Journalist Tool

Kineticist

  • HDashboard
  • IItems
  • ↓Ingest
  • SSources
  • KBeats
  • BBriefs
  • RIntel
  • QSearch
  • NName Review
  • +Health

v0.1.0

← Back to items

Episode 55 - The Deeproot Interview

Eclectic Gamers Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 48m·analyzed·Feb 11, 2018
View original
Export .md

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.034

TL;DR

Deep Root Pinball founder discusses manufacturing innovation, Zidware transition, and software/rules approach.

Summary

Dennis from Eclectic Gamers Podcast interviews Robert Mueller, founder of Deep Root Pinball, a new boutique manufacturer acquiring Zidware's backlog. Mueller discusses Deep Root's manufacturing philosophy (quad assembly), software approach (Turner Logic handling programming), rule set design strategy, and hardware/cabinet standardization. The interview covers claims resolution for Zidware customers, licensing challenges, and Deep Root's plans to revolutionize pinball code and player customization.

Key Claims

  • Deep Root has 25-30 patents in process for manufacturing innovations

    high confidence · Robert Mueller stated: 'we have probably 25 to 30 patents in process'

  • Annual new pinball sales across all manufacturers range from $4,000 to $7,500 units, with Stern capturing 80-90%

    medium confidence · Mueller: 'some years it might be as low as $4,000, and some years it might be as high as $7,500. Amongst all the manufacturers, with Stern probably taking 80% to 90% of that'

  • Deep Root's quad assembly system could accomplish more in 25,000 sq ft than Stern does in 100,000 sq ft

    medium confidence · Mueller: 'We could probably do more with 25,000 square feet than Stern could do with 100,000'

  • Licensing information leaks between manufacturers through licensors (Swiss cheese confidentiality)

    high confidence · Mueller: 'another manufacturer called asking if they could compete against you... that was supposed to be completely confidential'

  • Deep Root plans to separate rule set design from programming, unlike other manufacturers

    high confidence · Mueller: 'the problem is in Pinball, those have been combined, and I think it's actually been a big disservice'

  • Zidware customers will have opportunity to try Deep Root conversions before accepting them

    high confidence · Dennis's summary confirmed by Mueller: 'The customers of Zidware would have the opportunity to try the games before accepting them in a goodwill's arrangement'

  • Turner Logic (Chris's company) has dropped almost all other contracts to focus 100% on Deep Root pinball

    high confidence · Mueller: 'he has dropped almost all his other contracts, and his whole team is focused 100% on pinball'

  • J-Pop (John Papaduke) will work on rules for converted Zidware games but may not be the only designer

    high confidence · Dennis: 'John Papaduke, more commonly known as J-Pop... will be working on the designs of those games for Deep Root, but he might not be the only person working on those designs.' Mueller confirms: 'Yeah, that's very good, Dennis'

Notable Quotes

  • “I'm not asking for anyone's sympathy... they have definitely made our life a nightmare. And what we've tried to do... is we've been having to try to ride very fine lines.”

    Robert Mueller @ ~10:00-11:00 — Mueller acknowledges the difficult position Deep Root faces with industry criticism while trying to fulfill Zidware customer promises and manage licensing confidentiality

  • “There is definitely a lot of talking through licensors... this dysfunctional industry has caused us to have to make some decisions a lot of people don't understand.”

    Robert Mueller @ ~12:00-13:00 — Reveals the systemic problem of licensing information leaks between competitors in the pinball industry

  • “If I was to tell you exactly what we're doing, it would blow everyone's mind. But yet again, it would be like, oh my gosh, why hasn't everyone else been doing this all along?”

    Robert Mueller @ ~32:00-33:00 — Mueller hints at revolutionary software approach being saved for Five Days of Deep Root announcement, but doesn't reveal specifics

  • “The problem is in Pinball, those have been combined [rule sets and programming], and I think it's actually been a big disservice... I think it's going to be hard for the other manufacturers to keep up with us once we kind of let the public see what we're doing.”

    Robert Mueller @ ~29:00-30:00 — Mueller claims separating rule design from programming will be a competitive advantage and create a 'breath of fresh air' in the industry

  • “I could tell you we could manufacture 100 a day. I could tell you we could actually manufacture one a day. I think at the end of the day, the market itself... is going to dictate more of where our output is going to be.”

    Robert Mueller @ ~24:00-25:00 — Mueller acknowledges that manufacturing capacity is less limiting than actual market demand for pinball machines

  • “While the code might not be open source, we will specifically be giving users the ability to modify portions of the code or rule set as they see fit.”

    Robert Mueller @ ~37:00-38:00 — Deep Root plans user-modifiable code with restrictions for licensing/safety, differentiating from competitors

Entities

Robert MuellerpersonDeep Root PinballcompanyJohn PapadukepersonTurner LogiccompanyZidwarecompanyJohn NorrispersonDennispersonTony

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Licensing confidentiality is fundamentally broken in the industry, with licensors sharing competitor bids and information; creates strategic challenges for Deep Root

    high · Mueller: 'another manufacturer called asking if they could compete against you and give a counteroffer... that was supposed to be completely confidential. It's just a lot of this kind of porous Swiss cheese'

  • ?

    business_signal: Mueller acknowledges the small pinball market (4,000-7,500 units annually across all manufacturers, with Stern taking 80-90%), raising questions about addressable market for a new entrant

    high · Mueller: 'some years it might be as low as $4,000, and some years it might be as high as... $7,500. Amongst all the manufacturers, with Stern probably taking... 80% to 90%'

  • ?

    business_signal: Turner Logic (software vendor) dropped almost all other contracts to focus 100% on Deep Root, indicating high-stakes commitment from key supplier

    high · Mueller: 'he has dropped almost all his other contracts, and his whole team is focused 100% on pinball'

  • ?

    event_signal: Five Days of Deep Root announced as major reveal event where manufacturing innovations, software approach, and other secrets will be made public

    medium · Mueller repeatedly references Five Days of Deep Root as when 'the excitement' and revolutionary approach will be revealed publicly

  • ?

    personnel_signal: J-Pop (John Papaduke) confirmed as rules designer for Zidware game conversions; Mueller indicates additional unnamed designers may also work on projects

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.326

0:00
Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is Sunday, February 11th. This is episode 55. I'm Tony. And I'm Dennis.
0:24
And we're going to have some fun today. We are. We always have fun, though, Tony. That's what we do on this show. But before we dive into all the deep levels of fun that we have for both pinball and video games this episode, it's introduction time. So let's go ahead and punch those out. What's going on, Tony?
0:43
Not a whole lot. I've been playing the same games I've been playing for like a month now and listening to the same stuff I've been listening to for a month now. and I watched the opening ceremonies of the Olympics and remembered that, oh, yeah, NBC just utterly ruins the Olympics and it makes me not even want to watch it because their people won't shut up during any of it, and they cut away from stuff that you want to see to go talk about somebody. I mean, it's like, oh, they're in the middle of doing some actual sporting event thing. Oh, well, these people aren't Americans, so we're going to cut away, and we're just going to talk about how this guy worked at a Taco Bell for six months while training. It's inspirational. Inspirational sports story. Why don't you accept that?
1:29
Because it's terrible and it ruins everything. Why can't they be like the BBC and the CBC? They literally just stream everything. You just choose the sport you want to watch, and you can watch the sport without all the BS tied on top of it. That doesn't sound like a very good way to make money.
1:52

  • “We wanted these machines to be in a lineup with other pinball machines from different eras, that it won't look out of place.”

    Robert Mueller @ ~46:00-47:00 — Deep Root's design philosophy aims for aesthetic compatibility with classic machines despite redesigned internals

    • person
    Stern Pinballcompany
    Jersey Jack Pinballcompany
    Spooky Pinballcompany
    Highway Pinballcompany
    This Week in Pinballorganization
    Pinsideorganization
    Five Days of Deep Rootevent
    403 Cluborganization
    Flippin' and Mashingorganization
    Game Room Junkiesorganization
    Broken Tokenorganization
    Eclectic Gamers Podcastorganization

    high · Mueller confirms Dennis's summary: 'John Papaduke... will be working on the designs of those games for Deep Root, but he might not be the only person working on those designs'

  • ?

    announcement: Deep Root plans revolutionary software/code approach to be revealed at Five Days of Deep Root event; Mueller emphasizes it will differentiate Deep Root from all competitors

    high · Mueller: 'I'm going to be doing some crazy things... it will be basically a breath of fresh air... people will go, oh my gosh, that's such an amazing idea. Why hasn't anyone done that before?'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Deep Root plans to offer user-modifiable code/rule sets (with constraints for licensing/safety) as differentiator; not open source but more customizable than competitors

    high · Mueller: 'While the code might not be open source, we will specifically be giving users the ability to modify portions of the code or rule set as they see fit'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Deep Root developing four-level internal production pipeline: Alpha (concept), Firm Core (layout), Whitewood (prototype), Blackwood/Release Candidate (code+assets), and RTM (manufacturing-ready)

    high · Mueller: 'we have four levels of production behind the scenes. The first level is alpha... The next step up would be the normal white wood... release candidate... and then release to manufacturing RTM'

  • ?

    business_signal: Deep Root delaying public machine reveals to protect 25-30 patents in process; even cabinet appearance would reveal IP; creating tension between transparency and IP protection

    high · Mueller: 'even seeing the general look of the cabinet will give away a lot of what we're doing... very difficult for us prior to the Five Days of Deep Root to get a machine with that look out'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Deep Root is separating rule set design from programming, claiming other manufacturers have incorrectly combined these functions, leading to incomplete/delayed code

    medium · Mueller: 'the problem is in Pinball, those have been combined, and I think it's actually been a big disservice... long, long crazy long development cycles... 9 months to years and years'

