Journalist Tool

Kineticist

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

v0.1.0

← Back to items

The Other Pin Cabs

BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 16m·analyzed·Aug 22, 2020
View original
Export .md

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.031

TL;DR

Toy Shock details cabinet upgrades and European market strategy; FX3 Vol 6 delayed despite Space Station debut.

Summary

Chris and Jared discuss Pinball FX3 Volume 6's delayed release and underwhelming community reception despite featuring Space Station (first commercial digital release). They pivot to discussing three-quarter scale pinball cabinets, focusing on Toy Shock's new bezel design, complimentary upgrade boards, and European market strategy including a compact bar-top model created to address import tax issues.

Key Claims

  • Zen Studios delayed console releases (PS4) by four weeks due to unspecified technical issues

    medium confidence · Jared mentions Zen's post about PS4 update delays without clear cause

  • Space Station is the first commercial digital pinball release of a previously undigitized table

    high confidence · Chris and Jared explicitly confirm Space Station as 'first to digital, commercial digital' and emphasize this distinction from VPX

  • Toy Shock deliberately made larger bezel for durability targeting child users as primary demographic

    high confidence · Jeff Falk stated on stream this was conscious design decision for safety and longevity given 'Toy Shock' product positioning

  • Toy Shock skipped accelerometer to control costs, using button nudge instead

    high confidence · Jeff Falk mentioned accelerometer cost justification; Chris estimates accelerometer at $12 retail, $3-4 wholesale

  • European import taxes and 20% VAT made full-size Toy Shock cabinets cost ~$500 instead of $399

    high confidence · Direct statement from Toy Shock team on market research findings for European pricing

  • Toy Shock bar-top cabinet uses 16-inch monitor with alphanumeric back glass displays

    high confidence · Chris and Jared confirm specifications from Toy Shock livestream presentation

  • Farsight/Toy Shock flipper lag issue appeared between final build and released version due to wrong mainboard selection

    medium confidence · Jared interprets Jeff Falk's diplomatic comments about three mainboard versions, suggesting wrong blueprint file was picked

  • Dr. Dude ROM state carryover in hot seat mode allows easier progression up Dude-o-meter

    medium confidence · Jared describes personal discovery testing two-player hot seat with ROM state persistence

Notable Quotes

  • “it's just Volume 6, temper your hype, people were going full bore. Oh, they're going to make a Star Wars announcement.”

    Chris Rebus @ early — Describes community hype inflation and unrealistic expectations leading to disappointment

  • “we share news when we have news because we'd rather not over-promise and then under-deliver because that is more of a disappointment than anything”

    Jeno (Zen Studios, paraphrased by Chris) @ mid — Explains Zen's communication strategy for Volume 6 release date delay

  • “if you don't have tilt on it you don't need it on legs”

    Jared Morgan @ late — Observation about Toy Shock bar-top design viability without accelerometer tilt feature

  • “This really is I think the name of the product says it all, Toy Shock. This is actually considered a child's toy.”

    Jeff Falk (Toy Shock, paraphrased) @ mid-late — Core positioning statement explaining design priorities (safety/durability over premium form factor)

  • “we found that the import taxes in the European countries made it almost like a, instead of like a $399 product, almost like a $500 US price after importation”

    Toy Shock team (paraphrased by Chris) @ late — Quantifies VAT/import duty impact driving European bar-top market strategy

  • “I bought the accelerometer for that thing for $12. I assume quantity of scale would have had you buying them for a buck.”

    Chris Rebus @ late — Challenges Toy Shock's cost justification for omitting tilt accelerometer

  • “Space Station is basically the first table that was not in TPA... first to digital, commercial digital.”

    Chris Rebus & Jared Morgan @ early-mid — Highlights unique value proposition of FX3 Volume 6 table selection

Entities

Toy ShockcompanyJeff FalkpersonZen StudioscompanyP-DubspersonLinda FalkpersonJenopersonChris RebuspersonJared MorganpersonPinball FX3productArcade 1UPcompanyFarsight Studioscompany

Signals

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Toy Shock targeting distinct demographic (children/compact homes) vs Arcade 1UP, accepting market segmentation rather than direct competition

    high · Jeff Falk stated willingness to 'concede' hardcore audience to competitors; acknowledged competing form factors in market

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Toy Shock deliberately prioritizing child safety/durability over premium form factor, accepting trade-offs in bezel size and features (no accelerometer)

    high · Jeff Falk explicitly stated bezel size was conscious decision for robustness given 'Toy Shock' product name and target demographic

  • $

    market_signal: Bar-top cabinet form factor gaining traction in international markets due to space constraints and tax barriers; Arcade 1UP already established in this segment (Pac-Man, Miss Pac-Man, Space Invaders versions)

    medium · Toy Shock creating bar-top for European market; Chris notes Arcade 1UP precedent with bar-top variants

  • $

    market_signal: European market import taxes/VAT forcing Toy Shock to create separate bar-top product line rather than full-size cabinet expansion

    high · Toy Shock market research showing $399→$500 price increase; 20% VAT and import duties cited as drivers

  • ?

    announcement: Toy Shock introducing 1.2 upgrade boards (complimentary shipping) and two-tone laser-coated bezel design

    high · Jeff Falk livestream on P-Dubs Toy Shock fan page confirming product details

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.230

0:00
blockade pinball podcast you are watching the blockade pinball podcast i'm your host chris rebus aka joining me as always halfway across the world jared morgan hello how you going uh well yeah, I'm going.
0:30
We're going. Hold on, I've got to even make more adjustments because apparently I'm cropping the top of my head off. There we go.
0:37
Yeah, so folks, as you know, this is the dog and pony show. We like to think ourselves tech savvy and then comes this whole broadcasting nonsense and one of these days maybe we'll actually buy professional software but in the meantime then we have to use the freeware and my uh good old obs decided this morning when i logged in turned it on to revert back to who knows what and mess with my audio and so is there a is there a way to actually like save all the configuration for it. You can save, essentially export a copy of your configuration settings, right? It saves, all my cameras are saved, all that, but sometimes it changes the audio sources and sometimes it changes what the monitoring of them is. And there's a bunch of them that you have to adjust. So it's like troubleshooting becomes just a nightmare. And it's like, I'll have everything written down, but there's so many different ones to check. I don't know. I'll have to go through this week and figure that out.
1:56
Oh, the woes of the Blockade Pinball Podcast. Right, folks? That's right. It is. Really, please do all get out your teeny tiny violins and play them in unison for us at the moment.
2:09
Doctor Dude
game
Funhousegame
Space Stationgame
Party Zonegame
Arcade Expoevent
?

product_strategy: Pinball FX3 Volume 6 release date unannounced; Zen Studios citing standard policy of not over-promising; possible console platform alignment delays (PS4 mentioned with 4-week push)

high · Jeno confirmed Zen shares news only when ready; Zacharia post about PS4 update delay by four weeks; speculated console day-and-date launch window

