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Mel Kirk interview for Spring 2021

BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 10m·analyzed·Apr 20, 2021
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.033

TL;DR

Zen Studios plans 2X pinball output via Unreal migration and hiring; licensing separates VR into standalone experiences.

Summary

Mel Kirk, COO of Zen Studios, discusses Pinball FX's migration to Unreal Engine, aggressive hiring and production targets (20 tables/year), VR strategy with separate licensed experiences, and mobile platform restructuring. Key technical insights cover physics customization in Unreal, HDR/ray tracing capabilities, and the reasoning behind separate VR products for major licenses like Star Wars.

Key Claims

  • Zen Studios is targeting 20 pinball tables per year as a baseline for content output within the next 12 months, representing a 2X increase in pinball output.

    high confidence · Mel Kirk directly stated this as an explicit goal: 'Our goal is to 2X our pinball output within the next 12 months. So that means we're going to try to get to 20 tables per year as a baseline.'

  • Zen has hired 20 people so far this year as a result of the Embracer acquisition, with more hires planned specifically for pinball.

    high confidence · Mel Kirk: 'I think so far this year we've brought on 20 people. And this is a result of that Embracer thing.'

  • Zen's physics engine cannot be directly ported to Unreal Engine and requires significant custom development work involving gravity, collision control, friction, and rigid body dynamics.

    high confidence · Mel Kirk: 'It is most definitely not plug and play. It is most definitely complicated... we're talking about gravity and collision control and friction and rigid body dynamics, all these different things that go into our physics simulation.'

  • Star Wars Pinball VR is trending to be one of the top VR titles of the year.

    high confidence · Mel Kirk: 'Star Wars Pinball VR is trending to be one of the top VR titles of the year, so we'll see what kind of adoption we get.'

  • Major licensors like Lucasfilm categorize VR as a separate product category requiring standalone experiences rather than integrated VR modes within main platforms.

    high confidence · Mel Kirk: 'For our licenses, anyway, VR is a separate category. We have to address it separately... This is what you're seeing with Lucasfilm and Star Wars right now, right? We're building a standalone experience.'

  • Williams Pinball mobile app runs on PX Engine and will likely not receive new content going forward since Zen is not creating new Williams tables in PX.

    high confidence · Mel Kirk: 'That's in the PX, yeah... I think maybe the Williams Pinball app probably won't see any new content because we're not creating any new Williams tables in PX.'

Notable Quotes

  • “Our goal is to 2X our pinball output within the next 12 months. So that means we're going to try to get to 20 tables per year as a baseline.”

    Mel Kirk @ ~14:30 — Major production target announcement; signals aggressive expansion of Zen's pinball content pipeline

  • “It is most definitely not plug and play. It is most definitely complicated... we're talking about gravity and collision control and friction and rigid body dynamics, all these different things that go into our physics simulation. It just has to be customized, and it's heavy lifting.”

    Mel Kirk @ ~5:45 — Technical clarification on Unreal Engine migration complexity; explains why physics engine porting is non-trivial

  • “Most licensors do. This is what you're seeing with Lucasfilm and Star Wars right now, right? We're building a standalone experience because VR is—you know, there's a notion of brand equity and just releasing things that are just kind of add-ons when you can really make a full experience for something and give it a proper treatment.”

    Mel Kirk @ ~31:00 — Explains VR licensing strategy; clarifies why Star Wars VR is separate from Pinball FX rather than integrated

  • “I don't like building platforms... But a separate Star Wars VR game is now a Star Wars VR platform, and then inside of there we have eight tables shipping right, and there's a bunch of other tables that we still have in the library.”

    Mel Kirk @ ~38:15 — Shows reluctance to proliferate platforms while acknowledging VR requires separate architecture; indicates 8 Star Wars VR tables at launch

  • “And I can assure you we're making more pinball than we've ever made before.”

    Mel Kirk @ ~18:00 — Direct rebuttal to concerns that Embracer acquisition would reduce pinball output; strong statement of intent

  • “We do have mobile is coming back into view in a very big way for us. A very—it'll be very supported again under the new Embracer and Saber operative.”

    Mel Kirk @ ~62:00 — Signals renewed investment in mobile pinball after period of reduced focus; attributed to Embracer/Saber resources

Entities

Mel KirkpersonChris FrebuspersonJared MorganpersonZen StudioscompanyEmbracer GroupcompanyPinball FXproductStar Wars Pinball VRproductWilliams PinballproductUnreal EngineproductPX Engineproduct

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Embracer Group acquisition has significantly increased available resources and personnel for Zen's pinball division; hiring described as result of acquisition

    high · Mel Kirk attributes 20-person hire wave to Embracer acquisition; counters narrative that acquisition would reduce pinball output; frames as enabling rapid scaling

  • ?

    business_signal: Zen Studios has hired 20 people in 2021 specifically for pinball division with aggressive target of 2X output (20 tables/year baseline) within 12 months, enabled by Embracer Group acquisition

    high · Mel Kirk directly states hiring figures and production targets; frames as direct result of Embracer acquisition providing resources and capital

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Major licensors (Lucasfilm, others) require VR to be separate product category with standalone experience rather than integrated feature within main platforms

    high · Mel Kirk explicitly states VR licensing is separate category; notes this is standard across major licensors; contrasts with Magic Pixel's integrated VR approach

  • $

    market_signal: Pinsim VR pinball controller being evaluated by Zen as potential hardware partnership with Arcade 1Up; adoption contingent on Star Wars VR install base and market success

    medium · Mel Kirk mentions prototypes in office; expresses personal enthusiasm for controller; states 'we can pull some triggers very quickly to sell additional hardware' if Star Wars VR succeeds

  • ?

    announcement: Star Wars Pinball VR confirmed with 8 tables at launch; trending as top VR title with May 4th release target window