    • Yeah, I guess not. Well, I have not actually been playing too many games, because I have been watching a lot of Overwatch League, which I know we're going to touch on in the video game segment.
    2:04
    But I have done some things. We actually both made it out to the monthly 403 Club tournament and did pretty well compared to how we normally do, and it was a crowded field, so I was really pleased with that. and in addition oh I do have a correction I always like to put my corrections in the intro I caught this one myself so I can't give anyone credit for calling me out but when Steve Bowden was on last episode and I gave him a litany of introductions which I worked very hard on and people should go back and listen if they have not because they are super awesome and he was a fun guest to have I made a mistake afterwards when I was describing the summary I called them acronyms which obviously is not correct. They were alliterations. So I do know the difference. I was wrong. There's my correction.
    2:51
    You're never wrong. No, not ever. Only every third episode am I correcting myself. And speaking of episodes, I do want to mention that I found another mixed gaming podcast. There aren't very many of us, and when I say mixed gaming I mean that cover pinball and some other or other types of gaming. So we're primarily pinball and we also do a decent amount on video games, for example. Game Room Junkies is another one that's actually shutting down and I think they're the longest running one. I think they've been at it for about eight years. And they were mostly arcade games, I'd say, followed by pinball, followed by console. And then there's also Broken Token, which is very much mostly arcade followed by some pinball. Well, I was doing some searching and I found another one called Flippin' and Mashing. And they are relatively new. They've only had a half dozen episodes, and they are covering home video games, arcade games, and pinball. So I'm not quite sure of the balance yet because I don't usually go back and listen to prior episodes, so I've only heard the fifth and sixth. Looking at their show notes, my summary would be it seems like they're focusing mostly on home video games followed by pinball followed by arcades, but that might vary a bit. The fifth episode, which is what I came in on, was very well balanced. The only thing I will note is all the other ones I've mentioned are clean podcasts, and this one is explicit. So if that bothers people, just be aware of it. But I do have a link in the show notes, so if you want to give them a try. I found them entertaining. Otherwise, I wouldn't mention them. So that's it for intros. So I guess we need to get going on to what I'm assuming most people have been wanting to know about, and that is an interview that we had with Robert Mueller. and so we had scheduled to drop it in on this episode. You, Tony, weren't able to participate because I ended up scheduling the interview early on Friday morning. So, yeah, I had to work. Yeah, and I was working from home, so it worked out for me. But anyway, I had a lot of questions. We had questions come in from listeners. We had questions come in from Pinside. I monitored the main Pinside thread to try and help develop questions. and it's about 50 minutes long, which is the longest interview we've ever run. I normally keep them under 30, either by recording them that way or with aggressive editing, but it just wasn't really anything I felt that could be cut. So we're going to drop that in here, and then we're going to come back and we're going to talk about it. Hey, everyone. This is Dennis with the Eclectic Gamers Podcast, and I'm being joined by Robert Mueller, principal of Deep Root Tech, who's here to talk with us about Deep Root Pinball. Robert, welcome to the podcast.
    5:33
    Thank you, Dennis. Thank you very much for having me, and I look forward to discussing everything Deep Roots over the next few minutes. All right. Well, we're going to get started because it has definitely been a bombshell in the pinball community to have the announcement of another player in the manufacturing side. And the noteworthy thing I think lately has been the claims process that Deep Root has established to resolve issues with the former, or I guess it's still technically current customers of Zidware. You had a webinar, which I have a link to in our show notes for listeners who are curious,
    6:11
    that discussed what the plan would be in terms of making the Zidware games. And my bullet point summary would be, for those that haven't heard it yet, that the games that were planned to be Zidware games are planned to be Deep Root Pinball games, though there can be changes, including the theme. The customers of Zidware would have the opportunity to try the games before accepting them in a goodwill's arrangement. The customer would be responsible for any applicable taxes and shipping, and that you are offering a multi-tier option for Deep Root games in compensation to those that were in on Retro Atomic Zombie Adventureland, because it's a mouthful commonly called Raza and Alice in Wonderland Customers. And the final note I put down is that John Papaduke, more commonly known as J-Pop, who was the designer of those games, will be working on the designs of those games for Deep Root, but he might not be the only person working on those designs. Is that an accurate summary?
    7:13
    Yeah, that's very good, Dennis. I think you hit the major bullet point, absolutely. I didn't know if there was anything you wanted to add here that I didn't mention or that wasn't discussed in the webinar relating to the claims process. We're also going to have a link to the Deep Root Pinball website, so people can go there and route themselves to the claims information. It's also discussed in the webinar. And we do have the links to the two this week in pinball interviews that you've already done on behalf of Deep Root.
    7:40
    Yeah, wonderful. Thank you. Yeah, I just would add that, you know, I'm not asking for anyone's sympathy. You know, I and Deeper got into this of our own free will and volition. We know what we were getting into. So we're very understanding that there's a lot of people out there in a very small industry here who have megaphones louder than they probably should. And, you know, they have definitely made our life a nightmare. And what we've tried to do, and just kind of summarizing the 35,000-foot view, is we've been having to try to ride very fine lines. We knew J-POP was going to be a challenge. We knew we wanted to take care of all the Zidware customers, even though many people out there, especially those who aren't Zidware customers, might not have even wanted that to happen because then they wouldn't have anything to complain about anymore. We know that some Zidware customers are not going to, you know, go through with the leak for one reason or another. We've also, in creating, you know, pinball on top of that, we've had to ride that fine line of we need to stay enough to get Zidware customers to believe that we're going to follow through with our promises, but not too much that gives away a lot of our trade secrets, and there's a lot of those that we're trying to keep. more so than any other pinball manufacturers, all of them put together, times probably a couple multiples. We've also had to ride the very fine line behind the scenes of licensing, which I know Canada recently was talking about like it was some easy piece of cake, and I think a lot of people think it is. I think only behind the scenes with each of the manufacturers can really the truth come out that licensing is extremely difficult. The reason why people complain about licenses all the time is because there's not a lot of them that are going to be available for pinball. And those licensors have varying opinions about pinball and how expensive it is and how they would want their licenses to be used. So in going through the licensing process, we as Deeper have had to have presented enough of a picture out there for them to understand that we will be a major player and a competitor, but not enough to give away a lot of what we're doing because, as we found out very quickly, is that there is definitely a lot of talking through licensors. So, for instance, one major license that we're going for, we actually called the other day and tried to get an update. We were like, oh, well, another manufacturer called asking if they could compete against you and give a counteroffer. And it was like, well, that was supposed to be completely confidential. And it's just a lot of this kind of porous Swiss cheese kind of this dysfunctional industry has caused us to have to make some decisions a lot of people don't understand. And I really don't need their sympathy or support. But it explains sort of why we've had to ride this more legal line and position when it comes to Zidware. but also teasing probably more than we really wanted to to try to ride the licensing line and try to get to where customers understand that we really do sincerely want to fulfill all of these promises. So, one-winded, but it gives you the 35,000-foot view of maybe some of the decisions we've made. Okay. And I do want to get into some of the more general aspects regarding Deep Roots' entry into the hobby of pinball and the manufacturing side specifically. But first, I'm going to actually zoom in. So we're going to go from 30,000 feet. We're going to go down to ground level. And I want to hit on a few things that have come up in the two interviews that you've done with This Week in Pinball.
    11:28
    And the first area I kind of want to tackle is one in your most recent interview, and that is in regards to assembly. Now, in that latest interview, you discussed a concept called quad assembly, and you did cite that there are trade secrets behind the process. So I'm not going to try and get at the trade secret. Well, I wouldn't mind if you want to share the trade secrets, but that's not my goal. What I'm interested in is setting those aspects aside. Can you help explain what broad manufacturing concept the idea is sort of grounded on? Because it was pointed out that it's not an assembly line. So I'm assuming it must be modeled, though, broadly speaking, on some generally accepted manufacturing practice on which you're adding more ingredients to your secret sauce.
    12:13
    Yeah, absolutely. The great thing about building the team that I've built with people outside of pinball is they don't come in with preconceived notions and limitations that pinball just kind of breeds in and of itself. And so most of the people that have been brought onto the Deeper team have substantial manufacturing experience in other industries. And so by bringing all of those together and talking about the unique nature of how pinball is manufactured, because it is very unique, a lot of multidisciplinary parts and services coming together into one finished product, we've come up with what we think is a pretty amazing new take on manufacturing to be able to throttle outputs at any given time without laying off workers or firing people or hiring a bunch of new people, as well as dealing with the very complex nature of the raw materials and the finish work that needs to be done with those, and then through the assembly process. So quad assembly is still assembly. It's just not done on an assembly line. It's done more in an office type of nature with batch workflow, et cetera. Okay, so it's oriented to allow you to be flexible in terms of outputs without having to adjust your workforce size.
    13:38
    Absolutely. You know, one of the big problems is, you know, I think other manufacturers, I'll just leave it at that, have had lots of excuses as far as vendors or problems with parts and sourcing and things like that. Those are problems that every manufacturer has, and we know we will have those as well. But we think our quad assembly system will be able to make those, either minimize them or make them completely irrelevant. And we'll be able to do more with less space. So while we might not have the huge volume of space that Stern has now, we won't need that. We could probably do more with 25,000 square feet than Stern could do with 100,000.
    14:19
    And this goes more to agile manufacturing versus, you know, the Lean Six Sigma and all that. So it's just a different take at the same time trying to have a good end result that will allow us to be very lean and mean when it comes to manufacturing a complex machine. Okay. I know this is going to be hard to predict, but can you predict when fully operational at the location that were cited in the latest This Week in Pinball interview, What do you envision to be average weekly output capability, assuming the demand is there?
    14:58
    Well, in the years I've been researching, there is a reason why none of the major manufacturers, this is maybe an exception of Spooky, releases sales numbers is because it's not a lot, right? There's not a lot of new in box that is sold these days. I mean, if I had to take a gap, you know, some years it might be as low as $4,000, and some years it might be as high as, you know, $7,500. Amongst all the manufacturers, with Stern probably taking, you know, 80% to 90% of that. So, I mean, I could tell you we could manufacture 100, you know, a day. I could tell you we could actually manufacture one a day. I think at the end of the day, the market itself and what can actually be sold, you know, in pinball is going to dictate more of where our output is going to be versus what the physical and business limitations are going to be. With the space we have in the quad assembly and especially in getting the manufacturing ramped up, and it will take time to get it ramped up, I could give you numbers, but no one's going to believe them. And the only thing people are going to believe is when they can come and buy a deeper pinball machine, they're going to have it within two weeks of buying it, no waiting or anything else. and that's going to make more of a difference and drive more people to buy from us than elsewhere. Okay.
    16:16