  • ?

    product_concern: Flipper lag introduced in Toy Shock cabinet release despite lag-free final development build, attributed to incorrect mainboard selection

    medium · Jeff Falk's diplomatic comments interpreted by Jared as suggesting wrong blueprint/mainboard version was manufactured

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Community disappointment with Pinball FX3 Volume 6: expected major IP announcement or next-gen features; received three arcade ports instead

    high · Chris notes widespread hype inflation followed by underwhelming reception; lack of release date compounds frustration

  • ?

    technology_signal: Toy Shock partnered with Farsight Studios for software; Chris and Jared express preference for alternative (Zen/other), suggesting partner relationship may limit product appeal

    medium · Chris: 'I just feel bad that the software you're saddled with... I don't even know I don't even' (incomplete but negative tone); preference for Zen mentioned

    • I'll just throw it out here like this, folks. If any of you out there feel like contributing to the show at all, know some things of this nature um heck if you want to be in control of the video monitoring that would relieve me from having to switch cut like that and go to that and come back to this um let us know you know we're happy to share the uh share the fun if you want to get experience i don't know um so yeah what's going on jared uh well i got a year older yesterday or the day before on Friday. Yeah, I might have posted that onto Twitter. Yeah, I noticed that only one person gave it a like. So, yeah. Sad face.
    2:57
    No one cares. It's just another year. But, yeah, overall good. I got lots of beer and gift vouchers so I can buy more beer. Or gin. So, happy times. Yay!
    3:13
    It's a lovely sweltering 100 degrees here, which, no, I don't do Celsius conversions. Sorry. It's about 35 degrees-ish. We were, this kind of popped up into a discussion on the Discord, PinballFX3 Discord channel, and where all of a sudden they were blathering on about, oh, it's this degree Celsius outside and all that, and I just popped in. I was like, clearly you all are, well, A, you're talking in the middle of the night, so you're not in America, and B, I have no clue what any of this means because we never bothered to learn those things. And yeah, that moved into then a discussion of, well, what's wrong with you people? Why did you never convert to metric? And then it even went into that people are bummed with, you know, because they select English as their gameplay language and everything is in feet and inches rather than being metric. I was like, interesting. I never knew that. I guess you'd have to have a UK option or a Europe option, huh? Yeah, that's right, yes. Because, you know, things are different outside of the US. It's funny that.
    4:26
    Yeah. So anyway, that was some fun over there, just trying to... It's those weird differences between the US and the rest of the world.
    4:39
    Yeah, exactly. So, as you guys might have noticed, Volume 6 is not released yet, nor do we have a release date. No, they've been very coy about it, haven't they? They have been very coy about it. And that kind of factors into some of what we're going to talk about today, which is, after the release of what the titles were going to be, those three titles being Doctor Dude, Funhouse, Space Station, it was kind of what the general reaction was especially after having been such a long time between pack five and this one and it was kind of interesting i think you noticed it too jared that there was kind of a level of disappointment because i think people thought oh it's been this long we're gonna get two packs announced and they're gonna be license tables and they're going to be dropping three days later yeah because that's what we're used to now that's pretty much the ways in does tables well you know when we say a couple of days later it's normally you know three weeks later but that's generally typical um and there's been radio silence on it there's been plenty of promotion about the tables and the different you know pictures of them on twitter etc all the social medias but yeah definitely missing that release date uh and that's that's clearly frustrating people right well you know there's radio silence and there's radio silence so uh i know that jeno popped on with his uh he does a stream usually every thursday of him playing some table.
    6:29
    It's European time, I think about 5 p.m.ish. I think for me it's like 8 in the morning, 9 in the morning. But anyway, he had made mention that, because somebody asked him that question of, why don't you guys spit out more info? And he was kind of reiterating what we've always said, which was that we share news when we have news because we'd rather not over-promise and then under-deliver because that is more of a disappointment than anything. So it's better to not say anything at all than when there's actual news. Ta-da!
    7:13
    Yeah. And I think that's kind of what's now happening with the release date. We've got to be close. no we're close we're close uh but as to why they haven't actually put out a release date that's a good question i don't know what they're butting up against uh on that front me neither it's like they're waiting for some special point in time that we don't know of it's maybe lining up with the consoles maybe what do you mean lining up the console oh for console release so that they haven't added it. Yeah, maybe there's some delay in there. Could be. Could be because Zen does like to do day and date with everything they launch on. And I know that Zacharia just was doing a post about their updates for the PS4, I believe. And suddenly there was a delay that they weren't sure what happened, but it pushed it four weeks.
    8:16
    Yeah, just surprised. Ta-da! You know, so... That's going to be real frustrating, right? Yeah, yeah.
    8:25
    So, there's that portion of the reaction where people are just like, oh, God, just give it to me already. But then the other portion of the reaction that I did, like I said,
    8:37
    despite how many times I know that I popped into various forums and was like, it's just Volume 6, temper your hype, people were going full bore. Oh, they're going to make a Star Wars announcement. Oh, they're going to make... They're going to announce a next generation of game. They're going to... It's going to be massive. It's going to be a huge announcement. I think you're right. People were really hyping it up in their own mind, weren't they? About what this big... Why have we waited for CAX 2020 to release this news? uh if yeah people were like underwhelmed i think yeah and then to throw on top of that with the underwhelming is the factor that well it should have been a big deal that we found they're getting alphanumerics uh because it is a big deal it is a big deal i think to those that are dmd players and that involves predominantly your your zen players that weren't into williams pinball before uh this is kind of like whoa now we're going we're going retro man and and we're getting into the boring tables because that was always a big fear that uh that these are the boring tables they don't have modes so they're not as exciting to to mess with and play that's right really it's all about getting multiple on a lot of these tables and That's about it. Yeah. So I think that that kind of played into the kind of the, oh.
    10:14
    Fortunately, some of you recognize the fact that, hey, we finally are getting a table that was not in TPA, the space station.
    10:23
    And that is a big deal. That's first to digital, commercial digital. Commercial digital, yeah. Which is really what we care about, really. Yeah, I don't touch the VPX world. the sorry folks it that's an entirely different beast i i would suggest if you were really into it hey there's a podcast idea yeah start one set it up it's it's too much information for me to dive into and uh keep track of i mean honestly you've got so much content to talk about and in the um like the community build um space for um pinball like simulation so you know go go fill your boots make a new niche niche podcast right about that i mean i'm still out of the loop i don't even know who the the key authors of tables are anymore i wouldn't even know where to begin it would be like when i very first time i loaded it up and and everything was brand new and around with it exactly yeah i wouldn't know either it's it's it's it's uh it's an avenue that you know you really have to go super deep in and there's not a chance at the moment that i could go super deep into it. I just don't have the time. Well, and on top of that, the VPX community has very much become all about cabinet mode.
    11:42