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.212

0:00
blockade pinball podcast this is the blockade pinball podcast i'm your host chris frebus aka shut your trap joining me as always halfway across the world jared morgan G'day everyone, how are you going? I'm going good, you're going good Fantastic Well, look folks We're going to just cut right to the chase And that is, we have A very special guest Somebody who we have not had on In six months Wow, that's been a little ways Mel Kirk, everybody, COO of Zen Studios Hey guys, good to be with you again I cannot believe it's been six months maybe that just goes to show how stinking busy we've been over here well yeah you know and you've kind of got that the pinball show to put out information rather than having us be like Mel can we get you on so that works to your favor too yeah we started with the pinball show really because obviously you know we got a lot to talk about right now and we just needed a new way to do that and stay organized and so hope you guys are enjoying it Yeah, we are. We kind of view it as it's a press conference, and then we have follow-up questions that we want, but it's hard to ask them.
1:29
Hence why you're here today. Exactly. Answer the questions of the questions. There you go. So, folks, this is going to be a nice deep dive of all the questions that you may have heard us bring up, questions that we've seen brought up in discussions and stuff like that. But I wanted to start off kind of with this, that in the show you said that you were obviously bringing Zen's physics with you to Pinball FX using the Unreal Engine. And I was just kind of curious to know, is that a kind of a plug-and-play kind of situation? How does that integrate with going to an entirely new graphics engine? Does that cause complications? it is most definitely not plug and play it is most definitely complicated um ue has its own form of physics you know and uh so we ripped it out we're putting our own in and i i can't say much more than that because it's you know there's some confidentiality there but um i will say like our physics are the most advanced right and uh we we need to keep our physics and it's very you know i don't know they're very special so when we're talking about changing in an engine, it's definitely heavy lifting. We're talking about gravity and collision control and friction and rigid body dynamics, all these different things that go into our physics simulation. It just has to be customized and it's heavy lifting.
Epic Games
company
Lucasfilmcompany
Quest 2product
Pinsim controllerproduct
Arcade 1Upcompany
FX2 VRproduct
Saber Interactivecompany
Jeremy Williamsperson

high · Mel Kirk mentions 'eight tables shipping right' and references May 4th timing for launch push; discusses immersive implementation details

  • ?

    product_strategy: Zen pursuing strategy of separate mobile apps per major IP for discoverability, but maintaining option for content ownership parity across platforms (standalone app purchase should grant entitlement in Pinball FX)

    medium · Mel Kirk discusses historical mobile strategy of separate apps for IP; indicates entitlement connectivity is goal but acknowledges 'I don't know' on exact execution

  • ?

    product_strategy: Zen planning to rebuild Williams Pinball mobile and explore new mobile formats; current Williams app unlikely to receive new table content

    high · Mel Kirk indicates no new Williams tables in development for PX Engine; states mobile is 'coming back into view in a very big way' under Embracer/Saber; mentions going 'back to the drawing board'

  • ?

    technology_signal: FX2 VR contains device-specific bug on Quest 2 (menu overlay issue) that has impacted ratings; Zen lacked bandwidth for maintenance while developing Star Wars VR; issue now on priority list

    high · Mel Kirk acknowledges bug awareness, device-specific nature, rating impact, and deferred fix due to bandwidth constraints during Star Wars development; indicates recent patches issued

  • ?

    technology_signal: Unreal Engine migration enables HDR and 4K as minimum specification; ray tracing possible but requires custom work; future compatibility with 8K possible but no current content

    high · Mel Kirk explicitly states '4K, HDR, that's like the minimum spec'; confirms ray tracing requires custom implementation; references 8K device availability but no content

  • ?

    technology_signal: Zen is migrating from proprietary PX Engine to Unreal Engine 4.25 for Pinball FX and future pinball titles; custom physics engine implementation required

    high · Mel Kirk confirms Unreal 4.25 as current development target; discusses heavy lifting required for physics customization; indicates Star Wars VR already in Unreal

