Stars fading but I linger, still craving your kiss. Welcome everybody, it's the first official Canadas Pinball podcast of 2024. I hope everybody had a great New Year's, a great holidays. I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm looking forward to like a little bit more normal routine. When the holidays come, you know, you can't wait for your relatives to come over. You can't wait to have all those days off. But then you realize quickly as an adult, there's only so many espresso martinis and eggnog and eating and sitting and drinking a grown adult can do before you feel horrible. And I can't wait to get back to a little bit of a normal daily routine. But that being said, the holidays go way too fast and the years go way too fast. But as we look forward to 2024, raise your hand if you're not excited for the pinball landscape of 2024. When we look over 2023 and we think about everything that happened in pinball, you know, it wasn't that much. I'm looking over the award results from the People's Choice Awards. And after Foo Fighters, the number two game that won everything didn't even come out in 2023. It was Pulp Fiction. Now, I do want to say this. I still will argue that Pulp Fiction won for Best Theme, Best Callouts, and Best Topper, and Best Bang for the Buck. And even though the game didn't ship, I still would argue that those categories are relevant because the callouts are not going to change. The topper is not going to change. The freaking theme is not going to change and the price is not going to change. And I think it's kind of embarrassing for everybody else that Pulp Fiction won the second most amount of awards. And cleaning up easily was Foo Fighters with Game of the Year, Designer of the Year, Animations of the Year, Best Ruleset of the Year. And so congratulations to Jack Danger and team over there. I think maybe the big upset was freaking Christopher Franchi dethroning Zombie Yeti who worked on two titles in 2023. But I don't think anyone would argue against the fact that Elton John looks beautiful. So here's what I want to talk about on this first episode of the year. I want to talk a little bit about some news. Then I want to talk a little bit about what I think we're about to get with Jaws pinball. And then I just want to give you a few of Canada's resolutions for the year. And if you know me personally, I don't really believe in resolutions. I don't believe in January. I don't think we should pick a month and then decide to change stuff. I think we should always be trying to change ourselves. And we should all be a work in progress every single month. It's going to be funny this week when I go to the gym and all of a sudden it's crowded. and then two weeks later, all those people are gone. I've been going to the gym all throughout the holidays, even though I didn't want to. It's all about consistency. It's all about that routine. And man, I got my ass kicked today because Brenda said, hey, hop on my Peloton. She got me some Peloton shoes for Christmas. And I'll tell you this, as many pull-ups, push-ups, and sit-ups that I do, 30 minutes on a Peloton with nonstop cardio completely kicked my ass. All right, so let's talk about the big news item this week. We did not get the Jaws trailer yet. We're all waiting on it. The big news this week is the Princess Bride pinball is a real game, and it is coming out from Multimorphic P3 or P3 Multimorphic. I'm never quite sure which order to put those two things in, and let's discuss this for a minute, because I really, really, really believe that this is a good theme for pinball. I know some people out there aren't the biggest fans of this theme, but if you watch the movie, it's got everything that a good pinball machine can want. It's got a campy storyline. It's got really funny scenes that are memorable. It's got iconic characters and actors in the movie itself. And it's a fun journey from beginning to end. And you can see how all the different scenes in that movie would lend themselves really nicely to like great modes in the game. You've got sword fighting. You've got torture chambers. You've got like electric eels. You've got big rats. You've got trying to get through the forest. I mean, the entire movie itself is like one mode after another, and you could see how it would work perfectly. Now, will they be able to get all the assets from the movie? I think you kind of need it, right, because it's got so many one-liners and iconic scenes that you need to recreate it in the game itself. Now, here's the big thing. When I posted on Facebook that Multimorphic would be making The Princess Bride, 90% of the comments were disappointed that this game was going to end up on the Multimorphic platform. And this is the dilemma of this entire platform. Think about it for a minute. All of these years, we've been saying, Jerry needs a great theme to sell his platform. And then when he gets a decent theme on his platform, everybody is like, oh my gosh, I love this theme, but I don't want it on this platform. and it just begs the question, is Multimorphic just a no-win scenario for anybody? Like nobody's winning here. And at what point is Jerry going to just read this feedback? People would rather have a normal pinball machine that is based off of the Princess Bride