    And so if you don't have a proper cabinet to run it and test it on, then you're also doing a disservice to talking about it. Yeah, because it just doesn't really... They make the views and everything exactly for cabinet mode, right? Yeah. They're all tuned for a cabinet. So, yeah, it would be... looking weird on just a regular screen well i mean it's not that they're all tuned to it i mean because they do present also landscape mode uh with their builds but i'm just saying in general the the community that is really into vbx tends to be also the same community that is really into pincaps and yeah uh there's a lot of me just being able to rotate my monitor and play in cabinet mode is a whole different subset than being able to run a true DMD, run a back glass, run a shaker motors and solenoids and, and all that other jazz that is programmed into, into VBX. Yeah. So that's our, that's our handy, helpful, uh, tip for those that want to show their own. Take that. That's right. Take that. We'll even watch. That's right. Cause it'll probably be quite interesting. We'll probably learn something. Um, so yeah do it and yeah we'll learn something and then we'll report on it um so beyond that if we get into the further reactions of of what is what is what um it turns out that dr dude go figure is the one that everybody kind of goes about. Yeah, that's weird. Because we know that it's the most impressive package. And I think we know why probably people do think like that about it. And it probably has to do with their opinion of it from Pimble Arcade. Well, it's both their opinion of it from Pimble Arcade and whatever their opinion of Party Zone is. Because it looks very similar. If you put them side by side, they've got very similar Calipelots. Well, it's the same theme. I mean, the dude is on Party Zone. He's in there. That's right, he is. And that is what was the... It's essentially a trilogy of tables, because wasn't there one called... Help me out, folks. What was the... What was the first table before Dr. Dude? It's the other... Because there's the three party things for the ball lock.
    14:19
    Party animals? Oh, jeez. No, was that... I don't know. Maybe. Because there are party animals in... Yeah, come on, comment section. You know what table I'm talking about. You can put it in there. You know. I haven't played it, put it that way. So I wouldn't know. It certainly didn't make it down here to Aussie land.
    14:38
    But yeah, so I think there's that bit of... And even I had that opinion when I first heard it announced. And then once I started playing it, it was fantastic. I was just like, oh, yeah, I remember. I do like Dr. Dude way better than Party Zone. Yeah, it's a fun table. I like the interesting thing about Dr. Dude is that, you know, your mystery awards actually modify scoring on the table, which is, for its time, kind of unique. Like, you know, you'll get pop bumpers now with X, you know, and slingshots you get a little bit of extra when you hit them you know to you know take the sting out of it draining either side of the play field where you get done by them yeah oh at least i got some more points you know that feels good i think we mentioned it last time regarding with dr dude and just system 11s in general the idea that you need rom state carryover you really do and yes we You did. Yeah, okay. And I discovered something with Dr. Dude, because I put it into two-player mode, two-player hot seat. Ah, yeah. And the ROM state carried over to player two. Yes, right.
    15:54
    And because of that, it's much easier to progress up the Dude-o-meter, or whatever that thing is called.
    16:02
    And so at least that portion of it works. So it almost makes me think, well, if you really want to, get to the end of the dude meter throw it into hot seat four player or whatever and progress that way at least that way you can get through it all so I've got a question about that because I've never really played hot seat before because there's only one of me here so when you play hot seat do you get leaderboard status on any scores that you post I don't know because you go into Hot Seat and you tell it what version you want to play, whether you're playing Zen, Classic Arcade, or Tournament. So you can determine those. So it's not like you're altering anything.
    16:54
    It's just like my question would be, how would you actually identify people as scorers, which probably answers my own question. You probably don't get leaderboard status for a hot seat play because how would it know which player is who because you're not all oh right it would always be it would just score you whoever the the host that's right uh computer is yeah that's true that's right it'd be local only i would say right makes sense yeah i think i just answered my i just rubber ducked it um got to the answer i needed there you go live problem solving folks um and then the uh the the reaction in general for fun houses oh thank god that one needed help oh it did please send help it was horrible on um yep it was very very yes you're right it was party animal party animal thank you yes party animal yeah it was a um definitely a it's an oh it's what year is that that's a bally machine but is that what is that the 86 something chip i don't know what they system nine well no that that was bally wasn't doing system nine that wasn't bally they they had merged with williams at that time so there's that whole collection of bally tables that there's like a weird science or not weird science i wish it was weird science. Game Show. Game Show, but then there's those, like,
    18:30
    there's a whole collection of oddball ballet tables that nobody talks about, and I don't even remember the titles of them,
    18:36
    but it's the, their chip number is like a five-digit number, and it starts with eight, I know that much, and that's what they're called. Oh, 8502 or something like that. Yeah, something like that. Yeah, it's a certain processor type. Anyway, I'm wondering how super nerdy is that?
    18:54
    If only we had the ability to, you know, throw up pictures. Yeah. Let's not do that. On the fly. I know. Then there would just be an image of me doing this Hold on Jared Oh It be scintillating It really would There'd be five minutes of it, and you'd love it. Everyone on the stream would love it. It'd be great. Again, this is why we need a producer. A producer engineer on the show, that they can do all the... A director, actually, because that's what you essentially are when you're using OBS. You're a director. Yes. So you can put that on your LinkedIn, Chris. You're a director. Well, I think I already have.
    19:42
    But, you know, because that person would never be on camera, they could be easily doing the... And nobody would ever know.
    19:51
    That's right. It would all be smooth sailing. Feel like the duck on the surface of the water with the legs going like this. and then uh last but not least space station um i think there hasn't been much reaction to that purely because most people have never played it yeah that's right i'd like i would have been in the same boat as well unless except i went to this obscure little pub up the north coast and managed to find one it would be the first time i would have played it would have been in the um beta testing i'm i know i've put a quarter into well i not even a quarter because it's on free play. I know that they had it at Arcade Expo and that I did play it, but considering I played over 80 machines while I was there...
    20:35
    I didn't exactly spend a lot of time on it and I probably went, oh yuck, it doesn't have in-lanes. Yeah, moving on. Yeah, nope. Nope.
    20:44
    Because I can tell you exactly what row it was in. I can visually picture where it was because they put all their machines chronologically and by manufacturer. Very nice. Yes. It tells a story that way. It has a narrative, implied narrative. Which is kind of funny because then you get to the stern row, and it's just this bottleneck of people all down at the one end, and there's no man's land at the front end.
    21:13
    Yep. Do they have the stern slash data east row? Is it all like, you know, umbrella stern? So how Arcade Expo organized theirs the couple of times I've been there.
    21:28
    Stern, Modern Stern, is all in one row. But then where it ends, they go into Stern Electronics. Right.
    21:38
    Data East is a couple of aisles over because they don't have a large collection of them, maybe 15 tables of them. and that it shares the row with uh belly yams actually oh interesting um and then the miscellaneous category is in the miscellaneous and i'm trying to think whether or not they did put sega there but i don't think they did i think sega was in kind of its own spot also um because they basically what they kind of do is like like the capcom machines because they only had a couple they were in a little corner right next to the alvin g machines and then they had this one pit area that was basically all the rare machines um so that was where i played alien that was where i played um all the spooky uh tables where i played the thunderbirds table uh where they had houdini in that row. So it was kind of those oddball rare... Boutique. Boutique, yeah, exactly. Exactly.
    22:52