    • 2:57
    Okay, so it's basically if you're customizing a car, you're ripping out the suspension that came with it and putting in your own the way you liked it. Yeah. That's pretty full-on stuff. I imagine there's probably other things that are a bit different between Unreal and the old PX Engine as well. I know that the community seems to be really excited about the concept of HDR, high dynamic range in games. And I'm just wondering how that fits into pinball effects as far as graphical presentation goes. I'd say even things like retracing too, if that can be spoken upon. Yeah, we haven't specifically said rate tracing yet. Maybe we did. I don't know. These are things that we're working on, and that's the power that Unreal Engine gives us. And we looked at the change from PX to Unreal. Obviously, to kind of reiterate, look, we don't have to maintain an engine anymore. We let Unreal do that. That's what they do, and we can make games. But the physics, we're very specific to us. We have to bring that with us. And then the updated graphical horsepower, that is something that is provided to us, and we don't necessarily have to do anything other than we need to work on a lot of the assets, all the games that are getting remastered. It's complete rework of assets. But then they end up looking beautiful. The HDR, the graphical fidelity, ray tracing, the way the ball can potentially look and the way that we can do lighting and the dynamics. I think that the night and day difference of the World West Rampage screenshot for the night mode, I mean, like, come on, that looks awesome. I mean, or maybe I'm just saying it. I hope you all understand.
    4:37
    You know, these are the things, and, you know, we're still, like, every table is going to get its own kind of upgrade. It's not just, like, that's how night mode or dark mode will look in any other game that has dark colors associated with it. It really gives us freedom on the graphical side. I mean, because I'm kind of guessing that one of the pluses with going and using a third party's graphics engine is that when tech moves forward, they're obviously going to be keeping up with it. Like, again, just thinking about with HDR, ray tracing, you know, doing 4K gaming and stuff like that, that kind of takes it off your plate and puts it all on theirs, right? Absolutely. 4K, HDR, that's like the minimum spec that we can ship with, which will be awesome. And then from there, you know, it's up to how much work and energy we put into it. Ray tracing just doesn't happen at the push of a button either. I mean, that's all custom work. And then, you know, who knows what the future holds? Like people already have 8K sets, but there's no 8K content. But, you know, we know that the current devices are capable of pushing that. So eventually and in time, I mean, we'll see what we get to. So I'm kind of curious with obviously if you're not having employees focusing on the engine now, That frees up employees. But then I know that also in the comments there was mentioned by, I can't remember if it was you or Akosh, that basically said that you guys have also been hiring more people for the pinball division. I'm wondering if you can kind of expand upon that. Kind of what does that benefit? I mean, we kind of suspect what the benefits are, but maybe you can detail what the benefits of that would be for Zen. Yeah. We're getting so many CVs in right now from people who want to come work at Zen. I'm personally flattered. I think that that kind of says a lot about your company when people are, you know, aching to come work with you. We're hiring specifically right now for pinball.
    6:26
    And our goal is to 2X our pinball output within the next 12 months. So that means we're going to try to get to 20 tables per year as a baseline. Oh, wow. Of course, we have platform development and we have table development. Okay. So and when I say table, that doesn't just mean like the Williams where those are kind of like, you know, ports or we're already working with existing. I mean, I'm talking about from the ground, from scratch, 20 games per year is our goal for content. On the platform side, we really don't like to have to keep building platforms. Like, it's a pain. I don't want to release a new Pinball FX every three years because what we have to do with business, what we have to do with content, and push it all through on a brand-new platform, I mean, it is a headache. So I really – so the guys that we're bringing in right now, yes, of course, we're – you know, we get them started in content. That's where they're going to start with tables. And then we take our more senior guys and we put them into the platform team. But what the hiring means is that platforms should be bigger, more robust, better maintained. Live services should be more compelling. And then the content can flow and we can crank out awesome tables to fill the platform with. And so that's, you know, that's what the hiring means. And I think so far this year we've brought on 20 people. and this is a result of that Embracer thing. Everyone's like, oh, it means that Zen's not going to make pinball anymore. Well, I can assure you we're making more pinball than we've ever made before.
    7:53
    You mentioned the comparison shot with Wild Racer Rampage and there it was listed as Unreal 4. And I know that, I don't know, I'm sure you were blown away by it too, but we'd watched the Unreal demo for Unreal 5 and what it meant for lighting, what it meant for textures and everything like that. And I'm just curious, are you guys developing for sure in Unreal 4? And if you were to want to switch to Unreal 5, is that something that would be then relatively painless since you were already in the ecosystem then? Yeah, look, we're developing in 4.25. It's the same thing that Fortnite is built in and currently maintained. 5 is coming out later this year. Of course, we can move to 5 at any time, but under the guidance of Epic and under what's available to us right now, everything's in 4.25.
    8:48
    That's cool. I've got some questions now about probably an area that Zen has dabbled in in the past but seems to be getting a lot more focus now, and that's VR. Oh, yes. Turning this over to Jared.
    9:01
    So I've got the Quest 2 now, and it's a pretty amazing piece of hardware. and I'm just wondering with Star Wars Pinball VR and that direction that Zen's going in, what role does VR play in sort of Pinball FX's strategy overall?
    9:20
    In Pinball FX's strategy, I can't say right now at this certain moment because we have sort of a business problem with VR which prevents us from putting VR directly into FX because for our licenses anyway, VR is a separate category. We have to address it separately, and it has to most of the time be its own product.
    9:41
    Let me just stop you there just so I can clarify here. So if you're licensing for a pinball video game, they categorize, though, VR as a completely separate category itself.
    9:54
    Most licensors do. This is what you're seeing with Lucasfilm and Star Wars right now, right? We're building a standalone experience because VR is, you know, they don't want – There's a notion of brand equity and just releasing things that are just kind of add-ons when you can really make a full experience for something and give it a proper treatment. So when we're trying to figure out how do we ingest content into FX and can we do VR, Xen can release our own games with the VR treatment within FX, sure. But licensing is much different than that. While it might be under the same games group, it's a different product category to them. I'd imagine it's sort of like you know if we take what Zachary and Pinball have done with Magic Pixel they've just added in a VR layer into the product which is something a lot of people have been bringing up that's right it's a you know they just switch it on and it's there now I'd imagine that you know Zen could have done it the same way had you know the you know the room style a basic room set up for each of the Star Wars tables but then you have something like the Star Wars pinball VR experience where it's super immersive and you just can't do that in the same ecosystem as FX uh FX3 at the moment but pinball effects in the future because it's like you've got to think about you know all the different um collectibles and stuff that you can put into the room and what are they going to look like and How is the interaction going to work? So I can kind of see where you're going with that. It is very different from a planning perspective and an implementation perspective. You can have a basic experience or a really, really rich experience, and it sounds like you're going down the path of individual, tailored, rich experiences in VR.