than a Multimorphic machine that is making the Princess Bride. And the issue with this platform is very simply this. It's not about just one title. If you commit to this platform, you kind of have to commit to all of it. It's like you're not just marrying one person. You're marrying into the family. And you can't say that about other pinball machines. Other pinball machines are you're just marrying the person you want to marry, right? I want to marry Venom. I want to marry the big Lebowski. I want to marry this. I don't have to marry Dutch. I don't have to marry Stern. I don't have to go all in on this company. But when you buy a P3 multi-morphic game, you're committing to the entire family and portfolio of games. And that's the issue, right? It like okay so you love the Princess Bride and it going to be like over for the LE So then you own this thing and the whole point of owning a multi is to pop in the different modulars But then do you really want to commit to the heist and to Weird Al and to Cosmic Cart Racing and to Lexi Lightspeed? And then if you go on to Pinside and you see the people who have done that, right? You see the people have gone down this road before and married into this family. And then what happens when you want a divorce, right? You want to move on from the platform, you're like $20,000 in on this platform and nobody's going to buy your P3 and all your modular games for like $18,000, $19,000, $20,000. And this is the big dilemma. And I mean, it's a dilemma because a dilemma is something with no solution. And I don't think there's a solution here. He's just going to keep pushing this platform forever. Why can't Jerry just listen to the feedback and make a normal pinball machine for once. Like just try it. You know what I'm saying? It's like he's built this thing and it's always going to be this thing. And the majority of pinball buyers have said to him, this is not the thing we want. And I know he's got a few supporters. He probably hasn't even sold 500 of this platform over like an eight year period of time. And it's just not going to work. And these machines are barely coming out. And this is the dilemma, right? It's like he needs good themes to move the platform, but nobody wants a good theme on the platform. I mean, that's it. That is the ultimate summary of what Multimorphic P3 is. It was a neat new way to envision pinball. It's been around for 10 years now, and people are not really into it. Just replace that screen play field with a wooden play field, put more mechs in the game, and use your engineering team, which is great, and don't force them to retrofit like normal pinball stuff, it seems like it's so much harder to retrofit a great pinball experience onto the platform. And we shall see with this game as we see more of it, how are they going to sort of disseminate the assets over that big LCD play field along with the screen in the back? Because remember, Multimorphic has never had a movie theme ever transported onto its platform. How is that going to work? You know, are the animations going to be better than what they were on Weird Al, which was more like 1990s clip art. Look, I didn't see this coming from Multimorphic. It's also weird they're doing this like strange marketing campaign where it's like a weird clandestine website. I think they're trying to like parody what Barrels of Fun did. And maybe it's because both of these companies are in Texas, I believe. I don't know. I don't know why they're doing it this way. But Jerry, we know it's you. We know that this is gonna be a Multimorphic game. And now that the cat's out of the bag, you might as well reveal this thing before Jaws Pinball drops. I don't know how this thing is going to work. And I don't think they sold a lot of Final Resistance games. I think they brought Scott Danesi over and he came onto the platform and his game didn't sell nearly as good as what he sold with Spooky Pinball with a traditional game. Again, in marketing, when you get stubborn and you don't read the room and you don't read the feedback, What's the point now? If this guy just made a normal pinball machine by now, he would be up there with spooky pinball. He would be up there with spooky pinball. He would be selling over a thousand games a year and he would have great, tremendous success. And I have to imagine, if you're Jerry, your annuity, I think a lot of his annuity was coming from P-Rock sales. And a lot of those P-Rock boards were going into companies like spooky pinball. But he doesn't have nearly the amount of P-Rock customers he used to. So I have to imagine some of his annuity is drying up. I have to imagine like this is going to be a make or break year for Multimorphic. I really mean it. There's just too many companies. There's too much out there. And now that we've got companies like the European Pinball Corporation that's going to start remaking Bally Williams games. We've got all these Stern machines. We're going to get Jersey Jack Matrix or Harry Potter. We're going to get Back to the Future from Dutch Pinball and another mystery game possibly from Dutch Pinball. There's just so much happening in pinball. In a year in which pinball is so expensive, I just can't see Multimorphic being the company that's going to get people to write checks. And