    But the Bally Williams row, it's one side is Bally, one side is Williams, and it's the entire length of the warehouse. Wow.
    23:03
    I mean, I'm telling you, it starts with, like the Bally row, starts with the Bally ultra-wide bodies and then goes all the way to the end where you got your cactus canyon basically wow yeah that would be quite the size yes and that's why i say the middle portion of that row is where all these very strange bally tables are that have oddball layouts and themes that you're like what the heck is this is like gangsters and and dames and uh you know or you'll get your your tables like um spectrum and vector oh yeah you know the those kind of deals. Very experimental. They were really experimentations of the technology of the time to see what they could do with them. A lot of the tables you find, like the oddball ones, the designers and developers at the time were going, what can we do with this platform? This new chipset, how can we exploit it?
    24:07
    So they base a pinball machine around this idea they have for the hardware specs, basically. yeah and that was kind of ballet was on their last legs and was trying stuff out and so that was right around the time because that would be mid 80s and then they got absorbed by Williams so that's kind of but yeah you turn your head 180 degrees and see the Williams aisle and it's just hit after hit after hit. Yeah, that's right. The hits just keep on coming. But good luck finding a Williams table pre-1980.
    24:50
    They're there over in the EM section, but it's like, you don't care. All you want to play is the Gottliebs or the Ballys. That's right, of that era. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, they were the premium EMs, all the Gottliebs.
    25:08
    Yes, anyhow. Anyhow, okay. So now that we, boy, talk about tangents of what we didn't plan on talking about today, Jared.
    25:17
    Well, we just did. So there you go. Ta-da. You're welcome. The other thing we wanted to touch upon was, hey, how about those three-quarter scale pinball cabs that aren't being made by 1UP Arcade?
    25:31
    Oh, yes. That's right. Not the 1UP Arcade. So I could probably go because I've been hanging around on the good old Toy Shock fan page. It's run by P-Dubs. And, yeah, the Toy Shock folks have released two bits of information. So if you have an original cabinet, like a 1.0 cabinet, you can get a complimentary upgrade board to 1.2. all you need to do is cover the shipping for it and um they also have a new they also showed the new um monitor surround for it as well so the um the whole um the bezel the bezel thank you that's what i was looking for so it's now a two-tone bezel um that's been like laser coated two-tone bezel so what they've done is they've reduced the amount a gray and put like a black inner ring on the bezel to sort of offset the screen and it was interesting jeff falk who is the um uh the person who like runs toy shock uh along with linda falk um they they're on the stream with um p-dubs and they were saying look you know it was a an actual conscious decision for us to make the bezel as big as it was because this really is I think the name of the product says it all, Toy Shock. This is actually considered a child's toy. Yeah, they're specifically targeting a younger market and are not targeting the more hardcore, which is funny to say hardcore audience when you're talking about people that aren't going to sink money into a full-size virtual cab, but are looking to go significantly smaller. But, yeah, no, they're definitely – they have a price point in mind, a price budget that they don't want to exceed and are almost happy to concede the – it's like we're going to take this chunk of the audience and we'll happily concede the other chunk to the other – To the other companies. Yeah. Exactly right. Yeah, I really did get that feeling from the live stream that they ran there. It was very much, they really do know what demographic they want to target. They were really quite surprised with the, they were quite surprised. I remember Jeff saying, he was very diplomatic about it, but he was saying, yeah, we were rather surprised when the product was released and we had all the flipper lag issues. Like, you could tell that he was going, dude, WTF, Farsight, what did you do? And they were like, we didn't even really notice it. Well, if you don't play a lot of digital pinball, you're not going to notice it. But no, he actually did allude to the fact that it felt good, like there was no lag. And then when it was released, there was lag. Oh, I didn't catch that. Yeah, he was like, yeah, so what happened between the, you know, essentially the final build that we produced and loaded onto these boards versus the one that actually got released? It's like they had like three versions of the main board, and they picked the wrong version that had the better performance specs or something like that. that's what it sounded like to me. It sounded super dodged. Like someone picked up the wrong blueprint file, basically, and said, oh, yeah, make that times 1,000, you know.
    29:04
    So, yeah. But, yeah, like their bezel choice itself, the idea was, look, we know we're going to have kids' hands all over this thing. Kids can be rough. They want to put a – they don't want just plexi over the top. They wanted a more robust piece of glass, and because of that, a more robust bezel to handle that. Was required. So obviously they weren't going for design and form factor of what will make it look like a true pinball cabinet. They're going after safety. Yeah, they're going after safety and building construction longevity, basically. Yeah, which is fair enough. If you're targeting that audience, you do need to be cautious about these things. I did have to laugh, though, because he mentioned the accelerometer, going, oh, yeah, well, if we did that cost, it was going to be, you know, we just went with the button nudge rather than the accelerometer because I was going to increase the cost too much. I'm like, I bought the accelerometer for that thing for $12. I assume quantity of scale would have had you buying them for a buck. or like let's be generous like really hardcore and say they didn't negotiate a good deal and it'll be like three or four dollars max yeah yeah that's not much i think you could have you know offset that in the bill of materials right i mean i get putting in solenoids and stuff yes that's going to add more of a cost yeah uh but uh yeah that that one kind of cracked me up a little bit It was amusing. There was one other thing, though, that they showed beyond just the version 1.2 model, and that was the bar top model. That's right. It's a little teeny tiny.
    30:54
    It really does look teeny tiny. It's actually a 16-inch monitor, I think they said, with still the alphanumeric displays in the back glass, but the back box is smaller and the play field is smaller, so it's 16-inch.
    31:09
    And it's a little bar top. It doesn't have legs of any type. It just sits on your bar top and you play this thing. And the thing that made my eyes raise with this particular product is the reason why they produced it. And the reason why they produced this bar top model is that in Europe, they did market research in there and they found out that to import
    31:34
    To export the full-size, three-quarter size product that you're seeing everyone having in the US now, domestic market, they found that the import taxes in the European countries made it almost like a, instead of like a $399 product, almost like a $500 US price after importation. even though the dollar's strong over there, like the actual euro to the greenback is pretty much on par. It's the import duties and stuff like that really killed them. Like 20% VAT essentially is what they charge over there. So that made what was the price point and the feature points in that product really not matching up to the dollars. So what they did is they made this bar top model because a lot of, they alleged that a lot of European households aren't big. So therefore they need to, you know, make a product that's, you know, a little bit more compact for the compact home. And that made me think going, well, you know, Australia, New Zealand, everywhere outside of the US is an export market. So does that mean that we aren't going to be seeing the three-quarter size pinball machine because of taxes etc and toy shock are making that decision for us rather than giving us the option to buy and there's where i'm very curious to see what happens with one up when their product does become available in europe how much of a price jump is it uh is it do have they found a way around it or are they under the exact same issue. Constraint. Or have they found somebody, a partner for, I mean, all the parts are coming from China for the most part anyway. So it's more about, I guess, what, package assembly?
    33:37