    11:49
    Yeah, you're right. I need to adopt your messaging, Jared, because... There you go. You can have that now. Very well, you know, but in the raw, you know, you said it very eloquently, but just the way that I look at it and the way that Zen has to view it is, you know, look, at a push of a button, you say what we do with the Williams tables. You can go from the original creation to the remastered version, right? So, of course, at a push of a button, we could toggle to a VR experience, so to speak. It's just, you know, we're bound by different rules. The Zachary guys, again, they have great implementation. um you know we we you can't do that if you're going to have brands like star wars and you know others so yeah this i think that probably was leading into another question um as well which it seems like based on that answer if there were going to be more vr experiences they will be separate apps on on vr because of that because of that requirement from licensors they they need that individual experience tailored to their brand and their requirements. Correct. And once they saw what we did with FX2 VR, because that was our proof of concept, right? We had to do some of our own tables first. We showed them how this could work. Actually, Universal allowed us to apply the Universal classics into FX, and same with Telltale with Walking Dead. And then when we wanted to get more aggressive and go for something bigger, Meteor, Star Wars, it's like, oh, let's do something that's never been done. So what you've got is a Star Wars experience that happens to be a pinball game in VR. I mean, like, it is cool. And so there's all this extra stuff. And, like, that just shows, like, what VR was built for. It's a totally different platform. It's a different experience.
    13:32
    Yeah, absolutely. And it's definitely an exciting direction because, you know, experiencing the Star Wars pinball package or the experience in VR is, well, it's pretty special. So, yeah. leading on from that though um with the pin effects framework are the vr apps even though they're separate tailored branded experiences are they still going to share the same sort of underlying framework that pinball effects offers you know things like maybe leaderboards or you know the competitive access uh aspects like pinball royale or tournaments is that sort of going to be baked into these experiences or will it sort of be more separated well uh it's a progression like anything so we're looking at vr platforms again right and you know how i just told you i don't like building platforms but a separate star wars p uh you know vr game is now a star wars vr platform and then inside of there we have eight tables shipping right and there's a bunch of other tables that we still have in the library. We do have leaderboards, and a feature set can grow.
    14:42
    We have certain targets we want to hit because, look, May 4th is coming, so it would make sense that we try to get something out for the hype. So there's just so many different things that come, and this is what we can get done. I think that the feature set is rich right now for VR. Could it be better? Yes. Is Pinball Royale going to come to VR? Right now, I have no idea. We're going to make sure it works first in standard screens. Yeah. But, you know, of course, yeah, there's all sorts of cool things we could build into the platform and the services we could do. We can expand.
    15:11
    That's really good. Now, we were talking before about FX2VR. Now, I know that Zen did a promotion on Oculus recently for that particular product, and it was actually on sale, which is really good.
    15:25
    Now, the thing about it's still a good package to download, particularly if you're gearing up for sale with Spinball, because it gives you a taste of what to expect, but at the same time, it's a very different experience.
    15:40
    Now, with FX2 VR, there are some underlying minor bugs in that package. It's pretty much only one, which is like a menu overlay problem in there. Are there plans to just patch that and then call it done with FX2 VR? Yeah, you know, the game works beautifully on Quest 1, and then if you play it on Quest 2, you encounter this bug. So it is a device-specific bug. We are aware of it. It unfortunately kind of intersected when we were in the middle of Star Wars Primal VR.
    16:16
    And this is one of the things, you know, like we haven't had the bandwidth to do maintenance and to do fixes when new devices ship. So that'll be the beauty of having more guys on board. We'll be able to tackle these problems quicker because it does suck to see our game rating kind of suffering now. that bug is there. It's prevalent.
    16:35
    We've gotten flack. We need to fix that. It's on a list. It's on our long list of red. All the red stuff.
    16:44
    A long list. You sort of roll it out and it just goes down the hall. I'm aware of it. Actually, we did roll out some patches recently. I don't know if you guys caught those but we did issue some fixes on Steam and I think on Nintendo Switch recently and some others. Yeah, we did see those come through, actually, which was good. They seem to be well-received. The other question I had about, I guess, FX2 is, those tables that are in FX2 now, they've already got a VR environment set for them. I just wonder, with PINFX, is there a chance that we're going to see almost a reboot of FX2 VR and start to see some of these original Zen IPs coming into a package, a VR package in the future. Good question. It going to be a technology update again And sorry I getting washed out everybody The sun is moving in Northern California It up later and I getting whited out more than white in my REM so
    17:47
    He's a ghost, folks. Yeah, I'm ghosting on you. No, you know, we'd have to, like, if we were going to re-release those, it'd be the same thing, a rebuild in new technology, a remaster, a re-release.
    17:59
    I'll just say that I think our, you know, our VR roadmap in our minds is more about what some of our cool licenses and our future licenses are going to enable us to do.
    18:11
    It's always a balance. I know everyone loves our Zen Originals, and there's new ones, by the way, in production, which you guys know about for longer than... Two years. Two years we've known about them. I was streaming that in the show. I was like, we've known for two years. I saw that. I watched that. Thank you guys for that episode, by the way. I think you were very fair to us. Um, uh, yeah, you know, did I answer the question?
    18:39
    Uh, yeah, I think so. I think that the summary of that is yes, but it requires basically a brand new re-engineering of those tables. Anyhow, it's not just a flick the switch sort of thing. It's like a concerted targeted effort. And it sounds like that effort is better spent on some of the new, um, licenses coming out over the course of this and next year. Am I guessing correctly that Star Wars VR is being done in Unreal also? It is. Okay. Yes. Because we knew that with the Quest 2 that it basically was Unreal Unity or your own engine that would function. So we were like, okay, it's probably going to be one of those two when we were still guessing what engine you might be switching to.
    19:20
    Yep. Yeah. Yeah, that's fair enough. Now, I've got one more question on the VR space, and you'll probably laugh at this one. Now, you'll see behind Chris, he's got a... No, I don't have him in this room right now. All right, well, he has in the past.
    19:35
    He has a thing called a Pinsim controller, and it basically allows you to sort of have that feeling of standing in front of a machine when you're in VR. So I'm just wondering, can we expect to see... Can I buy this year, perhaps, something from Arcade 1.0 that does the same thing as that Pinsim controller? It gives you that feeling in VR of standing in front of a machine, So it completes the experience for Star Wars Pimble VR.