    Also, I guess my kind of final assembly category question that I had is, in the aforementioned interview, you also noted that there wasn't a plan to do physical test games, at least physical test games on location. I wanted to get some clarification on are you doing a whitewood stage at all, or do you just do more towards a final production model, or are you doing tests virtually?
    16:43
    So that's a complex question because it has to do with more what's behind the scenes and then whether or not we're going to be showing that in public. So let me do the behind the scenes first. So we have four levels of production behind the scenes. The first level is alpha. That's more of the concept design. If we are going to do a firm core on a title, then that would be the firm core model, model laying out the general paths, ramps, lanes, et cetera, where the general components are going to be. The next step up would be the normal white wood, and that's where we have something that's flippable,
    17:18
    has most of the mech but maybe not some of the complex mech, very simple programming just to make sure the geometry is good and it flips well. So the one after that is a release candidate, and what I like to call blackwood just as a play off of whitewood. Release can be something where our code is actually in play with the components and we're able to actually flip with the rule set. Most of the artwork is probably laid out by then, as well as plugging in where sounds and other video assets are going to be. And then release to manufacturing RTM would be something that's basically ready to, it's been designed to be manufactured at that point, and it's ready to be shipped to customers. So, on the inside, those are sort of our level. So, while I said there wasn't really a test picture, of course there is, just maybe not in the same way that other pinball companies might be using it. Okay. Now, as far as the public is concerned, in the future, yes. Right now, if people were still going through the legal process of, we have probably 25 to 30 patents in process.
    18:35
    And it is extremely complicated. And we want to get what we're doing protected and locked down. And unfortunately, even seeing the general look of the cabinet will give away a lot of what we're doing. and so it's very difficult for us prior to the five days of deep root to get a machine with that look out while we're still taking care of all the patents and getting them all filed and having that intellectual property where we spent a lot of blood, sweat, and tears on to protect it. So I hope that answers your question. Yeah, yeah, it does. And speaking of code, as you brought up with the Blackwood stage, I want to transition into some software-oriented questions because that was a portion of that latest interview as well, during which you noted that a company, Turner Logic, is going to be handling the software side of the equation. I've gone and reviewed their online portfolio, and I see they've worked on a diverse blend of projects, though none of them seem to have been gaming-specific. I was curious, I mean, with my understanding, and I'm not a programmer, but I know some, And while I would be confident that a programmer who can do drone software or accounting software is capable of coding for a game as well, some of the questions that have come up have been regarding the creation of rules. And when you announced that latest slate of sort of all-star designers, all-star sound person, all-star engineers, there wasn't a name that was announced that was going to be handling the rules on the software creation side. So I'm curious if you're planning to bring in someone to lead on software design who is a veteran of it, or are you confident that Turner Logic will be able to create rules with their existing staff?
    20:21
    So I think that's, again, two separate components. So let's separate rule sets from actual programming because those are two very different areas. And, in fact, the problem is in Pinball, those have been combined, and I think it's actually been a big disservice and that's why there's so many issues with incomplete code, delayed code, and you have these long, long, crazy long development cycles where you've gone nine months to years and years and years trying to get this insane code rule set out. It's unheard of and I think that it's going to be hard for the other manufacturers to keep up with us once we kind of let the public see what we're doing. And I think it will be basically a breath of fresh air in the way we're going to approach this. So let me talk a little more quickly about rule sets, and then I'll talk about the actual programming. Okay. So rule sets can be really complicated or they can be really easy. And I think a lot of people put too much into having, like, the one beautiful rule set. The great thing about not having one rule set to rule them all is you don't have the very issue of trying to create a rule set that everyone's going to love, because not everyone is going to love every rule set, right? And so not only is it not hard to create a rule set, I mean, there's a lot of things to kind of see that other people have done to kind of build on or that it plays directly to the certain theme that you're that pinball is, that specific pinball machine is actually, you know, playing on. But, I mean, I think from our standpoint is that we have been able to come up with some good rule sets ourselves. John Norris is just a rule set king. He's the one that kind of started the pin golf movement, which was very innovative. And so John Norris is just like constantly telling me, oh, this would be a great rule set. This would be a great thing. This would be a good thing. So, you know, John Norris has really spearheaded that. And I would say, even though a lot of people would disagree, I can tell you internally, Jaycoff is very good with rule sets as well. It's very unique things and it's tied directly to his very eccentric layout.
    22:37
    But we do, we have reached out and I'm not going to name names, but we would like top tournament players to be consultants for two reasons. First, we want to make sure that our tournament modes would be something that would be fun to play in tournaments, doing some things that maybe have never been tried before in tournaments. But we also want people who know rule sets like the back of their hand to come in and tear apart ours and to be able to kind of give us great, you know, constructive feedback. I mean, we're not immune.
    23:09
    It's not like we don't want to hear from anyone at Pinball. We don't want to start the foundation of what we're doing based upon people in that echo chamber. It's nice to get, you know, Pinball included because we're doing Pinball, But we want to try something new and then pull back as we need to kind of modify it, you know, to do it a normal. So it not only goes to someone who's never played pinball before and it's really fun and immersive, but also for, you know, a big tournament player or a fan of pinball, it should be something that's familiar to them and they're going to have fun playing it as well. And it'll still be challenging. So on the other side real quick, on the computer side,
    23:47
    Chris, who runs Turner Logic, is one of the most brilliant people I know. He and I get along very well. We have a lot of neat ideas. I think when he heard the scope and what I wanted to do, he just blew his mind. It was so exciting that he has dropped almost all his other contracts, and his whole team is focused 100% on pinball. And we're going to be doing some crazy things. I don't want to go into detail because I want to keep the excitement for the five days of Duke when we tell everyone how we're doing Toad. and I think it will, people will go, oh my gosh, that's such an amazing idea. Why hasn't anyone done that before?
    24:27
    And then they're going to go, wow, okay, so what do we do with this now? What opportunities do we have now to work with code and rule sets? And where do we go? So it's going to really revolutionize how code is done, and not only behind the scenes, but also how it's used by players and operators, for that matter, out in the field. Okay, so getting back a little bit on the rules portion that you tackled first. So your plan is that the games will ship with code that is what I would describe as tournament viable. I want to parse my words here very carefully and say that that will be an irrelevant that will be irrelevant when it comes to our code okay yeah and I remember in the this week I'm sorry go ahead I'm trying to be vague but not vague. So later on, people can say that I was being honest, but not trying to give away what the excitement is. If I was to tell you exactly what we were doing, it would blow everyone's mind. But yet again, it would be like, oh my gosh, why hasn't everyone else been doing this all along? It makes so much sense. So that's how I'll leave it. Right, right. And I understand there are elements still until you've done the five days of Deep Root that can't be made public. In the interview with This Week in Pinball, you had pointed out that there would be a lot of player control over the software, over, I believe, the rule settings as well. I was curious if that meant the software itself would ultimately be open source for the game, so players would be, or owners would be free to make modifications of the code and release the code and it'd be publicly downloaded and not cause any issues?
    26:17
    So open source has issues, especially when you're dealing with licenses, and especially when you're dealing with a machine that can be programmed to actually be hazardous.
    26:30
    And so I'll say this. While the code might not be open source, we will specifically be giving users the ability to modify portions of the code or rule set as they see fit. while that will be of course restricted it should allow more collaboration of oh my gosh this is a great game and we love almost all the rules but man there's a few things that didn't get right so let us switch a couple things around here and it will be that much better we would like the users to that sort of say is to tweak things as they keep fit to try to have you know experience that makes the most sense to them Okay, so there'll be some sort of tool that a user will be able to use to make rule modifications within the constraints that are necessary to protect the systems, protect the licenses, and so forth.
    27:32
    It'll be even better than that, but yes. Okay. Let's go ahead and move over into hardware then. I was curious, are the systems, are they going to be board-based or PC-based or something else?
    27:52
    I think there will be a lot of familiarity with the way that we're going to design the hardware. But I think it will be our own unique take. What we've tried to do is create the eBoot standard, just as other manufacturers have created their own standard, to lower costs and to unify that amongst all different titles over a number of years.
    28:18
    And so it'll be easier for not only us internally, the lower the cost of manufacturing, the lower the sales price to people buying machines, but it also hopefully lower maintenance and not only cost, but maintenance time as well. So we are trying to stay away from the PC approach that I know JJP has kind of gone, and even sort of the mini PC approach like Highway,
    28:45
    but still keep something powerful enough that we can run some value or visual assets on the machine. Okay. In one of the This Week in Pinball interviews that you did, you mentioned the plan was sort of the standard size WMS era games. I was curious if the intent from Deep Root is that all the cabinets will always be the same size or if you're considering wide body machines or everything's just going to be standardized because we see both approaches from different manufacturers. Some seem to vary it and some stay consistent on the cabinet size.
    29:21
    Yeah, absolutely. So I think cabinet size is pretty much, at this point, kind of very different from manufacturer to manufacturer. You know, JGP is more wide-body only. Stern has their own unique take. It's not quite the Williams Valley. Spooky, I think, is still using the Williams Valley. I really haven't looked at highway, so I'm not sure what sizing they're using. Ours will be very similar to Williams Valley size. It's not going to be small, dizzle gains. I'll just try to give hints, but I'll just say it outright now. They're going to be pinball machines, fully functional pinball machines as people know them. It's just going to look and act differently.
    30:00
    And so as a result, the sizing might be a little off, but what we've tried to do as we've redesigned the pinball machine from the ground up is to try to make it so if it's in a lineup with other pinball machines from different eras, that it won't look out of place. Okay. So in terms of, you mentioned the maintenance and how much easier it should be on the Deep Root machines versus what people in the pinball hobby are currently used to. I was curious in terms of things like mechs and mech sizes, one of the ongoing challenges, especially with some of the more boutique manufacturers that have been on the knife's edge, so to speak, financially, has been whether or not parts will be available if they did not use traditional parts like Williams parts. So I wondered if the goal here with DeepRoot is they're going to use standardized parts, if you're going to be using customized parts, or the technologies you're exploiting are such that there's an expectation that you don't really need to find new parts.
    30:58
    So when we first started, our goal was to try to use as many parts that have been outstanding, not just Williams Valley, but, you know, some of the East or even Stern, et cetera, parts that are publicly available just because we wanted to make sure that we were reinventing the wheel to the point of creating not only problems for us in redesigning, you know, a lot of these parts, but also that people could get their hands on those parts. You know, we wanted these days, you know, we're in the pinball business anymore and we're doing them. I've offered a couple of parts distributors, the exclusive opportunity to warehouse and sell deep root parts because we don't want to be in the parts business.