    Would you say? It pretty much is. So if they can import the parts into the country and then maybe manufacture it there locally and then ship it locally, maybe that's the way that they get around the problem. But you can assume that Arcade 1-Up are going to have the same challenges with VAT and tax etc so it's going to be interesting I don't know how the, I mean we got a range of Arcade 1-Up cabinets down here in Australia a couple years ago, like they came into the country and you could buy them through LD I think at the time so they've done it before and they have released it there So I think from Arcade 1-Up's perspective, I think other markets will actually see the product come out. That would be my bet that I would put money behind. Toy Shock, though, not sure.
    34:35
    I'm not totally certain. The interesting thing about their R-Top model, though, Chris, and this is what I was observing, is that, you know, if the thing doesn't have an accelerometer tilt, then there's little to no advantage actually having the thing on legs you know that right? correct like you could literally just have you could put it anywhere you can make an upright version you can make whatever you want if you don't have tilt on it you don't need it on legs so I don't know maybe the smaller screen and the more compact form factor for this thing it may be a better bet for countries outside the US well and I know that Arcade 1UP they have a bar top version of pac-man they're coming out with one for miss pac-man i think they have one also for uh space invaders or something of that sort so they know this market as well like they've seen that there's a market for this as well so you know it's going to be interesting to see what actually comes to the other markets i for one would not be buying one of those like bar top style cabinets if i was going to do it i would buy the form factor that makes most sense and actually have the pinball, traditional pinball form factor, if offered in our market. But I really don't think that ToyShock's going to be releasing that down here. I think that they're going to be only shipping the little bar top table down here. That is my call at the moment. I'll see if my guess is correct in future months. I find it interesting because I appreciate ToyShock's approach.
    36:19
    And they're doing the best they can for the price point that they want to hit with the best quality that they can. And I'm like, good for you guys. That's awesome. I'm glad that you're thinking of all that. And that you're taking feedback to heart and really trying to step it up. I just feel bad that the software you're saddled with it's not it's it's unfortunate that they went with that partner instead of um you know arcade one-up uh instead of um zen or even i don't know i don't even know yeah that's i would much rather see them go with zacharia uh i don't know i'm just not i'm not a fan of of gotley tables those particular gotley tables more than anything actually uh i mean the amount of times i've ever gone i want to play bone busters is very small really really small yeah like the new um the other thing they previewed in the stream was the um the new cabinet art as well and the only one that i would want to get they had bone busters a class of 1812 yeah instant no for that one um and the only one that i would consider apart from hoarded house would be the black hole because there's something about the stenciled look of black hole that appeals to me more than just the 80s garish like color vomit that is bone busters or class of 1812 art well they just look horrible yeah they seem to indicate that black hole for sure is going to be available the other cabinet art is going to be more of a how many requests do we have for it because in order for us to do a run on that artwork, we need X amount of people that we know that are going to go for it So I think even they realize that those are obviously not going to be as popular as what Black Hole would be It interesting In talking about the whole artwork scenario the way that they do the art on those cabinets is not just like a sticker or a pleat It's actually like printed onto the wood, essentially. So it's not a sticker. It's actually like bonded to the wood, almost like a paint, essentially. So I'd imagine it'd be like screen printed on.
    38:45
    So that does, you know, there is a definite bill of materials costs associated with that. And you're right, there is definitely a, how many units minimum do we need to make this a viable product line?
    39:00
    So, yeah, I think they made the right choice going with Black Hole, personally. I do wonder how many people, though, are going to take that cab and modify it uh the black hole cab black hole or even the haunted house cab just from the standpoint of there's no dmd you've just got the alphanumerics and the fact that whether people will want to go with that form factor of buttons or not because that might be an advantageous having the two buttons on both sides because you can remap what the nudge button does.
    39:42
    So I don't know. I'm just curious to know how... And obviously, Toy Shock, you care less about the mod community because that's not what they're selling it for. No, they're really not.
    39:52
    That's not a factor. I've already seen someone put a digital back glass in. People have gone down that route already with them and turned it into like a mini pin cab.
    40:05
    So yeah, there's already prior art there for that. but you know i think the form factor is the thing that appeals to people because you know toy shock do have a valid point in that there are households out there that just don't have the space the floor space for these like i'm even struggling with you know doing up force 2 and my pink panther's on its end in my garage because i just don't have room to assemble both at the same time like they're hulking beast pinball machines right they take up a lot of floor space so yeah they've they made it good like the whole three-quarter range is smart smart business really like the more you think about it yeah we did get a preview uh mel kirk coo of zen tweeted out a pic that he had assembled a marvel pinball arcade one-up cab at his home so we know that they're a real thing. He did say that artwork's not final.
    41:05
    It's still... What did you call it, Jared? A production test run? Yeah, I think it was a production... One of the production samples. Production sample, there you go.
    41:19
    It seemed like one of the production samples that he'd set up in the house. It looked good. It does look good. I got a better look though at just how small that 24 inch screen is going to be because there's a lot of lower area that lower the full lower area the lower apron is just a black big black bar that could really do with some art on it i really hope they do something with that area like put some art on it or some zen branding or something down there or even make it look like an apron like then you would wind up having a double apron because then there's the apron that would be on the playfield itself too like a double rainbow what does it mean what does it mean man double rainbow wow um yeah but the the angle that he took the picture i just kind of went oh boy that screen is going to be rather small yeah within the scale of the cabinet like it's almost like they should have just moved the the screen down more and had the top area as a void I don't know or maybe like middle roaded it or something like that it just feels really it feels really top loaded on the cabinet there's where I wish that there would be the option of oh you want a larger screen here you can buy it from us and put it in there yeah just because you know that people are going to swap that thing out oh they will yeah it's going to be probably one of the first thing the modding community look at which which again and here we go with our third cabinet option if you're really going for that if you're going to mod it because you want to be able to play all your pinball and have a larger screen and do all these things well you might as well just forego doing it on the one-up cabinet and go the at games route except for the fact that we still know next to nothing about it it's talk about radio silence yeah that company no idea they just do the shadow rendering they don't even have a render of what they want their cab to look like it's just a silhouette yeah they're taking some cues from Arkuda oh are they ever taking cues from Arkuda don't say anything because people might steal what we're doing yeah but that is still the this is why I wish they would put something out they'd put forth a true render because if you're going to steal any of the marketplace you need to say what you're going to do so that people uh know so just from a phone yeah yeah i mean rather than people going oh i'm gonna buy the one up and then they're gonna get mad because oh i should have i wish i had stayed you know away and done the games one you could steal the thunder and be like boom this is what we're putting out and and it's coming in this month like that's all i need to do show the product people can derive a lot of