    20:02
    It's a great product that should come to market. And we have several prototypes in our own office, which actually back in the day, Jeremy Williams, who was doing some cool videos for Oculus back in the day, who I think maybe built the first one. Well, that's who I bought the chip from. Oh, cool. Yeah.
    20:21
    Yeah, so we've had our eye on that. And now that we have big VR games, And look, Star Wars Pinball VR is trending to be one of the top VR titles of the year. So we'll see what kind of adoption we get. And if we feel like there's an install base, we can pull some triggers very quickly to sell additional hardware that completes the experience. Because I will personally say that the ability to anchor yourself with something in front of you, I was able to, in the VR experience, let go, turn around, take a step to the side, look where in the VR where the table should be step and put my hands immediately where they should go it was just like a perfect fit and I was like oh my god that's that's the bomb that sells it so well it is really cool uh I wasn't so graceful the first time I tried that I might have tripped and fallen over yeah right and you're just like you know well where I ran into the issue was I was trying to me and Jared were trying to see if we could like see under the table and how far along the side of the table could we get. And I didn't realize where the wall that was in front of me was in relation to that. And I wound up smacking into the wall going up. Okay. I got to, I got to adjust a little bit. Yeah. That's one of the coolest things about VR though, right? The game is in front of you and you can see it from all angles underneath it. the side you want to get really close up into the play field like i mean you can well and honestly that was one of the things that we were impressed with was with what zen had done was that it is viewable from all angles like yeah you can look down to where the ball drains and it's finished inside there it's not just you know a mirror reflection of what should be no it's there's like parts that yeah it's it's there yeah even even with us looking on the underside of the table it was like nope they put a bottom on there to the point that i think on mars one of the spiders is even crawling under there at some point. It's actually a texture that things can interact with, which you've got to do that in VR I'd imagine, which probably adds to the cost. Because people like me are going to be dorky enough to try it.
    22:36
    I'll put it a perfect example of this was I was playing oh god, now I can't even remember what game it was that I was doing. Oh, it was Last of Us Part 2. and my character is raining there's a rain gutter there's a whole wash of rain falling down and i had her walk directly under it and sure enough there was animation of her doing her hair underneath it and and i was like they knew that some idiot like me was going to be like hey i wonder what happens do they interact with the water yeah they do yeah no it's pretty cool i'd imagine that sort of stuff though mel you know adds to the complexity of producing a vr package because you've got to think of all the different interaction scenarios that someone might do when they're actually interacting with the game.
    23:25
    Yes. And then when you're in QA and you find all the things you missed and you realize, oh, we've got another month of work on this thing.
    23:34
    Yep. Didn't think of that or that or that. Yeah, happens all the time. Yeah, users. Game development would be easier if it wasn't for all those pesky users.
    23:43
    If they would only do exactly what you wanted them to. Exactly. I'm going to shift over to oh yeah that was all the VR right I'm done with the VR thank you they were good answers I do want to shift over to mobile and I know that you guys have a lot that you're going to save to announce regarding mobile for later in the year but that doesn't mean we don't have questions curious to know one of those main questions is because we started thinking about it we know how you guys have kind of used mobile as a test bed for a lot of things whether it be presentation, purchasing models, stuff like that. And it got us thinking with regards to Williams Pinball, what engine that was using. And we were thinking, well, if it wasn't real, it probably would have had the little logo on the front, but then we were like, is it PX or is it Unity? Can you tell us what engine Williams Pinball is actually running on? Yeah, it's running in PX Engine. It is PX Engine. Alright, okay. And so therefore, that's the same engine that would be running on the arcade one-up stuff, because that's the Android versions, basically. Correct. Okay, just to kind of recap, the first UE game from Xen on the pinball side will be Star Wars Pinball VR, and after that, like, anything new is going to be on Unreal, and before that was all PX. Okay. That's a good line in the sand. Yes.
    25:09
    So it makes me wonder, like, as Chris was saying, there seems to be a lot of experimentation, and mobile's a very different market to consoles and pc so i wonder with mobile is that going to end up being sort of taken or taken into or subsumed into the pin fx ecosystem or is that sort of going to be a little bit like vr and remain its own standalone package with its own technology and all that sort of stuff because you did say we went back when fx3 came out that you were hoping that the mobile was going to be a unified package that would be fx3 and obviously that never happened right we never got there uh but we we do have mobile is is coming back into view in a in a very big way for us a very it'll be very supported again um under the new embracer and saber operative we're being given resources, access to knowledge and expertise and just extra help to maintain a good mobile presence.
    26:14
    I still want to do mobile the way that I like to play a game. You know, I know Williams, we kind of brought in all these like parts and kind of free to play sort of stuff, but that's not my favorite thing to do. I don't think anybody here really enjoys making a game that operates like that. So we're, we're again, kind of going back to the drawing board, um, and with mobile, but we're going to, we're going to make another attempt at mobile on, on pinball or mobile on pinball. Wow. That was my, I told you guys earlier I was up early today. We're going to try our hand at pinball on mobile, um, again in a, in a, in a new format and hopefully it'll be enjoyable. It'll be very easy to digest. It'll be easy to understand what it is you need to do. Um, And that is a big priority as we go forward. Does that mean, though, that the Williams Pinball app, has that seen its last edition?
    27:13
    No, I don't think it's seen its last edition. Well, actually, you know, because that's in the PX. That's in the PX, yeah. See, we haven't thought of everything yet.
    27:23
    What you're going to see, I think, is there will be new releases. I think maybe the Williams Pinball app probably won't see any new content because we're not creating any new Williams tables in PX. Okay. So, yeah, just by virtue of, you know, we can talk about it. We can say that here. I mean, by virtue of our choice in technology going forward, it appears that Williams Pinball on mobile is kind of maybe seeing its last content. Well, for those of you that, like me, that actually enjoyed the grind because you didn't want to pay and you wanted the free, now you know you've got all the time in the world to get for free the rest of those tables. Everybody's going to hate me for that. Yeah. I'm like the only person that was like, what, the grind? It wasn't bad. I mean, I did an entire month's worth of charting to figure out exactly how long it would take. This is during the pandemic when I was really, really bored.
    28:14
    To try and figure out how long it truly would take for you to earn all the tables and all the parts and everything. And, I mean, it's doable. But, yeah, it's a grind. So, Chris, you might be like the only person who talked about liking the grind. A lot of people grind it or go through the grind. I'm surprised.