again, it's because nobody wants to date the family. If Jerry put up a poll that said, would you like us to make the Princess Bride with our traditional platform or make it like a normal pinball machine? He does not have the guts to put up a poll because over 95% of people would say just make it a normal pinball machine. And that's the whole thing about market research. If you turn yourself off to it and you just want to go with your gut and your hunch on what you think people want, it's not going to work out. And it's so obvious what people want. They just want normal pinball done right. Like that is it. That is all people want. That's what we want from Barrels of Fun. It's what we want from Jersey Jack and from Stern. And when your game is not turned on, I want to look down and see beautiful artwork. I want to see a world under glass. You know, when you go up to a multi-morphic and you look at the front of the game, the front of the cabinet that you see the most, it's just pitch black. There's no artwork on it. How is this improving the pinball experience? Because as we all know, half of the pinball owning experience is not even playing your games. The majority of people who buy these high-end games, yes, and once you're at like $12,000 for the platform, you are now selling a high-end game. The majority of people, they don't even play their freaking games. I mean, we see this every single day. A new game pops up for sale, Ghostbusters LE, 177 plays, Pirates of the Caribbean, Collector's Edition, 20 plays. People don't want to play these games. They just want to stare at them. These things are works of art. As one of my friends always said, they're just movie posters you can play, you know, and nobody wants to play a flat screen TV. It's just the way it is. All right, so we'll see what happens there. But that was kind of out of left field. And now the cat's out of the bag. And you're hearing it from Canada's Pinball Podcast. I'm confirming it is a multi-morphic game. Oh, New Year, you thought Canada would be kinder. You know, I'm just calling it like it is. I'm just calling it like it is. And I usually don't give much airtime to Multimorphic because most people don't really care. And we're all just waiting for Jaws pinball. Now, look, are we going to get it this week? If Stern is going to CES next Tuesday like a week from tomorrow then we are going to see this Jaws game any day now We might see the teaser tomorrow We might see the full game reveal Thursday Friday It going to happen any day now Now look what also could happen is this If we don't see it at CES, then I think it might be a whole nother month wait to see the game. But I keep hearing they're going to unveil it at CES. Stern likes to do that. But they also normally don't take off the last two weeks in December. So maybe because they shut the factory down, there's going to be a little bit of a delay. If we think about when they revealed Foo Fighters, it was in February. So we might all be wrong and we might have to wait a little bit longer. Now, every day that Jaws is delayed is good news for Elton John. It's good news for these spooky pinball games. It's good news for Labyrinth. It's good news for everybody else. because once Jaws happens, a lot of money, a lot of attention, and a lot of enthusiasm is gonna move in that direction. And I know every single pinball content creator out there is just waiting for Jaws. Like, we're all just waiting for Jaws. I mean, there's nothing else really happening of significance that has our attention. You know, we're still waiting for Pulp Fictions to ship. I don't know when that's gonna happen. I have no idea. You can march up to a distributor today and walk out with an Elton John Platinum edition of the game, which is great. You know, I'm reading the same reviews over and over about Elton John. Everybody likes the way the game shoots. Everybody thinks the game is beautiful. I just don't know how you spend $12,000 on one. I really don't. I really don't. I still think these games are gonna be like $9,000 in just a few months, especially knowing what's around the corner, especially knowing this is not like a dream theme. I don't know. I just don't see Elton John being a game where like you're going to want to keep going back and back and back, especially because it's a music pin. I mean, that's the issue with all music pins, unless the music pin really has a narrative in it. Right. And I don't feel that way with Elton John. Every time I watch the stream, it is beautiful. It is colorful. It does shoot well, but what are you even doing in the game? Like what's the purpose of the game? And I think that's why it's a good location pin. It's a good pin to maybe go play at your friend's house who dropped 12k on one. But in terms of owning one and spending that much money, I just don't see why you would want to own one right now. You know, if you're a huge fan of Elton John, absolutely, it makes sense. But even then, I would just wait. Like, if you love Elton John, you know you're going to be able to get this pin in just a few months for so much less money. All right, so that's what's happening at Jersey Jack. I think they're going to have to show their new game by the summertime, and it's going to be Mark Satan's game and I think it's going