information from a even a render like look what uh okay one up did when they first announced the tables they're all renders and you know even some of their you know the shots with um the the pinball machine you know allegedly in a home you know that was absolutely a render that one was a very good render but it was still a render so stuff like that like get your product out there so people can see the thing like i don't i just don't get there that's another one that i just like roll my eyes at and because it's because i mean that's what toy shock is doing toy shock got their they got their product of market shipping products and they're shipping product right now yes because there's going to be that desire of people wanting these things and to the less informed you know to the grandparents they're gonna be like oh little Timmy he wanted a virtual pinball machine and I saw one at Walmart so I bought it and you don't have no clue that there's going to be a difference no and the thing is little Timmy will probably go hell yeah this is awesome older Timmy is going to go oh god grandma give me the receipt older Timmy is going to go no older Timmy will be going well look at least it's not one of those zizzle pinball machines oh my god so there's that look it's better to have 12 sort of questionable godly tables than no godly tables at all so good I guess like you know you wouldn't be like bummed if it was under your tree in Christmas time it's not terrible let's be honest like it's still you get a pinball machine you can play games on it and with the 1.2 board it's not going to suck because it'll actually be at i think the the interesting thing from a specs perspective is it's it's not only they fix the high score issues not saving which how would that get through qa initially like i just don't understand um and uh they're also going to fix the um the i think the frame rate it sounds like they've actually done something to clock it in at 60 i don't know how they've done it but they have um so it sounds like it's going to be the 1.2 boards and we'll see this because p-dub's going to like upgrade his machine any day now if he hasn't already um so we'll see what the performance is like he's going to be doing the good before and after you know stuff on it so we're going to see what it's like and you know maybe 1.2 will be the turning point with this product it'll actually become like yeah maybe not or you know by the where to yeah you know if you know what you're getting into go and get it you know yeah and that's just what i'm saying it's as long as there's not so much of a buyer beware uh you know and and that's what i feel like the ad games one right now is where it's you're crossing your fingers for something that you don't know the specs of um but you don't even know you don't know what the reality of is yeah yeah that's the thing you don't you don't know what it looks like the website's suspiciously quiet about it and all you can go by is what they leaked through P-Dub's channel on a spreadsheet.
    47:49
    So, yeah. I wouldn't make a decision based on that. Like, you can't. You almost have to make your decision off of their other products.
    47:59
    Yeah, which from what I've seen are actually pretty good. Yeah. Their Arcade Legends cabinet seemed pretty good. but yeah you know like pinball is an unknown quantity for them so you really got to see the thing you know and this is where toy shock and rk1 up ahead because they you know they're showing this thing off so you can see it and you know toy shock you can buy it and you know the as we both know with product the best thing you can do is have real customer testimonials talking about your product because that sells product um well and interestingly enough they're uh again competitor to uh to add games not the pinball front but the arcade cabinet front there's a couple of kickstarters going on uh with different companies doing cabinet one particular company is doing I can't remember the name of the didn't plan for this talk either otherwise I'd have it down it's the R something anyway I want to say R-Type but I don't think that's what it is but anyway they're doing a small form arcade cab that can be you can either buy it just as a bar top or buy it as full riser so that it's a regular standard height but it's going to have its own store within it to officially buy games. Okay, so it's iiArcade. There it is. Immersive Arcade Gaming Reinvented. Now, their big commercial games that they have licensed are Dragon Slayer, which, that's a huge one because you can't do it in MAME. You can't. It's laser-dispased, and it's fragile, because it's laser-dispased. Yeah. So they're doing that, and then Double Dragon, I think, is the other one that I recognized, at least, the title of. Everything else, I was like, eh, you got a problem, because Arcade 1-Up probably already locked all the licenses up for anything Namco, Taito.
    50:14
    Well, Sega's still out there, but good luck getting that. That Dragon's Lair game is an odd one. It's niche popular, because it's hard to find. but in speaking as someone who's actually put money through it and played it, you've got to know exactly when to press the buttons at the right time. It's staged. It is the original QuickTime game. Yeah, it is totally. And it is brutal because the amount of time you have to actually do that QuickTime movement and register what's going on, It eats through your quarters because you just die and die and die and die, and it's only through experimentation that you get past the next QuickTime event, and that was kind of the point of it, to eat all your quarters with.
    51:02
    Exactly. I'm reading through the Kickstarter page now, and it looks like you shouldn't bother looking at it unless you're in the USA, Canada, or South Korea because that's where they're shipping it, according to what I was seeing here. But, yeah. But this is the reality.
    51:26
    All of a sudden, this market has popped up, and many people are seeing the potential and are starting to dive in. And as we keep on saying in various manners, competition is good because it forces the hand of everybody to up their game without increasing the price.
    51:46
    So what is happening with this thing is going to affect what happens with future Arcade 1-Up caps. I mean, Arcade 1-Up has already improved their monitors, apparently, from what they initially started with. And AtGames is obviously going for larger monitors, but in the same package size. and obviously with more controller options and stuff. So, yeah, this stuff is going to start proliferating and exploding, I think, in this next year.
    52:20
    Yeah, we're going to see a lot of options come into the market, I think, because people are waking up and realizing that it's actually a thing. And I think the same thing is going to happen then with the pinball cabs, I believe. Oh, yeah. There's going to be heaps of companies coming out with the idea of it. And you can, I just hope that what I don't see is a whole lot of people trying to install freeware on it and trying to sell that as a thing. So, you know, installing all the main stuff on there and then trying to sell a product with that embedded on there. Because, you know, that's what a lot of the manufacturers here, like in Australia, are doing. They will build you a machine, and it will magically come preloaded with 200 or 300 pinball tables that are all open-source community tables, not licensed, on a product that's being sold in retail, which is against the licensing terms of that product. So, yeah, dodgy. And this is what John Dynamon was talking about, the fact that the market isn't level in that regard. People just do what they want. and try and sell it as a thing. Which makes it more difficult for the legit companies to secure licensing because those companies are gun-shy about having their product then somehow magically make it onto these other things.
    53:43
    Yeah, that's right. And that's what they don't want. They've spent the time and engineering dollars making this product and then it just gets put on some Chinese knockoff.
    53:55
    Please see Arcuda. unfortunately because that is essentially what happened So there we are folks, there's the current state of things The current state is once again plateaued Yeah, so we just need to wait for Zen to announce the release date You have to assume it's going to be soon They wouldn't just sit on this forever now they've announced it, it doesn't make sense for them to do it I think our synopsis is They're just waiting for all the platforms to line up. And once they're all lined up, they'll probably release the thing.
    54:32
    Yeah, because I think I had said my guess was it was going to be near the end of July. I think your guess, or excuse me, near the end of August. And I think your guess was beginning of September, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, something like that.
    54:49