    28:32
    That's kind of the nature of mobile gaming. That's it exactly. Because if I wanted a full game of pinball, I hopped on my PC, and I played it the way that I wanted to play it. But when it came to mobile, I treated it much like I treat other mobile games, which means I'm going for a really short burst. I typically didn't play a three-ball game. I was only playing the daily challenges. and because of the grind made the daily challenges have a true purpose that was what I was doing once I earned all the tables I was like oh well okay I don't know but yeah so I mean I got something out of the grind but I certainly know why people hate the grind because there's plenty of other games that I've dropped because of the grind so there's definitely a fine balancing act with working out what people want versus what they're willing to put up with from a grinding perspective yeah just changing changing pace here a bit we know that um you know mobile is a different beast and it sounds like there are some changes afoot with mobile but just wondering if if vr has a strategy where all the brand owners want their own experience would that sort of carry through to mobile as well like um would there be sort of a standalone app um for pin effects or are we going to see more brand specific implementations of the product. Well, I think you've seen historically on mobile, we have released separate games for discoverability purposes, right? So people can find, we can leverage our IP, Aliens vs. Pinball, Bethesda, what else? Williams, obviously, Star Wars, Marvel. We even did all the Family Guy and American Dad and like all those, the Balls of Glory, they each have their own app in South Park. because discoverability works so differently on mobile. You know, those games also existed in Zen Pinball.
    30:27
    What was missing was the entitlement. You know, I think that we wanted to make sure if people bought the app here, then they could get the entitlement. I think somewhere along the way we connected them. Maybe we didn't. I don't know. But the strategy going forward, mobile hasn't changed in that regard.
    30:42
    Discoverability is still a problem. But, you know, we – I don't know. I don't know what the answer is yet. But, you know, we're established. I mean, like, there's going to be a dedicated group of people who know how to do mobile. And under my purview, I can help provide, make sure they have everything that they need to make a great mobile game. It will be within the expectations of the quality that we always want. Will it be brand specific? I don't know yet. Will it be a Pinball FX platform style game? I think it makes a lot of sense to do it that way, as long as we can also entitle players to own the content if they discover it in a Star Wars standalone game. but then they can come into FX if they want to play it there as well at the same time. I think on mobile, for us anyway, that's a good solution. So again, this comes into the idea of, A, you're hiring more people to be able to tackle some of this, and by nature of being part of this larger group with the Embracer and Saber, that some of those other companies that they are in this group might have a better grasp of putting mobile forth that you guys can then just be like, hey, yes, we like that. Thank you. And it becomes part of your kit also. Good summary. Are you, just out of curiosity, any of those companies borrowing kit from you guys?
    32:05
    Well. Oops. It's a good question. Embracer, you know, family companies have some amazing IP that could benefit from good cross-promotion. come into the Zen library, you know, and discover a different player base or break down the fourth wall, put a Zen pinball game into a, you know, beautifully placed corner or arcade of an Embracer RPG or whatever other game they might be coming out with. You know, yeah, these are all cool, really fun things that we're going to be able to realize in the future.
    32:37
    So with all this, all the variations of mobile that you've sampled with and everything, has there been anything that surprised you with all the discovery that you're like yes that's awesome we didn't expect that that's going forward oh from the mobile game yeah mobile gaming yeah absolutely um user interface you know that that was a big one ux as we call it uh really big under getting better player data and understanding what people want to spend their time We don't get that kind of data so much on consoles. We get some of it on PC, but just the richness of data that we can harvest from mobile. And it's not meaning like we're selling this. Let's clear that up right now because people are going to jump on that.
    33:22
    No, I mean, the purpose for data, just for knowing what you guys want to do in the game. You discover like, oh, nobody even goes and checks that out. You know, like, what are we spending time on that for? Everybody wants this. So that's the beauty. We can get that real-time feedback from mobile so quickly and digest it and process it to make better games.
    33:42
    One of the other things that kind of happened in this, moving us out of mobile, but it is a mobile platform, being the Switch. Switch obviously was announced as being able to do PINFX as a launch platform. But then everybody kind of noticed, wait a second, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One were not mentioned. aren't those more powerful than the Switch. So I'm just wondering, can you elaborate on any of that? Because it seems like that's a rather large base that obviously PS5s are very difficult to get right now, and it seems like you'd be losing out on a lot of customers with that install base. Yeah. A couple of things. Yes, we're targeting next, or I mean, they're here now, next-gen consoles. Yeah. Because our development base, we're pushing to the highest fidelity, And from there we can scale down. That's just the way that we try to develop here. We're always pushing the limit first and then we can port out to lower supported platforms in terms of just what they're capable of.
    34:46
    The reason why we didn't announce PS4 and Xbox one, it's simply a bandwidth issue right now. We're not able to day one launch pinball effects across PS5 and PS4, Xbox Series X and Xbox one. So, you know, we'll see what happens. Do I want to see the game go there? I would. I just don't know when, and I couldn't fairly promise that day one. So it's really a bandwidth issue. Would that though also because I know people are going to then wonder this is well yeah but if I do any purchasing eventually on a PS4 and then I buy the PS5 am I going to be back to oh I have to repurchase for that Or is that something you're going to have to save for later to be able to communicate? Yeah, I really couldn't. I shouldn't open my mouth there.
    35:33
    But look, I mean, you know, we can talk about backwards compatibility and we've done it forever. This is the first time we had to break. and honestly it's a decision about technology when it comes down to it. Well, let's change the pace and have a think about some of the really popular features that were in FX3 and I think one of those is the create your own tournaments feature.
    35:56
    It's like such a popular feature in FX3. Do you see that returning to pinball effects and is it going to be different in pinball effects if you can talk to that? yeah that is one of the you know most loved features one of the most used features we know this if that is very much staying uh hopefully we can enhance it you know that is one of our baseline things and you know as we go as platforms progress it's all about taking the best things that are working and finding out how to make them better that is a hot ticket yes item i imagine that you, I mean, obviously you guys have promoted various people's tournaments that they've, like the, what's that, the, I won't say Piengeng, but I'm not quite sure if I'm saying that right. But anyway, that they've wound up having to do their own software off-site in order to tally up totals, because they want to do long-form multi-table game tournaments. That's one of those things So I'm wondering, is that something that Zen is looking at potentially adding, is being able to create a larger tournament than just a single-game tournament?