    31:49
    Those talks are still ongoing. I think that that's a much better option for us than having and controlling all those parts in-house for either people that want to put those parts in their own homebrew project or they need replacement parts for our machines. our warranties will be better than anyone else in the industry by multiples. So I really, we're trying to do everything very, very rugged as we can to make it safer for a home environment, but still be, you know, still be pinball, still be those basic components everyone would be able to recognize.
    32:26
    Now, in terms of it still being pinball, this was my last hardware question, and you might not be able to answer it, but I was wondering, In terms of the play field, is it planned to be the traditional plywood, or are you going with an alternative material, which we've seen from manufacturers in the past?
    32:45
    So I will give a T, and that is we're going to take a sledgehammer to a play field if at least the market doesn't ship. Wow. And I'll leave it at that. Okay. Every play field leaving our facility that's put into a game will have a sledgehammer taken to it, and if it leaves a mark, it does not ship.
    33:09
    That's the standard I've set, so that's what, to answer your question, that's what we're going to keep to. All right. Well, that's an easy standard to measure for people, so they'll have something to check against.
    33:22
    I'm done with dimples. I'm done with, on my own machines, and I'm done with the substandards people have gotten used to for what should be one of the most strongest and most important components of the pinball machine, and that is the plate build. So that has been a passion of mine that that has to be right or it doesn't shift. Okay. Well, I just have some generalized questions about Deep Root and the hobby in general, and I want to go back actually to your first interview with This Week in Pinball. There was a quote that, of course, got a lot of traction with people in terms of, we would love to make a Ferrari with Kia prices and Kia costs. Now, where I want to go with that is the motto of Deep Root Pinball, I believe, is every family needs a pinball, every pinball needs a family. And so in my take, in my view of the hobby, not in the manufacturing side, has been that the biggest challenge to growing pinball has always been the pricing. and it's too soon I'm sure to talk about pricing but I'm curious about where you're seeing Deep Root enter in the hobby like is it going to be around the Stern Pro is that the market is the Stern Pro price point are you trying to undercut where Stern Pro is or is it more on the collector side where the JJPs and the highways the more high dollar companies have chosen to stake their claim in terms of what market share they want I think it would be very difficult for the other manufacturers to compete with us.
    34:54
    Do you think that differential is more or less than 20%? I think that we will have a portfolio of machines at multiple price points, different features for each machine. As I've already said before, we will not do the multiple version of each title. There will only be one title. and the titles in our portfolio of games will be at different price points. Oh, okay. So you see Deep Root having more variants than we see from the other manufacturers, just pin to pin, because they'll be designed perhaps significantly differently from each other.
    35:35
    Yes. I don't want to go into much more detail just from a competitive advantage, but it will be very difficult for even something like Astern to compete with what we're doing. And it actually has been a major selling point to licensors, many of whom know pinball, would like to do a pinball title with their license, but don't really like the price point that other manufacturers are at. So that's been one of the easier things in the licensing talks is price points. Okay. You mentioned already that the machines will be full-featured machines. I'm curious, are all the models planned to be what I would call operator-ready in terms of they'll come with Coindors, the software's going to accommodate making money on location with audit tools and the like?
    36:27
    So when we were redesigning the pinball machine from the ground up, there were only three safe items that we knew we were going to touch. It had to have two flipper buttons, it had to have the general shape, and it had to have Coindor. and so I think to answer your question, I'll leave it at that.
    36:50
    We have put a lot of effort into creating a machine that's not only tournament friendly but also owner-operator friendly but more importantly to the standard of someone putting it into their house and being proud of having a Deep Root machine in their house. Now, in terms of when you go to market for the sales of machines, are you planning to use the distributor model or are you going to be doing it direct?
    37:20
    That's always tough. As some people have pointed out, Stern has the distributor model locked down and a couple of other manufacturers have tried to chip away at that with some success or not. I think that marketing and actual distribution are one of those things that is just going to have to be organic with time.
    37:45
    I think that we're trying to go into some markets that maybe some other pinball manufacturers haven't yet thought about or don't really care about. And so we're hoping that the let's look at everything, every option, every possibility is going to be there.
    38:00
    We have not, and I'll just be honest, we have not had any distributors, well, maybe such a one, reach out to us, and we're perfectly fine with that. You know, I think that we have reached out to some unconventional types of distribution opportunities, and we're going to be continuing to do so to look at getting Deep Root out there to the masses. And it's really about, you know, family and having families have that nostalgic, vintage American feel with the pinball machine in their house, photo operators I think will just come as they are.
    38:40
    And, yeah, so I'll leave the answer to that. Okay. Given the resurgence that we've all seen in pinball's popularity over the last few years, we've entered a point even before the announcement of Deep Root being on the scene that a lot of those in the hobby feel that the manufacturing area is very crowded at this stage. We've got the long-running Stern Pinball. You've got Josie Jack targeting the high-dollar market. We've got the boutique manufacturers of multimorphic, spooky, and American pinball. And then the still-around-but-struggling Highway and Dutch. I'm curious, why get in at all into pinball at this point in the hobby's maturity? And where you maybe see Deep Root being in five years after releasing? We'll measure it from after the first games are released, sort of. where you see that deep-roots place amongst the existing manufacturers, or you even think they'll still be around?
    39:36
    I mean, I don't know what's going to happen with other companies. All I know is what we're told behind the scenes as, you know, I know there's loose lips with some of the people associated with us, and it's frustrating, but it is what it is. So I'm not going to, you know, speculate on, you know, secondhand information I've been given. but what they did is that we put a significant investment into this and we're here, we're going to make our splash, and we're going to stick with it. And while Deep Root is a conglomerate of many different enterprises,
    40:13
    this pinball is a huge passion for mine. I mean, I know when I built my collection and got back into pinball a couple years ago, So I knew this was something that I wanted to be a part of, but I had to do it my way, and I had to do it the right way. And so it's taken time, of course, to plan everything out. You know, things that I wanted to do at first didn't work out, and so you have to, you know, go back to the drawing board, look at what your strengths are and what you can bring, and is it still worth it? And we're here today because it is, and we think that we can bring a lot more excitement and passion to pinball rather than take it away. And so that's what we're here to do. All right.
    40:57
    I've obviously, I've steered clear of really asking any questions about J-Pop because it's a personnel matter, and so I don't, you know, normally the answers will be you can't, you won't be able to talk about it. But I do want to ask about something tying to him relating to your latest This Week in Pinball interview where you announced all these other exclusive arrangements. You have Osweiler, you have Norris, you have Nordman. These are big names that people who are fans of pinball from the 90s or 80s should know, and they all have very unique styles of design.
    41:27
    I mean, just looking at it now, if you had gone public with just those three names, that would have been a hydrogen bomb on the hobby already, just because of their pedigree. But adding in J-Pop adds in all this, in my view, adds in all this headache, because it meant you had to tackle the Zidware customer issue and the blowback from the hobbyists who are upset about Zidware. So I'm curious, what's the view in terms of why was it more advantageous to involve J-POP than just going forward with these other designers?
    42:03
    So that's a hard one to answer. A lot of these designers that we have now were either not available at the time when we needed to start doing our design process a little under a year ago.
    42:22
    And I don't know if I really wanted them. We were trying to get new blood. I mean, I've mentioned someone else that I reached out to, which I really have a lot of respect for their work. There's another one that I have a lot of respect for his work, but both of them have said that it's just not their cup of tea. And so we started designing by ourselves. And what we found in working with J-Pop is he's just, I think there's a, we live in a very caustic environment these days where I think things are taken to the ends of the spectrums. And so while there's animosity about J-Pop, J-Pop's the guy that I have a friendship with. I hug him when he comes. I hug him when he goes away. I love, he goes back to Illinois. I love his family.
    43:14
    I think that he really made a lot of stupid decisions and mistakes. And unfortunately, I think that the blowback from that is not in comparison to what was actually done. So I would challenge the notion that J-COP, while he did come with challenges, and those challenges have been very frustrating, mainly because we had a breach of confidence back in September. I think things would have been very different had that not happened. But anyway, while it's challenging, I'm not upset about any of the blowback from J-Pop. J-Pop's best work is in front of him. I see him behind the scenes and no one else does. And you have to realize none of the other designers have said anything negative because they like to work with him too. I mean, he is a fun, engaging guy to work with. He's extremely creative. I mean, he blows me away on many things. He stands up for what he believes, but, you know, you tell him, hey, look, we've got to change this, you know, and you give him a good reason, he'll say, okay, let's do that. So he's really good in the collaborative environment. I think the closed-door competitive environment in this valley was probably not the best environment for a guy like, you know, John. but in the more collaborative nature of what we're doing here. I mean, I've seen other designers just sit there and they've just done some amazing work together just talking back and forth with ideas. And so I really don't see John bringing on John as a challenge. Now, dealing with the big megaphones out there, especially with people who have no interest whatsoever in the Zidware mess,
    44:57
    I think, yeah, that's the challenging part because you want to ride the fine line of pushing back but not being disagreeable, and that's been very hard. I think the Zipware customers, with the exception of the plaintiffs, of course, which that's a whole other matter, but the Zipware customers have been overwhelmingly, in private, very supportive. You've seen a lot of them not go online, and I'm very appreciative for that because I think that no matter the very few people that have just nothing but negative things to say about Seafruit or about John or about the bidware, I think that that's very, very isolated, right? But it's the loudest thing right now. I think when we finally get bidware customers taken care of very soon and we get John's games out there, if people have a chance to play them and love them for what they are, I think that a lot of this will just be history. And even if it's not for some people, then we don't want your business. You know, it's just, you know, we want people to buy our machines who love to play our machines. And so if you're not one of them, then there's other manufacturers that you can go buy machines from. That's really how I feel about it. I'm a little curious. This goes back into the Wayback Machine, but if I remember, in one of the threads involving Zidware on Pinside, around when Pentasia sort of stepped in, I wanted to think that there were some posts from the DeepRoot account. Did you all consider intervening back then?
    46:35
    Yeah, absolutely. So we were trying to work with Charlie Itzuki. That was right when Americans Most Haunted had taken off. I spent tens of hours and tens of thousands of dollars working with Spooky, trying to, you know, over many, many months, trying to see if we could come to terms on working together. But at the end of the day, Charlie had a very different vision, and he's done well with it. So I really respect him, and I'm glad that he's been able to do something no one else has been able to do in pinball in comparison to, you know, Sir or even JJP.
    47:13