    Yeah. It feels like September to me, I think, at this stage. but we'll see either way we know it's exists it's a thing now everyone knows of its public knowledge so they're going to release the thing you know and again as both of us have played the beta we can tell you marked improvement over what previously was available yeah those three tables are like you wouldn't even recognize them from a gameplay perspective it's funny you know I've been on the subject of gameplay perspective. I've been in the Toy Shock chat, and there's people in there talking about, you know, I really just wish that, you know, Farcyke kept the license and they were able to continue doing things. Because, you know, the games play really well, and it got me thinking going, hmm. And I thought, no, I'm going to just ask the question here. And, you know, they say, you know, one of the great classic things is I don't like all the pop-up scores and the animations. I said, well, you can turn it off, right? Some people don't know that still, that you can turn off those things, which is really surprising.
    55:56
    And I think we actually, I think I might have won over another customer to Zen now that they know they can turn that off. So I'll get that internet dollar. Thank you very much. That's the virtual internet dollars coming my way for that.
    56:10
    So, you know, they were talking about, you know, the fact that, you know, Zen's physics are just no good and, you know, Farsight's physics were much better and stuff like that and you know I just went okay nice good opinion there just left that one on the card I responded initially going like you know like okay if you can look past all the railroads and you know questionable physics when the ball leaves the play field sure Farsight's physics are much better but and then you know I could see it going down the rabbit hole, and I thought, no, I'm just going to step back here. I'm not going to win this argument, not that I really care.
    56:55
    I just went, nope. As far as I know, Far Strike still very much has the Gottlieb license. It's theirs to say, we're done with it. It's not going to get pulled from them, from what my understanding of their licensing agreement was. but they're also not going to make new tables because they don't feel that there was any interesting tables left to do. So I think the only way you're going to see new Gottliebs is if those people that bought the Toy Shock product demanded from Toy Shock that hey we want more Gottlieb tables And then Toy Shock actually contracted Commissioned Farsight to do it
    57:36
    You're right. That's, I think, the only way that that's going to happen. Farsight, I think you're dead on the money there.
    57:42
    Farsight will need, basically, a sign check to actually start development again because to them it's a risk, but if they have someone paying the bills, they are essentially a contract studio now. That's what they do. Like they're making all the Brunswick, they've got Brunswick Pool, Brunswick Pro Bowling. Yeah, that's all, you know, with probably some money floating around there to make it worth her while as a development studio. So if someone pays them, they'll do it. And, well, they'll do whatever, really. Like they'll produce whatever they can get their hands on, really, if someone pays them the money, which is, you know, good business, let's be honest. producing something you have a guaranteed revenue stream for, yeah, that's a logical choice. Not only that, but if you're doing the EMs, having the physical machine in your office is no longer such an important factor. No. I mean, they proved that just with their Pinball Hall of Fame Gottlieb collection. Oh, they did all that with scripting. Yeah, it was all scripted up. The logic of those things is very predictable. As long as you know what triggers what and when it triggers, you can totally script that. You don't need to emulate or do anything because, well, you can't emulate it because it's an EM.
    58:57
    And in terms of tuning the physics, well, they weren't exactly tuning the physics of the EM to actually play like an EM to begin with. No way. And if your fan base doesn't care, then voila. Voila, you've got yourself a market that's great. You can sort of do what you want. Yeah. There was a discussion also going on, and I kind of find this interesting. There are some players that do not like the new physics that came with the Monster Pack and with Volume 5, because they feel that the ball suddenly slowed down.
    59:33
    Interestingly enough, myself, Spacey's Arcade Greg over there, like the new physics, because we feel that it more closely resembles what the actual table, a real-life table play is like. And so I kind of posed the question for the people that were complaining about it, and I said, what's your experience with real-world table play?
    59:57
    Because I knew a couple of the people have never actually gotten their hands, because of where they live, they've never had a chance to play on a real machine. So that means all of their experience is based off of either playing previous versions, so somebody else's interpretation of physics, or watching videos, typically the Papa videos, which are, again, you're dealing with not only different table settings than what a table was designed for, but the skill of the player playing it is making certain things ball behaviors look like they're natural when they're anything but um yeah and the response came back pretty much with what i what i thought where it was like no i don't have much experience with with these particular tables i just know that for me the challenge went down with the monster pack in volume five and i was like okay that's fair enough but just because you happen to you know it's one of the top online players or digital players is the terror over there over or be dirk i can never remember um the guy can dominate any digital pinball machine and he's also apparently really good at real machines you know and that's not who you they're always going to find the exploit of a table and always going to you know i i watched a guy at one of my uh when i was in the league and he was i think at the time ranked 33rd in the world uh i watched him run indiana jones completely run the table he and then i watched him play uh game of thrones and he was literally on one ball for 20 minutes yeah i mean that's not natural that's not you know so if you have an operator once no no no no so i mean if you have that kind of skill of course you're going to want something that's even more severe but my standpoint is that at least even with the first three volumes which don't have the good flipper physics and might have a little... also have what Greg termed was the marble ball effect which is the ball speed accelerates in ways that are unnatural that I can't possibly follow.
    62:35
    And I was able to compare again at Arcade Expo. They had every single machine that Zen had put out and my thing was what Zen had nailed was at least the wild ball play and a lot of the angles that you have to shoot the ball at.
    62:56
    And Gone Were the Railroads, obviously. But then when we get these newer packs, it feels more real to me. Even if the ball apparently is slower, and I'm not really... People keep on pointing to Circus Volterra, and I'm like, Circus Volterra is a floaty table. that's how it actually really is it's designed for the ball to go side to side not up and down yeah it's a it is very much a floaty table it took me by surprise when i played it properly set up at somebody's home it's like wow this thing just floats around it's like the ball is on slow motion but it's how they want it to play well and i also point out things like look go back and play any Steve Ritchie table. They're going to play lightning fast compared to, and I don't even know what designer to compare it to, but go play F-14, which is a System 11 machine, and it plays just as fast as any modern Stern. It does. But then go play something like Earthshaker, which came out around the same time, and it plays miles slower than that. So a lot depends on also the designer and how shots were set up, what kind of speed you can expect out of that.
    64:15
    And so it's not that Zen is not raking the table up high enough. I guarantee that their program has all the tables set at the 6.5 degree rake.
    64:27
    I'm pretty positive of that. And then here's something to consider. When you go into now with these alphanumerics, I don't know that 6.5 was the standard rake. I think it was actually only 6, maybe even 5.5. It was much flatter. So that's something that you're going to have to adjust to and realize that it's not because they're not doing it correctly, they're matching what these tables behave like.
    64:54
