loser is just Godfather Ali. I think at $12,000, these Jersey Jack games are just too much money for a game where you're going to make 5,000 of them. It doesn't help that people share that letter that goes with every single Godfather. It's basically a letter indemnifying Jersey Jack pinball to the quality of their machines. They want people to believe that you're getting this one-off bespoke handmade pinball machine that might have like issues with the play field and warping and ghosted inserts. And I don't think people are gonna buy it. We don't get letters like that with Spooky Pinball. We don't get letters like that with Chicago Gaming Company. We don't get letters like that with American Pinball. The people who are making quality playfields and the name of the company is Bader. This is such an excuse again for Miracle Playfield. And look, I don't know if there are gonna be issues with Godfather Playfields. There is an image I shared on my Facebook page where you can see some of the inserts starting to lift up on that play field. I hope it's not widespread. I'm not rooting against Jersey Jack Pinball, but I have no empathy anymore. They still use Mirko, and I don't like Mirko. I think he's a weasel, and I can't for the life of me understand why Jersey Jack Pinball continues to use him. They told Guns N' Roses owners they would have the replacement playfields for Guns N' Roses. No, they still don't have both the upper and lower playfields available. I've been asking and you still can't get both. And we're almost at the summer of 2023. So they're missing that milestone by a year. Why is that so hard to do, Mirko? And I think Queen Pinball is another one that's going to be dead on arrival. I think the big winners are going to be Foo Fighters, Pulp Fiction and Galactic Tank Force. And I think Scooby doesn't even need to win or lose because they're going to win because they got all of those non-refundable deposits. And I think that's where pinball is at right now. So ladies and gentlemen, Kaneda will be back with more shows. I'll definitely be back with a show on Wednesday when we start to talk about Galactic Tank Force. But thank you so much for being a member of the Kaneda Club. Know how dedicated I am to each and every one of you to get you the most entertaining and to the point pinball podcast on the planet. What happened to all these shows that were supposed to fill the daily void and now they've all become 90-minute shows with interviews? No, we need more short, to-the-point pinball podcasts with energy. I can't wait. And so, you know, my cargo shorts come in this week, and we're going to wear them at the Twippy Saturday night. If I win the Twippy for favorite pinball podcast, behind the paywall, this will be the greatest achievement in pinball podcasting history. Everybody have a great day. I'll talk to you soon. I just want my guess