    As far as J-Pop, during that period, I did go meet with J-Pop. I was very interested in working with J-Pop. However, I don't think John at that point had hit rock bottom, and I don't think that he had at that point, you know, the humility that needed to be there to make changes that needed to be made. And he was working with, I'll just call this person a behind-the-scenes mentor slash confidant that was very disruptive.
    47:45
    And so I got very frustrated with the situation because of that. And so I backed off. So I let everyone, you know, kind of know that's what the case was. And there were a couple, you know, messages that I had. And I knew that, you know, the contagion thing was going to fall apart. I knew that there had to be some things that had to happen before, you know, the Zidware customers were going to be able to be made whole. And then, of course, AP wasn't going to be that option, too. And they bailed on him the second there was any disagreement. And that's the difference with us. It doesn't matter how many people hate us because of J-POP or want to, with their, you know, megaphones in a small industry here, try to take us down because of that. We've made our decision. We're sticking with the decision. We're going to make this happen. And there's nothing they can do about it other than just to be shown for what they are at the end of the day.
    48:39
    All right. I only have one last question. It's one of the more fun category questions. I was just curious, who would you say is the greatest living pinball designer, retired or working? It doesn't matter. I'm just curious.
    48:51
    Well, I've got several designers now that are being paid a lot of money. I know. You're going to upset all but one of them. I don't know. I could probably tell everyone's vision of me as being an egomaniacal narcissist and say that I'm the greatest pinball designer ever. But I think that would fit a lot with pinball because everyone in pinball thinks they're an expert and they're the best ever, whatever the current conversation is. If I would fit in with Sir and Jack and everyone on pin side, right? well the hobby can be a bit cost bit caustic it it is caustic and i i find it very funny that people belay deeper than deeper it's just the people you know where people are gaining up today everyone in pinball everyone has gone through what we're going through now and in fact i'm actually a little grateful that it isn't as bad as it's been with other things and so So, you know, if Stern gets a break from everyone complaining about, you know, the quality of their stuff or incomplete code, or Jack gets a break from this crazy prices and stuff like that, then, you know, I can give you, you know, you're welcome, right? So I'll take the heat for now, knowing that there will be a day where that will change. So back to your question. Most of my personal collection are late 80s and early 90s Williams Valley games. Oh, okay. I would have to say J-pop. His designs speak more to me than any other, but I will say recently I've been on Creature from the Black Lagoon, and I don't know why such a simple game with music that really gets on your nerves really drives me to play it over and over again. But I go more for not the designer. I go more for what's my passion today. I mean, everyone who comes into a pinball collection, and I know a lot of other people can commiserate, ask, you know, what's your favorite? And it's like asking which child is your favorite, right? It's just, it changes over time. You know, certain machines speak to you in different ways. I like to play one machine just because of the better rule set. I like to play another machine because of the light animation. Like Circus Voltaire is absolutely gorgeous, right? Almost stuff there with Magic Girl.
    51:08
    But it's a little one-dimensional to play. So that's a hard one. I appreciate the question. It was a good question, but at least with as good as answers I can give you, probably overall I enjoy all of J-Cops' design more than anyone else. That's fair enough. Well, those were all my questions, I guess. Before I let you go, if you have questions for me, I'm more than happy to try and answer them.
    51:35
    Yeah, so I don't know if I have a question at all for you. I really appreciate you being willing to do this interview. I know that there are other podcasts out there that constantly talk about, you know, promising to come on and never came on or were too scared to come on. I don't think it has anything to do with that. What I really like about you and Tony is that y'all are very fair, you're very thorough, and I'm personally very appreciative of that. Because at the end of the day, I remember commenting to Jeff over at This Week in Pinball about, you know, I called him the media. And you're like, oh, well, I'm just a guy with a website. And you'd probably say, we're just guys with a small podcast. But pinball is small. I mean, you are the media. And so some of these podcasts and online sources, they act like media and very professional, and then others don't. And so I'm very appreciative for the hard work that you put in that's unpaid and probably well-deserved, that you do what you do, and I'm very appreciative of that. Well, thank you very much. I can't attest it to anything other than it's probably our personalities. Tony and I have this personality approach, and so when I do interviews, I do them in the way that I always wanted to listen to them or read them. So that's sort of the structure. or I've done yours up the same way I do any of the others where I write up all my questions. You know, I have ones that I don't think will get answered, but it's just what I think is interesting to hear about. So if we have a minute or two left, how about you ask the most important question that you didn't think I would answer and see if I'll answer it. Oh, gosh. Okay. The one, I did drop one off the list as we were going along. and the one I had was, and I'll read it specifically from my notes, and it's, you've stressed innovation quite a bit as one of the key elements to the deep root strategy. Can you cite a particular example, such as a mech modification or design change?
    53:45
    Yes. We talked about a little bit of that code and a little bit about the design. Have you ever seen Minority Report? Oh, yes. Tom Cruise is like, moving things around with his hand. So when all the guys came in, I told them that's what I wanted. And they all laughed at me and said, that's not possible. And I told them, it's going to be done, and I want to see a prototype in 30 days. And that's sort of the culture we have here. Nothing's impossible. I mean, if I told them I want the pinball machine to float like Han Solo, you know kind of carbonite thing in the entire Sharks pack I expect the guys to do it And so there are no no at Deep Root Everything is on the table and we have the ability to do some of the most amazing things that some of these other companies never even thought possible, let alone, you know, pinball phonetics as well. So a couple of hints there, and we'll leave it at that. Okay. So if you thought, if a layperson were to see a Deep Root machine, and I would say currently in the realm of physical pinball, what most people would identify technologically is the most out there in terms of what it's done for pinball from what it has been in sort of purely mechanical form would be the P3 system for multimorphic. Do you think the average person would think there is more innovation in the DeepRoot machine?
    55:12
    I don't think Jerry's machine is very innovative. and Jerry and I have had a lot of private conversations so he will know that that's not an insult. It's just my personal opinion.
    55:24
    Putting a video screen and doing some of the things he's done which is way over engineering and creating a bomb cost that's crazy, crazy high. It's just, that's not what we wanted to do. We wanted to, look, pinball and video games have been kind of on parallel paths for a long time. Pinball didn't want to be video games. The video games didn't want to be pinball And as you get closer to synergizing those, the question is, can it still be pinball?
    55:50
    And would people still recognize it as pinball? And so when I look at, you know, like pinball arcade on iPhone and I look at the virtual tables or I look at something like P3, I don't consider those pinball. It's more video gamey, right? what we wanted to do with Deep Root is to go toward the video game but just do it with some finesse and some creativity. We're not going that far that direction, too far that direction. That we wanted to keep pinball, what it is, people love bashing crap with a silver ball, right? It's fun. And so we wanted to keep that basic thing. So no, there won't be huge LCD screens under our playfields or as the place built underneath the glass.
    56:36
    People will see it for the pinball that they love and cherish. All right. We'll leave it at that. Thanks again, Robert, for coming on to the show. I appreciate it.
    56:46
    Thank you, Dennis. Take care, and hopefully we'll do this again. All right. Sounds good. Well, welcome back, everyone. Hopefully you enjoyed the interview. It revealed a lot of interesting information. Tony, since you didn't get to participate during the interview itself, let's let you kick the ball off here let's do our analysis like we would with any other news piece what did you think or where do you want to begin um the best place to begin I'm just going to go ahead and start down I took some notes when I listened to it after you guys finished it and I thought the whole licensing issue thing where he was talking about how they were coming back well so this other company came in I think it's interesting to see just a slight peek behind the curtain on how something like that's working at that level and to actually have somebody come out and go, well, I know we've been talking to you, but. Yeah, that was a curious thing. It also made me think, you know, back on our last episode when Steve was on and we were talking about why hasn't Stern done a Tron Vault Edition and you brought up that you thought it had to be a licensing challenge. And I thought that has to be easy. That can't be a problem. Well, you know, maybe I'm once again wrong, and it really could be a difficulty with dealing with Disney, even if they have an established relationship. So, yeah, that was an interesting curtain peek.
    58:10
    I think what I'm going to bring up now is one of the early elements that I focused in on, and it was one where when I got suggested questions, most of them came in regards to software. And we obviously had quite a bit of a discussion with Steve about the concern that there wasn't a lead rules guy.
    58:31
    And so there were a couple of takeaways I had from the interview. The first was the idea of divorcing the programmer from being the rules expert. I actually think that makes a lot of sense. I hadn't really considered it because it does seem like the programmers, by and large, are the rules guys at this point. I know back with Premiere, John Norris did do a lot of the rules development. I don't know if he coded it as well or not. He may have. I just don't remember. But I know he was responsible for developing a lot of the rules, at least in a preliminary fashion, for most of the games he designed.
    59:05
    So that part made sense to me, but I'm still really unclear about the software. No, yeah, it was clear as mud to me. I mean, it's still murky about how it's going to actually play out.
    59:21
    I think it's going to be something that we're just going to have to wait and see, and I think until we actually see it, it's going to be everybody's question. It's one of my number one questions and concerns going into it is, well, what does this actually mean, and how is this actually going to work? Right, and with Robert's insistence that it will come across as very obvious, that why hasn't it been developed before once they reveal what they're willing to reveal? That's why, as I rack my brain, I'm feeling dumb because I can't come up... On the mechanics and stuff, I have ideas on how they can pull off what they are alluding to. I'm not figuring it out on the software. But I do think it will probably be comforting, at least to a lot of tournament players, with the notion that they do want to bring in high caliber, high ranked players to test out the games before they're released. So that does suggest that whatever they're planning to do, it will pass some sort of smell test. So, but I understand that they didn't want to reveal a lot because they're not to that point in the marketing yet to do their unveiling, which ties into the whole five days of Deep Root and everything. But it was the software is where I remained the most murky.
    60:34
    Did you have another category or section you wanted to bring up? I was impressed by the concept of being able to take a sledgehammer to a play field.
    60:47
    The reality of it, I don't know. I don't even know what it has to be made out of that can take that kind of impact with no damage of any way, shape, or form.
    61:00