    The rake was different because the flipper strength was different. So that's when you adjust the rake of a table, it's when the flippers are stronger or weaker. That's why all the older EMs and early solid states, they float because the flippers were not strong back then. No, they don't go whipping the balls around at all. They don't. No, they don't. So that's where it's, when we talk physics, I always now kind of want to know what is your experience in the real world on these things and how do you feel? Because, and I point everybody to Greg's video. I'm like, watch what happens when he put a marble on the table. That told the story. And it was enough of a telling of the story that Zen went, oh, and adjusted things accordingly.
    65:44
    That's right. Yeah, I don't know. The physics scenes will always be a point of contention because everybody's experience is different. But as we've said in the past in the show, it is based on the tables that Zen have in their studio. And that is the standard that you're playing. So unless you can go to Budapest and go and play those tables and then compare notes, just believe that it's right.
    66:11
    Yeah, I mean, the tables were designed to be within a parameter of play, but the specifics of each table is obviously going to be varying different and different. And I even came across this when I was playing on somebody's Revenge for Mars table, that any time the ball went into the scoop, you had to nudge, time your nudge, so as soon as the ball was ejecting it, you could nudge it to hit it, because otherwise it was going to fire straight down the middle. And the owner of the table happened to be watching, and we complained. We're like, dude, your table fires straight down the middle every time. He was like, oh, let me take a look at that. So he popped open the play field and went underneath and realized that the scoop chute had been loosened a little bit, So he lined it back up, tightened it, ta-da! That's all it took. It was literally just a slight little screw. A couple of screw chins. Yeah. So, you know, and that was all they did. But, I mean, how many times have I played Metallica where the snake eject is vicious? I mean, it's, again, it can be a straight down the middle shot or it can graze your flipper. so there's tolerances that are allowed machine to machine but it's the broad strokes that Zen is nailing maybe the fine tuning that is where it becomes whatever table you're used to playing yeah that's right it's the plus minus 10% of your own experience they should just have that warning across your experience may differ from your reality I don't know yeah but i think that there's where your toy shock uh community uh they're going to get used to the godly physics that farsight has presented and they're going to come to accept those and i accepted them when pinball arcade was our only choice i didn't have much of a problem with the physics until i played zen's version and went oh oh i've been wrong yeah that's right yes so the Farsighted Physics were not terrible the bad part of it was that they were predictable but they did do a fairly good job of especially when you compare it to previous pinball games other than everybody always brings a pro pinball I never played pro pinball so I can't really comment on that one. But everything else that I had ever played was always exceedingly unnatural in feel. I always felt Farsight felt much more natural, and I completely accepted it for the eight years that I was playing it.
    69:02
    And then, like I said, you think you've had a good pizza, and then you find out that you've just been eating Mama Celeste, and all of a sudden you have a real pizza from a real pizzeria and you go, oh. Oh, that's what it's supposed to be like. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
    69:22
    Dope. Different flavors. All right. We're going to call it at that. You can expect to hear from us in two weeks.
    69:30
    Presumably with an announcement. Hopefully we'll have a date for you. Yeah. Presumably with an announcement or a release date. Yeah. But that's when to look for us next, two weeks from now. and I don't think that we're other than the release date I don't think there's much that we're really looking out for because I don't think we're going to be seeing any new news about the cabinets even from Toy Shock until September proper oh yeah I think so I think they're going to be ramping up from September quite aggressively, but I think, yeah, I don't think we're going to expect anything from August at all.
    70:16
    Yeah, it's going to be towards the latter half of the year, I think, or the latter quarter of the year, really, isn't it? Yeah, something like that. So, anyway, that's the good gourd. I just heard a giant explosion. Oh, fireworks. Fireworks. Kaboom. Yeah, why not? Fire in the hole! So long as it's not a power transformer.
    70:37
    Because in this heat, those can go too. Oh, yeah, that's true. Over in the peanut gallery, it's a spectaculation of what to expect from Zen for the rest of the year.
    70:50
    Stuff and things. Wait, that's what comes from our show, not from Zen. Yeah, I don't know. We can maybe delve into that if possible.
    71:04
    Throw some ideas out there of what. More tables. I mean, literally, that's what our speculation is going to be.
    71:13
    Here, I'll give you all a nugget to kind of chew on, because I just read this article before we started today. Yeah. You might have heard that makers of Fortnite, Epic, have had their game yanked off of Apple and Google Play because they instituted in-app purchasing that skipped Apple and Google completely so the funds went directly to Epic. Yes. Then Epic announced that part of the reason for doing this is because Apple charges a 30% commission right off the top of any sale. They do, yes. Whereas the Epic Game Store only charges 12% for theirs. right so there's something to consider for all of you that are because i've read rampant speculation about this too of because the other three games that zen has put out being castle storm 2 operencia and dreadnoughts those all went directly to epic game store for limited time exclusivity that they're fearful that if there is a new iteration of pinball effects that it might also go epic game store exclusive and if you're wondering then why that might be a possibility that's probably a pretty good reason like a mission cut seems to be a pretty good motivation to you know maybe go epic first to at least come on right to at least kind of get the initial wave of people that want to play, get all that, and then, yes, obviously, if you're a console player, you can't go to Epic Game Store. You're going to have to wait for it to come to console. But when I heard that cost, I was like, holy crap. That's a big kiss. If you're paying 30% to the store, and I'd be curious to know what Steam's cut is. I don't think Steam's is that large. Do you? I don't know. But if it's 30% to that, what's the cut to, say, Scientific Games for the Williams license that they're having to pay?
    73:30
    Oh, it would be, oh, well, I don't know. I don't either. It's hard to say. It's really hard to tell. Honestly, I'm guessing it's probably like a 20% cut. So right there, you're now 50% of your profits are gone. And then if you slap on a license.
    73:48
    Then there's more. You've got this little tiny bit of money left that had to go into your game development, and that you're now recouping the costs on. So I'm saying... If you can save 20% of one of those commissions that you have to pay, then you do it. And I'm saying that with the idea of we've got all those licensed DMDs that have not been made yet.
    74:17
    Well, yes, that's right. That would make it easier for the studio to afford to the extra costs and licenses that would go along with those particular games, wouldn't it? Yeah. So I'm just going to throw that into the fire for those that are having panic over this and wondering why, what the logic would be for doing that. we keep on saying these are businesses that are meant to make money and they need to make money in order to further put out product that seems like a pretty valid reason I would think so the article linked in the show notes is it's a 30% cut on average through Steam so it's similar so if you look at Steam versus Epic there's money to be saved yeah wow we'll see though who knows i think uh the big question for me has keeps on continuing to be what is the uh ps5 and xbox x or whatever it is that they're calling it i'm never going to know because I'm not an Xbox fan.
    75:35
    But what is going to happen to those? If it's just a straight port of FX3, that answers a lot of questions. If it's something different, that opens up a whole can of worms. Yeah, exactly. The likes of which, maybe that's where next episode we can speculate. Maybe. I don't know. We'll see how much me and Jared can go behind the scenes and kind of go, how long can we stretch this little tangent?
    76:07
    That's right. We are good at it. So, you know, we are experts at that little caper. Yes. All right. So, yeah, until next time, folks.
    76:19
    Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time. Jared, give your out. Next time there's going to be stuff and things, so stay tuned. Stuff and things, folks. That's what we're all about, stuff and things. Bye-bye.