    37:11
    Yeah, there's a lot of formats. We can slice and dice it a number of ways. We see how other people are doing it now. We've got a lot of ideas on how we can do it and innovate there.
    37:24
    I can't spill too many beans, But, you know, I think that we do a good job of enhancing our features in our platforms and making sure that there's like new and like a whole new reason to build a platform to begin with. So in other words, you've heard what the community is interested in. We know what they want. OK. Speaking of that, obviously, leaderboards have been a they can be a point of contention among a lot of people. And I know that we here have been this goes back to us with Farsight. We were like, wipe the boards every now and then. And part of that thing for us has been, and I know that it's been said before, with Zen even, that if you guys were to do a code update that made the game more difficult, therefore making the top leaderboard score almost impossible to reach, that you're hesitant to do that. But we see, obviously, Stern, JJP, they're constantly putting out code updates for their latest tables. and if you were in an arcade, the odds of your high score on a pinball machine being wiped over the course of six months is very real.
    38:32
    Is there any chance that maybe Xen goes into a, hey, every this period the board's going to be wiped, we'll archive the top 50 scores, you can look it up by the date and be happy that way? Or are we going to continue same as SAML and worry about whether any code updates that you guys do is going to be contingent on is it going to piss off the leaderboard people? Yeah. It's a good point. It's very thought-provoking.
    39:02
    You know, it goes down to maintenance sort of a thing and improving in these code updates. We've not focused on that, you know, really over the last couple of years. But, again, adding more team members and having people available to do that sort of a thing will make it, you know, we'll have to prioritize that and make decisions. But I definitely see your point. I agree with it. You know, with that, I think a lot of times we were fearful of doing things because we just don't feel like people get communication. Like they don't take the time to understand why something happened and then they just rage at you online and create a bunch of negativity. So, you know, there's also that problem is just making sure people understand why and what's going on.
    39:42
    Right. Yeah. Fair enough. Now for console owners, there was a bit of good news. and that was the console is getting a teen rating. So with a new rating, that could actually mean a change to what you can actually put into some of the Bally Williams games, which did have some issues with content of an adult nature. So I'm wondering, is there a chance now with a teen rating to think about ways of changing family mode content and enabling that for console owners moving forward.
    40:22
    Yeah, definitely. And yes, Pinball FX is going to be a T-rated game. And that is another kind of freedom, buys us more freedom to do kind of true-to-nature content with what we've had before. We've been criticized about certain games like we just couldn't include that content. Probably Williams is the best example, and so we did the censored version. my preference is going to be to leave it uh the the default is going to be the family safe mode and then you can change it to the uh to the full content and that's a conscious decision of of of our shared zen because we like to make games that we can just give our kids to play and um you know that the world is changing uh quickly and what's politically correct is or you know okay for a certain group or territory, games are kind of at the forefront of this. I think we've talked about this maybe before, but we're still very sensitive to that. And the last thing we want to do is, you know, and most of the time you don't realize you're doing it. You have to be so aware of everything you're putting out in the world. So, yeah, we'll be able to put games out that have been censored previously in the Williams site, and then as we're bringing in new licenses or there's more content coming, we could push the boundaries a bit on the T side, that T rating gives us extra descriptors that we can simulate and have in the game.
    41:51
    Yeah, that's very awesome. Especially because it obviously immediately pops up. You're like, ah, so we can get Jackbot back in and we can maybe get an Elvira table in the future because I was just imagining a censored Elvira would just be plain wrong.
    42:08
    It wouldn't be Elvira anymore. Not the Vowel Table at all. No. It really isn't. That was literally what got me to buy Pro Mode when Farsight was doing it with Pinball Arcade because I was like, I can't stand this version of the audio that is nothing like what I remember this machine being. But, like you said, it's fair enough to ship it with Family Mode and make it that you have to make the conscious effort to turn it on or turn it off. That is at least... It's a token step, but it's there. all the same that you easily point to.
    42:43
    Let's see if we can definitively put an end to this. And that is, we have a host of tables that throughout the years have dropped off and never returned.
    42:55
    Whether that be, and I myself, since I wasn't an Xbox owner, I never played Buccaneers or Speed Machine or Agents or those really early, you know, the Rocky and Bullwinkle. I don't even know what those look like because I was on PlayStation. but then you know more recently obviously we lost five tables going from fx2 to fx3 this go-round we're losing um uh walking dead which understandable since telltale good luck getting hold of them since they kind of don't exist and i imagine valve wasn't too happy with you guys um for the portal purposes you can ask them you know um so is there a chance is there even any desire on the part of Zen to go back, bring these up? Maybe when I say remaster, rethink them.
    43:44
    You know, obviously you guys have learned a lot about design of machine of tables since those early days. Or do we just need to put a nail on it and say, nope, they're done. We're not seeing those again. I would say that the first group of tables that you mentioned, the early Xbox ones. Yeah. Those really early ones. And then like rocking Bullwinkle, there's a nail in the coffin on those I don't think those are coming back some of the licensed ones I would love to bring them back we're working on bringing them back those are still great designs do I want South Park back on Pinball FX of course I do even Street Fighter is great and Ninja Gaiden we said Street Fighter because I imagined that one-up would love to be able to put up a Street Fighter pinball cabinet.
    44:37
    Well, you know, yeah, John, you and I have a lot of history there. That was your first license with him, right? It was, yes. He got the better of us on that one.
    44:47
    First license is always the hardest. You're just going to get it. So, yeah, there is hope. I don't want to, like, I've been really bad in the past about being really excited about stuff and hinting too much at it. I just will say that we know you want these. We want them. It is possible. Okay. That means we're just going to keep on pestering until we find out.
    45:11
    Okay. Yeah. All right. Let's move into, this is the, we kind of saved this for a little while into this, folks, because we didn't want to, we want people to actually listen and not just turn off their ears.
    45:27
    So, Mel, what table did you all announce today? Oh, wait. I was going to try and fool it. No, obviously the response with regards to both table purchases not going forward into pinball effects and on the PC side going Epic exclusive. We had, I mean, I guess we were naive to this. We had no idea. There are some very strong opinions about the Epic Games Store. we understand the business angle of why if you're doing complete remasters the man hours that goes into it you can't just give that away for free um you know why that is but obviously the reaction you saw it we we felt it i put a little bit of unfortunately on jeff it this week in pinball in an article i wrote um how did you guys do you know did you expect this kind of reaction and how do you address it?