    It's one of those things that seems like, well, this is a lofty goal that I can understand everybody liking, but the reality, but how does it work in reality? Like a lot of these things, it's like, this sounds really good, and I can see where this could be good if it can actually happen, because it doesn't seem possible to me. Well, yeah, I think one of the things I was contemplating with all the discussion in the past with the This Week in Pinball interviews that we have linked and every element that's sort of been discussed about what the deep root plan might be has been. That was my favorite question was asked about the play field one, and it's one that I came up with based off of the thought that they must be considering alternative materials. And one of the things that I've thought about for quite a while was I've been a bit surprised that they've stuck with plywood for so long now. and there were experiments with plastics, but I don't think they were ever cost-effective, but I think all those experiments were in the 80s. And then, of course, there were different, like, European manufacturers had different coatings that they put on top of their playfields that account for why the art holds up so well, even though they weren't cleared. So, I mean, I don't know some sort of, but, I mean, when you think about, well, what can, what could get hit with a sledgehammer and not leave a mark? Like a firm rubber could. I suppose there's some sort of composite. I'm not an expert on plastics, but they have advanced quite a bit versus what we had in the 80s. So I'm guessing something probably synthetic along those lines, but we'll still allow a ball to roll. But we're getting beyond my wheelhouse, obviously. I mean, that's moving into an engineering question, and I really have no idea how that is going to work. I'm like you, and with their whole special factory assembly thing and everything, it leads me to wonder more and more if we're not looking into something like some of the new resins or epoxy-type things that have been becoming more and more available. Yeah. Another element that I thought was pretty interesting was on the innovations and not it being so much that video game style, which I know is something that we were discussing at one point. I don't think it was on the podcast. I think we were just talking about concepts and thought, well, maybe it's more in the vein of the P3 system. And based off of really the last question I asked, Robert really insisted that they don't see that P3 model as the direction they want pinball to go in, that that's too much in that video game realm, and that they're looking to innovate in a more mechanical fashion, was how I took it. Yeah, I took that the exact same way as just how they're aiming. I don't know. It seems like they're very, oh, what's the best way to put it?
    64:08
    They have a very firm idea of what it should be in their mind, and I just think that we're not necessarily,
    64:16
    I don't think it's necessarily something that is going to be well translated until somebody actually sees it. I mean, this could actually be one of those things where once you see it, you just slap your forehead and you're like, oh, okay, everything they said makes sense. But as of now, everything's just like, I don't see it. I don't understand. Yeah, and I think my sense has been from the interview that that's probably going to be the slap-the-forehead moment on the software, but perhaps not on the hardware because they are indicating that aside from some basics like the coin door, the dimensions of the machine and such, that it is a ground-up redesign. So, I mean, if they follow through on all of that, it should be, I think, significantly different than what we're used to. So in that case, I won't feel like, oh, duh. It'll be more like, oh, interesting. And then maybe if it's fun and it works, then people might then go and say, okay, okay, why haven't we seen innovation like that before? But we'll have to see on that. We did, of course, have a discussion on pricing. That was another element I wanted to try and hone in on, even though until you have a game out, I think it's very difficult to get pricing out of anyone unless they've already been manufacturing. but as you know as long time listeners know I've harped on the issue that I think the problem with growing on the collector side of pinball has been the pricing side and that all these manufacturers are coming in at a way too high of a price point so they're all fighting over the same piece of pie instead of going where there still could be growth but that would be around Stern Pro and below. That's why I asked and I realized when I listened back after I finished the interview and was editing it that maybe some people didn't understand when I asked about the Stern Pro pricing and he indicated that there would be a range and that they would be competitive. My question about 20%. Why I said that number specifically is if you were to reduce a Stern Pro price point by 20%, that would be about $1,000. It would be a little over $1,000. So I was fishing to see if they thought their machine would be at least $1,000 less than Stern Pro. It sounded to me that the answer was it depends on the machine. Yeah, it did really come off that since they're not going to do versions of the machines, it's just each individual machine is going to be its own thing that we will have to see there how it goes. So maybe this specific machine is a lower-end machine with lower-end options, and it'll be at the bottom, obviously. And then there's another machine that's a completely different theme that is a fancier setup that'll be more. That's how it came off to me. Right, I agree. And that is very different than what we see from everyone else. Everyone else seems to, you know, basically have concepts, but the new machines are always around, you know, they're like in tiers. Yeah, they do the, okay, this machine, we want the pro tier, the premium tier, the LE tier, where this seems to be much more almost like they're going with, okay, here is our planned percentage markup that we're going to use on every machine. So what does it cost to build blank machine, throw the markup on it? That's what that machine costs. What does it cost to build this machine, throw the markup on it? That's what this machine will cost. Right. Because even the manufacturers that don't do the multiple flavors of machines, all their machines are priced around the same price point. So they all exist on a single tier. But this sounds pretty different from that.
    67:47
    The final item I thought that we could discuss was at the end when I went ahead and at his behest asked that question about trying to get a specific innovative concept. And he threw out a couple of examples. Again, they were descriptive but vague in terms of the idea of like the GUI system at the start of Minority Report where Tom Cruise is trying to direct all the bust, so to speak, that he's trying to execute as the law enforcement officer. and then the Han Solo carbonite floating as Boba Fett pushes it to Slave 1, and trying to incorporate things like that into a machine, and that their philosophy is that it's all possible. I, of course, had and have a very hard time imagining exactly how that is in a pinball machine. Maybe not so much the Minori Report thing with the, you know, So if you were to integrate like a VR or motion detection, you know, Kinect style, I could see something like that. I'm not quite sure on the floating thing. But with enough magnets, I suppose anything's possible. I guess. Honestly, I took that whole thing more as a generalized philosophy slash idea over being a direct comment. And it was more of a whole, if this is what we want, this is what we're going for. I mean, like the magnet thing I could see, the GUI thing I could see, but I can't for myself see where something like the GUI would fit in a pinball machine. If you're throwing in the sensors like some of the newer dance arcades that are coming out of Japan have, so I have to move my hands above the field in certain ways to do certain things, how is that traditional pinball and how is that working type thing? Yeah, but is it any more dramatically distracting? And some people would say it's just as dramatically distracting, I assume, as the action button on the Stern games. You got to smack that action button. Got to shoot them TIE fighters. Smack, smack. And I miss the action buttons all the time because I don't even notice them half the time and I lose a lot of points because of it. But no, you could be right. It could be very similar. I mean, not similar, but the whole interaction could be another level of play. It's just, I don't know. I think it's something that without actually seeing something, I can't. And this seems to be what I got out of the interview overall was that, okay, this is good discussion, but without actually seeing any of this stuff, it just sounds like wishful thinking, dream, interesting stuff. It's too vague. Even now, I still think most of it's too vague for me to have a really good feel for anything other than we have big dreams, we have big ideas, and we know in-house it'll work. And once you see it, you'll know that it'll work. But for now, we're just in the dark. Right. I agree. And these were examples of ideas. I didn't interpret them as they're going to do a Star Wars machine or they're going to do a Minority Report machine. No, no, no. I didn't take it that way either. I just thought that they were kind of ideas for, like I said, it was like an idea type thing. It's like we want to strive for something. Right.
    71:23
    Highlighting the boldness. To me, it was reminiscent of the old how Atari supposedly was when they'd all go and the designers would all get in the hot tub and get a little stoned. and then that's where all their ideas came from in the 70s for their arcade games was that. And it was sort of seen as this ultra-creative, there were no limits. In the hot tub, anything was possible.
    71:46
    It was a strange time at Atari, or so I've read. But I didn't know if there was any other elements, takeaways. Yeah, I think there was, especially on the hardware side, I walked away feeling I have a better understanding, but still a lot of, I mean, in terms of like, it's more conventional than my mind was taking me, in the sense that it's more, I shouldn't say conventional, I should say mechanical. It's more mechanical than where my mind was going based off of the information we had seen thus far. But like you, until we really reach the point where they're unveiling something, it's really hard to reconcile all of it into how we're going to actually see it as a machine that's playable and won't break down and actually will be at a competitive price point. There's just too many unknown variables for me to make it work.
    72:43
    Obviously, as we've always gotten the impression from the other written interviews, it's clearly staking out a very bold path.
    72:53
    It's difficult to see how it works. but and obviously Robert knows that and he under he keeps indicating that he doesn't expect people to get it until they show it and obviously this interview happened before they're ready to show it I'm hoping we at least shed a little bit of light on some of the stuff that was confusing but I think we'll always be confused until after their their marketing event yeah I think that until we see that that's exactly how it's going to be I will say one thing for certain is they have no lack of self-confidence and they have no lack of drive from the discussions. Yeah. Note there, Robert is very sure that it will be groundbreaking. So he struck by that with us. I thought it came across in a more understandable manner, I think, verbally versus how in writing sometimes things can be. but it was obviously the note that he's talked with Jerry with P3 before as an example, and that he doesn't view that as innovation in the hobby. He just views that as a video game meeting, a pinball machine, more so than an actual groundbreaking concept, but that what they're working on at Deep Root should be definable, he thinks, by anyone as groundbreaking. So, yeah, that definitely holds. That's interesting and is very, yeah, it's very bold. Very, very bold. Yep. Well, obviously, we'll keep an eye on it, just like we keep an eye on all the manufacturers. But thanks again to Robert for coming on. We do appreciate it. And I think we can go to our next pinball topic. All right. And that's the same tournament, Tony. We're ready to get into the finals. There is shame in the shame tournament. I mean, seriously.
    74:43
    There is shame. No. So, round three results, real quickly. Valley Game Show. It beat Genie with 81.8% of the vote. Totally deserved. Now that I've actually played Game Show, I really, Game Show's actually pretty fun. Yeah. It's just, Genie's just so awful. It should never have been submitted. But, hey, what can I do? I just host. I don't make the rules. Actually, I made the rules.
    75:12
    And then Big Buck Hunter Pro. It took out Sharky Shootout. Much closer, though. 54.5%. No, that's a shame. I like Sharkies. Yeah, well, I thought maybe having Steve on would have helped sway the audience, because he clearly favored Sharkies over Big Buck Hunter, and we spent quite a bit of time talking about it, but I guess Steve just doesn't have the influence I was counting on. So, here we are. The final matchup is the Valley Game Show versus Big Buck Hunter Pro.
    75:42
    Any predictions, Tony, on how it's going to end? I... No. Oh, for me, I'm going to vote Game Show, and I think Big Buck Hunter Pro is going to win. There. Easy. See how easy that was? Okay. Well, yeah.
    75:59
    Big Buck Hunter Pro is from 2010. It's got deeper rules, and that's going to carry it. But I'm not going to vote for it. That deer doesn't ever work, and I'm voting for it. I'm sorry. It just doesn't work. And Game Show, broadly speaking, is one of the less liked System 11s, even though I like it quite a bit more than I thought I would after trying it. Yeah.
    76:22
    Okay, next family. Yeah, that was quick. So anyway, vote. Link in the show notes to the vote. Go vote. And then we'll announce the results on our next episode.
    76:31
    Next topic, a real brief one, Total Nuclear Annihilation. You like it. I like it. Apparently everyone likes it. Spooky Pinball has announced that sales of TNA have now passed the 300 count, thus making it their best-selling game of all time.
    76:47
    I thought there were 350 of Rob Zombie. No, 300. 300 of Rob Zombie? And 50 of them, I believe, were LEs. Maybe that's what was messing with my head. Yeah, and I'm not even certain on the LE thing. But yeah, so I think it was sometime last week they announced that unit 301 had been sold. Obviously not manufactured yet, but that put them past that threshold. So it has set a new record for them. And I'm not surprised. I'm still going to stick by that. I'm skeptical that they'll get halfway to the least sold street level. I'm going to commit on that still, which would be just over 400 units. But I'm more than happy to prove wrong. It's a fun game. I just think even with the, they're going to get around to more shows that should get them more sales, but at the price point that it sits at. And when people look at it, that's just a lot of people I don't think will try it, unfortunately. And so.