to be the Matrix. So we got Jaws. We got the Matrix. You know, we don't even really talk about what's after Jaws. Like, is it going to be Journey? Is it going to be Dungeons and Dragons? Is it going to be Pokemon? I don't know. But did you see that Stern Factory tour? Did you see that Stern video of the move to the new factory? It's ginormous. After watching it, I was kind of worried about Stern. I'm like, oh my gosh, at these prices, how is Stern Pinball going to like fill that factory every single week? Like there's no way pinball demand has increased with the prices being where they are at. And I just started to get a little bit worried. I wouldn't want to be in Stern's shoes. I wouldn't want to have to fill all of that space with activity and people and games going out the door because yeah, like maybe for Jaws, but then the game after Jaws, how are you going to make like six to 800 games a week if the demand is not there. I think Stern is very vulnerable because they're so damn big right now. And there's been some really interesting exits over at Stern Pinball. Like their engineering head left and went over to Jersey Jack Pinball. Why do you think that is? It can't just be because of the money. You know, we always hear these rumblings over at Stern, Things aren't as great as they seem. And there's a lot of infighting, which is probably normal in a category like this, where you've got all these people making games and you've got your designers who are creative. And then you've got your financial guys telling them, you're not allowed to put this in your game, right? I think that's the tug of war at every single game. It's like Seth Davis wants to make money. Keith Elwin wants to make the best damn game possible. I don't think Seth Davis is like waking up and wanting there to be as much as possible in a Stern machine. I think he wants to make as much money as possible with doing as little work as possible, right? That's his job to grow the profits of Stern Pinball. And the easiest way to do that is to instead of rerunning Elvira, just redo the artwork for a few hundred bucks and make it a freaking Blood Kiss edition. And so all of a sudden you went from selling a game for $9,500 and now we can get $13,000 for them. Same thing with Jurassic Park. Let's not make more Jurassic Park premiums. Let's just make another LE. And all of a sudden, we're selling these for an additional $3,500. And you have to understand, you have to understand how cheap it is for Stern to change from a Jurassic Park premium or an Elvira premium. The moment they decide to make another nicer addition, it's costing them nothing, people, over a premium. That's another few million dollars in the bank per game for just stickers, people. Stickers and a plaque. Crazy, right? Crazy 2024 upon us. I also think what we're going to see in early 2024, I'm just going to make a prediction. I think American Pinball might be closing its doors. I really just have this bad feeling about American Pinball. I don't know how they get themselves out of this hole. Like, how are they going to turn a corner now? They don't have He-Man, people. they don't have a winning game next. They don't. We all know this. The only way they can get themselves out of this Galactic Tank Force hole they're in is if they have a hit title next. And they don't have it. And they have no way to get people into this Galactic Tank Force game. And I'm really worried about them. I think the rumor that they have to sell all these tank forces before they move on to their next game, I'm starting to believe that rumor. They were supposed to sell those games by the end of the year. And I think we might see American Pinball be the first one to duck out. I could be totally wrong on that. That's just Canada's prediction. But when I look at the health of all of these companies going into 2024, I think AP is the most vulnerable, even though they have the money. I really don't think like Mukesh's passion is pinball. It's not. If his passion was really pinball, do you think we would have got the games we got from American Pinball? I think he put trust in people that guided this company in the wrong direction You like my gosh Canada it a new year I thought we were going to be more positive We are going to be more positive once JAWS comes out All right, everybody. So what are my resolutions? What are my resolutions for the year? Well, first and foremost, I want to actually unbox my pinball machines. So with another baby on the way, we have to buy a house. So this house is happening. There's no ifs, ands, or buts about it. Canada will have to get a house this year, which I'm super excited about. It means I can unbox my pinball machines. I can be within walking distance to my demon and we can actually live like normal adults. Okay. I'm so excited for this. That is one of my resolutions for 2024. No more apartment living, no more living like I just got out of college. So that's number one, right? That'll create a happy wife, which will lead to a happy life. My other resolution that I want to do, I want to stop any conversation and drama around pinball content creators. So you have my word on that. We're going to stay talking about the companies and the people associated with the companies. And that is that there was