    77:48
    It's their loss. Yeah, it's their loss. But, you know, on the flip side, they might not be able to justify the expense because you can get any Stern Pro with shipping about $1,000 less. And that's, you know, that's a lot of bread. So that's always going to be a challenge. But, hey, that's pinball. So, speaking of pinball, final pinball topic.
    78:11
    Oktoberfest. From the way I understand it, Martin, who's one of the hosts with Head to Head Pinball, he was researching trademarks, and he found out that American Pinball has a trademark for an Oktoberfest pinball machine. Now, I want to go ahead and note, this is not a confirmation that Oktoberfest is going to be their next game, nor is it even a confirmation that Oktoberfest will ever be made. They just have the trademark. That said, what do you think about the theme, Tony?
    78:41
    It's beer? I guess, I mean, that makes sense. Well, Gary Cern at Expo did say pinball plus beer equal dollar signs. So has Cern given some tips to American pinball? Did they interpret that very literally?
    78:57
    It's entirely possible. But, yeah, I don't know. I don't see, I mean, when I think Oktoberfest, I think, you know, weird German costumes and huge tankards of beer, and I don't know how that works into a pinball machine. No, I think this is terrible. I think this is an absolutely awful idea, and I ask that you not do it.
    79:20
    No, I mean, whose most favorite holiday is Oktoberfest? Not even alcoholics will pick that. It doesn't make any sense. I mean, yeah, it's so German. And it's, you know, so I'm thinking, yeah, you've got like Lederhosen, you've got blonde women carrying giant tankards of beer, and there's probably some sausages on the table. And, okay, so I'm just trying to think. It's sort of like, gosh, my favorite holiday is Oktoberfest. Said no one ever. I mean, St. Patrick's Day would be a better pick. if you wanted a beer-driven holiday, you could do that. Yeah, I just, I mean, Houdini, while it doesn't resonate with me, that's a really good theme. Yeah. And that's the thing. These are all themes. They're themes that are just not licensed. So I get it. Oktoberfest is very recognizable, so I see where it's got the name recognition thing.
    80:18
    I'm sure there's a way you can integrate it into a pinball machine. I just don't see it getting anyone excited. It's like, libros and multivol. No.
    80:31
    The accordion is lit. Shoot it. No. I don't even know what these things are associated with. I'm trying. I'm giving it things. It's just, you know, another, to me, if you're going to do things like, if you're going to do things that don't have licenses, then it makes sense to stick with, you know, the stuff that's really recognizable but also it easily integrates and that people might have an interest in, like mythological characters and things on that line. That's why Houdini works, is because people know him. And even if you don't like or know Houdini, if you like magic, it works for you. I guess if you like beer, Oktoberfest could work for you, even if you don't like Oktoberfest. But it's not like Pabst sold gangbusters for Stern. So anyway. Yeah, and Pabst had a really, really good art package. Yeah. so anyway no I don't think much of this theme but naturally as you know I'm not particularly theme driven if the gameplay is good then I think the pinball machine deserves to do well but you know this wouldn make me open my wallet just off the announcement No no I think it would be a horrible shame if an Oktoberfest game came out and the soundtrack did not include the beer barrel polka. That would be a travesty on top of a travesty. Now, would that require paying a license? I don't know anything about this polka. Since it's a polka, I'm assuming it not, because who cares? Except you.
    81:58
    Yeah, I don't know. It's old. I don't know how old it is. I know it's old. Okay. Well, they could probably do it on a keyboard. Yeah. MIDI style. System 11 style.
    82:10
    Well, that's it for pinball. So let's go ahead and we do have a couple video game topics we wanted to cover this episode. And the first one I know you noted and one I mentioned in the intro was Overwatch League. And for those listening who are already starting to turn off the podcast and be like, They're going to go into a big digression into the specifics of Overwatch. That's not what this one's going to be about. We're not going to talk about the gameplay itself. No, this is actually going to be primarily our thoughts on the Overwatch League and how they're handling competitive Overwatch. So you want to go ahead and just sort of summarize what it is and what it means for esports? Yeah, the Overwatch League is Blizzard's new push into the esports scene, and they have taken a page from all of the actual reality sports thing and linked teams to cities. and they've tried to create brands around different teams specifically to kind of generate the kind of feelings that you don't get. I mean, it's different when you're cheering for the London Spitfire than when you're cheering for, you know, Joe Bob's Rack Em Up team or Cloud Nine or the Immortals. I mean, it's the same thing. and most of those teams that have been around in the competitive scene of Overwatch and other games, because a lot of these teams have competitive teams in all sorts of games, they just transition their core teams into these teams based around cities.
    84:03
    And I'll be honest, I think it's a genius idea. I like it. I like where it's going. I don't like how it's been executed so far. And some of that is just because it's very new and they couldn't do it. They couldn't roll it all out in the way that I think they think it will ultimately be. But so there, I guess, in terms of, so broadly speaking, I think it's a great idea. So let me, I don't want to, I don't want to poo-poo it too much and make it sound like, oh, he hates Overwatch League. No, I'm watching Overwatch League all the time. I like it. The things, the issues that I have with it. The first one, which I know is one that they plan to address, is everything is actually taking place in L.A. Right. So it's cities on paper. So it's meaningless right now. There's no real connection unless you choose to feel a connection. So, for example, I cheered on, I suppose, if I were to pick a team, and I did. If I'm picking a team, I picked New York Excelsior because I lived in New York at one point. And they lost. And they lost because they chose to keep using a die system with a Genji that doesn't know how to play. But I said we weren't going to go into the specifics. I'm not going to explain. It was completely predictable why they threw that away, and Libero should be ashamed of himself. That said, in addition... Goes a bit far. Yeah. Well, and that's the other thing. And this bugs me only because I'm coming off of watching Overwatch's World Cup, which was very country-oriented. And it gets really confusing because they're not based in the cities themselves, and also because they brought in already existing teams. London Spitfire is an entirely South Korean team. New York Excelsior is an entirely South Korean team. And Seoul, South Korea's team is entirely South Korean. So then you look at something like the Dallas Fuel, which has one American and is mostly Europeans, but also has Thai and South Korean players. So it gets a little confusing because, in a way, you're looking at it, and you see something like Seoul Dynasty, Shanghai Dragons, and Shanghai's up until, well, they brought in some outside people now, but they started with entirely Chinese base. And you start to think, is this like the Olympics? Are these national teams? And it's like, no, no, because half the players are Korean. and it's like, oh, okay, well, but it gets weird because unless you know the pedigree, it's like, oh, Cloud9 became this. Immortals became that. But there's not really an association with the cities. So that's my glaring issue. There's something that's going to disappear as time goes on and as players start trading and new players come in and old players go out, the whole ties to who they were before are going to vanish. And it's not like the Kansas City Chiefs players are all people from the Kansas City area. No, it's not. I mean, half of the NHL is Canadian or Finnish or Russian.
    87:10
    Right, no, it's not a problem except that when you're trying to link against what was already existing, it was very much organized. Basically, people from the same countries played together. Even when there wasn't national teams, that's just how it was. So for those of us who watched the transition, it's confusing. But I agree with you. It will sort itself out. It's not a problem other than when you go in, you might be like, well, what's London about? It's like none of these people have even been to London sort of stuff. It's like, well, you see, and that's the thing where I don't know when they'll implement all of that. But at least in the NFL, they make you live in Kansas City if you're going to play for the Chiefs. So, I mean, you just have to be there during the season.
    87:56
    So there's a plan for all that. So that's okay. It's just a little weird. And the final one, and this is very ultimately nitpicky of me, but I don't think this one will resolve quickly, and that is the cities that they chose to have teams. Yeah. It is not diverse.
    88:13
    No. I mean, California has three teams, and two of them are in L.A. It's ridiculous. That is ridiculous. It's not even like San Diego, L.A., San Francisco. It's L.A., L.A., San Francisco. Now, to be fair, L.A. always seems to have more sports teams than they know what to do with. I mean, there's been times where L.A.'s had two football teams. I think they might have two football teams now. Yeah, you could say three if you want to go ahead and count Oakland as L.A., because that's who most of them cheer for. Yeah. So, I mean, it's just one of those things that it's... It's weird. Texas has two. Right. Texas has two. All of Europe has a single team. London is the only team in Europe. And there are a lot of European players. Western Europe's full of great players. It is. It's weird. It's just weird. South Korea, as I noted, a lot of the players are from South Korea. Why do they only have one team for the country? Why is Seoul the only city represented? Yeah. I'm like you. I'm kind of surprised at how they did the initial cities. I'm surprised that there wasn't. Now, L.A., I understand L.A. I understand New York. I understand Philadelphia even. Sure. Those all make sense. Dallas makes sense. Now, Dallas and Houston, to be fair, Houston's a much better team. Yes. But Dallas is the bigger city. But I don't understand why London is the only European team. why isn't there a Berlin team or a Paris team or a Stockholm team or something like that? Why isn't there a Canadian team? Also, some of these are not – yeah, no, where I was going was incorrect. I'm treading back. Yeah, there's just a lot of cities that I thought was – it's odd to me that Chicago's not there, but Miami is. You know, it's just – I don't know. I'm not saying that Miami – Where's my Kansas City Monarchs? Huh? They might be. That'll be an expansion team. I never would have expected an area as small as Kansas City to be an initial one. But it's just, yeah, I don't know. It's just I find it mysterious in some ways. It's weird that Houston has a team and Chicago doesn't. Yeah, it's things like that. It's just things like that. I like how Florida just has, the whole state of Florida has a team. Right. Well, that was what I was going to mention when I started stuttering out was I was like, Are they Miami? Wait, no, it's Florida mayhem. That's what they call it. And New York, I don't think is New York City. I think it's New York State. And so, because it's not the NYC Excelsior, it's New York Excelsior. So some of these are organized by states, but most are organized by city. I mean, it is Seoul Dynasty. It's Seoul, South Korea, not all of South Korea. It's Shanghai Dragons, not Beijing Dragons, not China Dragons. so yeah I at first I thought maybe that was because they only had one team in the state but Fusion's not Pennsylvania it's Philadelphia so I don't get it so there's just some inconsistencies that but I want to stress these are all really really minor I need to fill out the segment with something and so I use complaints yeah these are things that are going to even out as the years go on I have no doubt in my mind that the Overwatch League will continue. Its popularity is insane. Unless something big happens. I mean, it's still not unusual to see just the main stream is almost always over 100 or 150,000 concurrent watchers. And that doesn't include the different language streams. Because there is a Korean language stream. There is a French language stream. I mean, they all have large amounts of viewers also. Right. And I do want to say that the production levels that they're putting behind the broadcast, it's really good. It is. It is really good. They are definitely pouring it all in. This isn't some we're trying to do it. This is definitely a we want this to be a thing. We are staking a claim here. This is where we've planted our flag. This is what we're pushing. and I think they're doing a really good job with it. Yeah, it really works. It's an example to all esports, I think, in terms of just how they're putting the whole show together, how often it's airing as like a real sports season. So, yes. So those things are awesome. It might be airing a little too much right now. A little too much like baseball. Yeah, they might need to pare it down a little bit. I mean, I'm falling behind on other stuff because I'm watching Overwatch League four days a week. Yeah. But at the same time, they've even gone so far as they haven't gotten rid of the old Overwatch competitive setup like Contenders. Contenders still exists. It's basically like the minor league is how it seems. They're still running at Contenders in the fall.