too much negativity at the end of this year. It really brought us nowhere good for anybody involved. And I don't think anyone wants to go down that road again. So you have my word. You have my word on day one. I'm not going to mention any more content creators unless it is in a positive light And that is that the other resolution I want to do is just make this show as good as I can And I really feel like we're going to get there. My goal for the end of this year is to get to 800 subscribers I think that's fair. It's really hard when you're at where we're at to keep growing If you're listening to this show right now, and you're not a subscriber, please subscribe It's kind of sad to steal my podcast when it's only $5 a month. I went into Hillstone, one of my favorite restaurants. You might know it as Houston's and other areas of the country. The $55 filet mignon is now $68. Have you walked into your favorite restaurant and compared prices from 2019 to today? Like everything's gone crazy. The only thing that has not increased in price in the world of pinball is Canada's Pinball Podcast. So I appreciate all the support and no, I'm not going to raise my prices. I'm just going to give shout outs when people out there raise the roof and increase their donations. You know, the thing is, everybody is this. I'm not going to change my formula too much. I'm still going to be hard on these companies because at these prices, this to me is the year like 2024 is the year where these companies either deliver products that are worthy of these prices or I think we're going to start to see a much larger mass exodus from new and box purchases. I feel it. You just feel it. You feel the climate is in the air. Like these games are so much money now. The days of just writing checks for like, you know, $10,000 to $15,000 on a whim. And I saw so many of my pinball friends lose so much money on every game they bought in 2023. I I mean, I'm staring right now, and now like Foo Fighters LE with hardly any plays is a $9,500 game. That's crazy, people. You're losing like $3,500 in one year on the game. That's the game of the year. This isn't some crappy Thunderbirds game. You didn't even lose $3,500 on Thunderbirds if you bought it. You know why? Because Thunderbirds was like $6,000. And that's the problem with pinball now is at these high prices, the prices are going south so fast. And it doesn't matter what the game is. Let's take James Bond LE, for example, right? Everyone's like, oh, James Bond LE is now one of the greatest games of all time. I love James Bond fanatics. I know the code is good now. I know you guys are enjoying the game, but there's no denying the fact you can go get a James Bond LE now easily, easily for $3,000 less than it was brand new. I mean, easily for less than $3,000, 9,500 or best offer. I mean, I'm looking at these games right now. I mean, $9,500. And then you see all these people trying to sell them for $12,000 and $11,000. Who's going to buy your $11,000 James Bond when one is sitting right next to it for $9,500? And once Jaws comes out, what do you think the demand for James Bond is going to be? And that's where we're at, right? It's like the market is basically saying that a Stern LE should be $9,500. So guess what? That's what it used to be. And so it's going to be a really interesting year to see if any of these manufacturers actually wake up and read the room. And there's not enough of these newbies coming into the hobby that are just going to buy every single new game. I'm going to buy both spooky machines in one day. Like, you know, like most people are not going to do that. Some people might want to do it. That's their prerogative. And speaking of spooky, come on, is it really taking this long for license or approval on Looney Tunes or is the code just not far along? Come on. Like, seriously, come on. You could show us something, right? Oh, everybody, welcome to 2024. Welcome to Canada Spinball Podcast. I feel like I'm going to be back on the airwaves tomorrow. I feel like the Jaws trailer is going to drop tomorrow. Everybody, thank you so much for being a member. We're holding really strong with the subscriber base. And if you have a friend who's not a member, that's my thing. The only thing I ask of you in this year, if you have one friend, just one friend, think about it, one friend who's not a member of Canada Spinball Podcast, you could say to your friend, hey, look, man, I'm going to give you 60 bucks. And here's why I'm giving you the money. You're going to sign up for Canadas Pinball Podcast. And if everybody just did that to one friend of yours, we'd be at 1,200 subscribers. That'd be amazing. That's the easiest way. Word of mouth, everybody. Word of mouth. Everybody, welcome to the new year. I can't wait to cover what happens in the pinball industry this year. And I can't wait for you to know what I know is happening in pinball this year. It's going to be crazy. It's going to put 2023 in the rearview mirror so fast. And it's going to happen any day now. Later. Stars fading, but I linger on, dear. Still craving your kiss. I'm longing to linger till dawn, dear. Just saying, living as it is. Sweet dreams till sunbeams find you Sweet dreams that leave all worries far behind you But in your dreams, whatever they be