    93:19
    And it doesn't involve the teams that are involved in League. There are other teams, so I don't know if they're still going to run a World Cup.
    93:30
    I would assume so. Yeah, I don't. I don't care, actually. They can run whatever they want. I'll probably end up watching it. But I think a lot of other esports will consider going this way, doing it this style. I definitely could see them using it as a model because it seems to be working pretty well. Well, let's go ahead and go to our last video game topic. This is the one that actually I saw information on just after we did our last episode, and that was some rumors were going around. I have a link to an article that discusses this regarding Microsoft, which I'm sure most people know they own the Xbox brand. And what some people who aren't into consoles may not know is that Microsoft has been struggling this generation, particularly in 2017, with a perception problem. And I think that perception is based in reality. They don't have enough first-party titles. So there's not enough exclusive games if you're a console gamer to say, oh, I want to get an Xbox over a PlayStation or a Nintendo, where they have very deep first-party studios that have a library with a litany of known entities. It's just they're more exclusive on other systems is the problem. And so Microsoft finds itself, well, it's still in second place until the Nintendo Switch catches up and surpasses it, but they're significantly behind, probably on a two-to-one ratio from the PS4, which it's not a terrible quantity amount, but as a percentage of the pie, it's bad. So the rumors have been, and I don't think the rumors were surprising, that Microsoft has been looking to buy its way out of this problem by acquiring a major studio. That is different than what I have often, as, again, as people who have heard me whine about video games and whine about Xbox, that is the current gen console I went in on, is that I've often thought they need to buy an established but not strongly successful studio. and my go-to has always been Capcom. Capcom is weak. Capcom is mismanaged. Capcom has great IP though. So you buy something like that instead of, you don't have enough time. You need to solve this problem as soon as possible because you want it fixed for the next generation. So the idea that I have is instead of growing new studios internally, which you should still do, you buy your way out of the problem and you're like, okay, Resident Evil is now an Xbox thing. Street Fighter is now an Xbox thing. Problem solved. At least in part, problem solved. because people know that stuff. There are people that will buy things just to play those games. The rumored companies, though, are way bigger than anything I ever imagined. Yeah. They have included PUBG Corp., Valve, and Electronic Arts. So I thought maybe we should sort of discuss. I mean, I guess PUBG Corp. wouldn't surprise me because PUBG, that's PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds. PUBG Corp. makes that. It currently is console exclusive on Xbox, So that relationship is there, but I don't think that solves their problem because that's just one game. I mean, PUBG Corp didn't do anything else.
    96:47
    Right, and while it doesn't solve their problem, I think it is, in my mind, the most realistic one for them to pick up, or at least the most realistic one for them to start with. Of that list, definitely. Of that list, yeah, as something to grab before their exclusivity with PUBG drops. so they can maintain it. The other thing is I like Steam, and if they bought Valve, I really hope they wouldn't just get the gaming section of Valve and not Steam because the idea of Microsoft taking over my Steam makes me sad. Yeah, and again, this was in a rumor list, so I have no idea. Steam in and of itself would not relate to the exclusivity situation that they'd be trying to solve with a Valve acquisition. No, but it would solve their Windows Store problem. Yeah. I mean, no one likes to buy things on the Windows Store. That's always been true. They have that problem with games for Windows Live as well. So, yeah, I don't know. But I don't know if Valve would be interested in selling Steam. But I could easily imagine if it wasn't have to acquire the whole company, I don't think it would be unrealistic for them to say we want to buy your development teams and all your IP.
    98:07
    Because Valve ain't doing anything with them. That would be good pedigree. That would be the having Portal, having Left for Dead. I mean, Half-Life I think is a little past this expiration date in terms of having as much of an impact as... It has more of an impact for people like me than it does for new gamers. But Portal and Left for Dead resonated really well in the last generation, so there are a lot of gamers that still think very, very fondly of those games because it wasn't that long ago that they had them. Yes, but can you imagine the insanity that would roll up if Microsoft put out a Portal 3, or not a Portal 3, but a Half-Life 3, and the sheer hatred and the anger that would roll off people.
    99:00
    I don't know. I don't know if they get more angry. Would they rather have never had it? I mean, that's the only other alternative because Valve will never make it. No, no, they won't. And they're smart. I think they're smart not to make it. I think it's something that has gotten to a point where there is no way to safely do it without causing bigger issues and or failure and hurting your brand overall. It's better to leave it dead. Yeah. I mean, if I were looking at Valve, Half-Life is not what I want. I want Portal mostly, and Left 4 Dead would be my secondary because that could definitely be improved upon. And I don't think it doesn't have – it hasn't reached legendary status. You could just modernize that and make it a better game than it had been. Yeah. Then the final one was the biggest shocker one, and I can't really get my head around the idea of Microsoft actually acquiring electronic arts.
    99:57
    And mostly because it would lose so much. I mean, for me, it's sort of a math question. They would buy EAs like worth, I think it's around $35 billion. Now, let's be clear. Microsoft could afford, they could buy all of these. They, in cash, have, I think, something on the order of $130 billion.
    100:18
    So this ain't nothing to them. They wanted to just buy. That's why they should buy their way out of the problem. They have cash. Just take your tax write-off. But, I mean, they did it last year. They just didn't do it on the gaming side. But the issue with getting something like EA is you buy a $35 billion-valued company, and then you immediately have devalued it if it's only going to put things out on, let's say, Xbox and PC because they are fine with people buying things on Windows PCs.
    100:45
    But if they're going to say, all right, well, Madden's not on PS4 anymore, then not everyone's immediately just going to say, oh, well, now I have to buy an Xbox. Some people will be just like, I'm not going to buy Madden then. And so the company value – Are people really going to say, I'm not going to buy Madden? Because I would think people would be saying, I'm not going to buy Madden for like the last 15 freaking years. Look, there are some people, they won't be able to afford it. They won't be able to afford to buy the console to buy Madden. Something like that. I'm sticking with my guns here. I'm going to stick with it. I think the math is there that you have to ask yourself if you're Microsoft, how long will we have to sit here and grow our Xbox brand and our Windows sales before EA is selling the same number of units as it was when it was multi-platform? Valid. Very valid. That's what I think is the biggest issue. I mean, from a gamer standpoint, I think this actually would be great because EA is one of the most hated companies in America, so there is no way Microsoft could trash it any further than it has done itself.
    101:51
    That's so incredibly true. It's one of the reasons I would not mind seeing them pick it up. I don't think it's the best idea, but anything... I think Microsoft could make EA be a better company. Period. Now, I guess if you were an Xbox owner and you were to be told money is no object, but you can only pick one, pick a company for Microsoft to buy that would give them an excellent first-party option that would make people go, oh, we should buy the system. It's like you're Phil Spencer now, and your one job is find one company to just basically make people buy Xbox. What do you pick? Sony. Sony? that's actually i think that is as steve bowden would say that is the objectively right answer all right let me let me change it so that you know i i guess i could one-up you and say nintendo but but let's let's uh let me uh let me qualify that to make a little more fun and say you can't pick a hardware manufacturer can't pick a hardware manufacturer not a not a console manufacturer not another, not like, not Apple, that makes, you know, Macs, more traditional software entity. But anyone you want? Anyone I want. Yeah. Wow.
    103:13
    Trying to think. It's not. It can be one of the three on the list if you want. Well, that's what I mean. I mean, I'm kind of liking EA just because. I don't necessarily know that it's necessarily the best choice.
    103:33
    But it I think it would give them the most other stuff. You know what? Let's pull off this list and look at I feel that I'm hearing searches. I feel I'm hearing searches. You are hearing searches. Bethesda wouldn't be bad. Actually, that's an interesting one, yeah. RPG Deep, but also that would give you the Wolfenstein. Give you the Wolfensteins. It would give you the Skyrim and all the Elder Scroll games. It would give you Fallout. It would give you...
    104:11
    That's, you know... I think Bethesda would be the best current, because it gives them the Dishonored games. Yeah? I think without going with an insanely huge company, I like Bethesda. Actually, I really like your suggestion. Yeah, Bethesda. I think that one would be very attractive.
    104:32
    And rolling out a huge portfolio, I mean, another, I guess, easy one one could throw out would have been to say Activision. See, Activision was my first thought, and the more I thought about it, it's like, I don't really like that one. Ubisoft would work also. Ubisoft, I actually could envision Ubisoft being a more practical option for them. I'll tell you the one that came to my mind first, even though they don't have a ton of IP, Rockstar.
    104:59
    I don't know. I don't know if they have enough. It's pay to win. It is. You do Rockstar and you say, here's Grand Theft Auto 6, so you will buy our machine because of Grand Theft Auto. Square. Square takes twice as long as Rockstar and puts out half of it as a product. But it has a bigger fan base. And it gets them into the Asian markets where they traditionally have problems. I've wondered about an idea that would help. That's sort of why I've always kind of liked Capcom as a concept, is it would give them a major Japanese studio.
    105:33
    Microsoft in the 360 generation really did try and punch into Japan. They got a number of exclusive JRPG titles. And it just didn't take. It just didn't work. Now, Square could be big enough that it would. I think that's true. But here's the, I mean, the behemoth that is Grand Theft Auto. What is its sales now across all platforms? 75 million copies.
    105:57
    Yeah, it's something huge. They are their own brand. They have their own marketing setup. They are the true behemoth on the scene in terms of that they're so highly respected. that Microsoft would say, we're acquiring Rockstar, we're not messing with the creative development team, they are totally their own entity, it's only on Xbox though. So, open your wallet. We've also doubled the price of Xbox because you're going to pay for it. They wouldn't do that part. No. But hey, you go back to the EA thing, hey, get EA and say, yeah, we're doing EA, it's Xbox exclusive, we're banning any loot crates on future games. No more loot crates.
    106:36
    There, they just improved the company. Problem solved. Problem solved is now not worth $35 billion, but all other problems are solved. Yeah, those are all some pretty solid things. I like the Bethesda one, though. That's good. I like Bethesda. I like Rockstar. The reason I really like your suggestion of Bethesda is I think it fills a major... I mean, Wolfenstein, Doom, okay, those are like bro shooters. That's sort of Xbox's domain already. but Bethesda has an excellent stable of deep story driven single player experiences in fact they advertised it during the game ceremonies they had Linda Carter do that little thing that was like a self help are you suffering from multiplayer deficiency syndrome or something it was really really clever Bethesda where we make single yes you know games that are that multi hour deep enjoy that's what Sony's exclusives are. That's what Horizon, Zero Dawn, and Nier are. And that's what Microsoft needs, is more of that. Because I think their stable, on the exclusive side on that, is weak. Bethesda solves that problem for them. So yeah, I like your Bethesda one. I hope they buy Bethesda. Oh, Bethesda would also give them Quake. I forgot about that. Quake and Doom? Yep.
    107:52
    And it would give them a VR stable already built pre-positioned VR team. Hmm. Yeah, maybe interesting. Well, Tony, I think we've made it to the end of the show. We have. It seems remarkably quick today. Yes, because our part of recording today has been remarkably quick. As a reminder, you can always reach out to us, facebook.com slash eclecticgamerspodcast, or you can email the show, eclecticgamerspodcast at gmail.com. And we're on Instagram and Twitter, primarily the Instagram, at eclectic underscore gamers. and on our next episode assuming all scheduling holds true we do plan to have another guest host someone who is more on the collector side of the pinball hobby so i'm hoping we'll have some good discussions for you then but regardless in two weeks we'll talk to you later see ya bye