    46:27
    Yeah, this is what we expected. I don't want to minimalize it, but it wasn't as bad as what I thought it was going to be, to be honest with you. We have a lot of support, and a lot of people who don't like to chatter online and become a part of a toxic community or just throw their hat in, message me privately or through other means, and they say, hey, we get it.
    46:50
    It's not my favorite thing, but we still support you and thank you for being honest about it. So I thought that we would actually have more negativity. I thought it would be terrible to be honest with you. I was dreading it. We all were dreading it.
    47:06
    You do things as a company because you've got people that depend on you to make decisions. And sometimes we just evaluate it and we just say, this is the right thing to do for our company for the next 10 whatever years. You know, this decision was made pre acquisition. This decision was made because we were a different type of company, and would we make it again? I mean, I don't know. I can't second guess it. But the reaction that we got, you know, and I know that people just, like, I personally don't understand it. You can play a game wherever you want on PC. You know, there's myths about Epic being Chinese spyware or whatever, but, like, those guys, you know, they give away a lot of games. They have awesome storefront. I mean, there's no reason why we can't launch a game there. They support us unbelievably well. This was a decision, a conscious decision, and the way that we wanted to tell everybody was a very conscious decision. And we knew it would be difficult. We knew that it would be challenging. We tried to do it in a way that was honest, up front, providing ample time to digest it. So hopefully over time you guys, you know, the community will understand and maybe look back on it. And hopefully the people who aren't with us right now are saying that we're the most evil company in the world will maybe come around and we can win you back. Cause I'm assuming that you guys kind of tested the waters with the Epic game store with Operencia and Dreadnaughtical and, uh, Castle Storm too.
    48:30
    Yeah. Yeah. We, uh, we've, we've launched all three of those there, uh, you know, exclusively. And, um, you know, we've, we've been close with Epic. Like we've had friends there for many, many years. Um, we actually worked on Unreal technology way back when we did a Punisher first person arena based shooter back in like 2009 or 10 you know that was on Unreal Tech and yeah archives and history of course what am I pinging Punisher pinball yeah another thing I want to kind of clarify because I know that I wound up seeing it in a forum but I wanted to get it out there verbally coming out we were kind of theorizing okay wait a second with the one-year exclusivity within Epic, does that mean also any table is released within that time period? From the point it releases, does it now have a one-year DLC exclusivity on there? Or is it the case where after that one year expires that any table that had been put out during that time would also be available at that point too? That's correct. It's the latter of what you just said. Okay. Once the game is released, that begins our period. Everyone's fully aware that we are constantly launching tables into said pinball platform, and at the end of that term, all content in said pinball platform can go wide. With the console platforms, because I know that some games require this, is it going to be an Epic login on the consoles, or is that a completely separate beast? No, no, no, that's completely separate.
    50:07
    There's not an Epic login for anything on pinball effects. Okay. And then the last thing I kind of was wondering about, and we were kind of thinking, you know, in terms of goodwill, hopefully the answer is yes. But with the Williams tables that are out right now, obviously volumes one through three have the different physics than what then got implemented in volume four. Those physics have made their way into the arcade one-up cab. So we know that it's been done within the PX engine. are those going to get sunsetted in in a patch for FX3 with the Williams tables? Yeah, we want to take care of those tables. We want to get them the Williams physics. Can't give you a date when it's happening, but that'll happen. It'll happen, okay. Yep.
    50:56
    So, on timelines and impatient gamers, so, you know, we know that Pinball FX is coming out sometime at the end of the year no real release date yet but you know that's a long time to wait for new content is there going to be stuff coming out between star wars pinball vr and pinball effects coming out later in the year that people can enjoy from zen from the pinball space yeah there will be um awesome like i i said you know i think i don't remember it must have been the first episode of pinball show. We got some, we got a lot of stuff coming. There's going to be some surprises coming that I think everyone will just be like, where did this come from? We're just going to drop it on you. So there will be more to hold you all over between now and when pinball effects launches. And that's why you tune into the pinball show. Cause I'm sure that's where it will get announced.
    51:59
    There'll be news. Stay tuned. there's one other thing on there now we did talk earlier in the show about the sort of cadence and how many tables you'd like to get out once you get spun up with new staff and that sort of thing but from the perspective of pinball effects how many titles new titles, given that there is going to be stuff coming out this year now and you've revealed that, how many new titles do you think we're going to see maybe before the end of 2021, before the end of the year. Okay. So before the end of the year. So we already announced Classic Collectibles and Mandalorian, right? That's true.
    52:42
    So I'm going to count my fingers here. I can't say the names, otherwise I'm screwed. You'll be in trouble. You said some originals.
    52:52
    We're going to be on the way. Okay So this year there should be nine news and tables coming Nine That a lot Is that a combination of originals and licensed When I say licensed like William
    53:06
    That's a combination of Zen originals and, like, Williams tables? That's right. Yes, 11. Sometime between now and the end of 2021, which the prior year, I think, what was the most that you guys had put out?
    53:26
    It was like three? No, like 16 tables total, but it was like four different packs or something like that.
    53:33
    I mean, considering nothing has been released so far, that's a pretty good clip for what's going to be in a year. Yeah, 11's a lot. Well, here's the thing. Aside from WMS6, we had a pretty good clip on Williams games. and they're not full, you know, we're not starting from ground zero. I'm talking this year, guys, there's going to be 11 from ground zero games shipped. Oh, right. Brand new, Zen exclusive, like, original licenses. Yeah. And you've got Star Wars Pinball VR coming, you've got Pinball FX coming, and there's going to be 11 brand new from the ground up Zen tables coming. Okay. That's definitely something to look forward to. Yeah. one of the things that you talked about was obviously people have a whole bunch of features that they want put into pinball effects but there's that feature creep where if you just keep on putting them in it's just going to keep on pushing it back but for people like me that run cabinet mode one of those things that we are very curious about and it's always bugged me to the point that then I had to go make my own back glass but what got revealed with the Williams collection with the flick of a button, hey, look, there was the back glass and it was animated. Can we expect Zen to do back glasses that are built in for cabinet mode that maybe are even animated back glasses? Because obviously the Williams ones, certain tables, like if you were to do a lot of the System 11s, have a lot of windows on the back glass that are important information. Yeah. it's a very obvious feature that we're missing right now i would agree um and yeah that is that makes a ton of sense to include that uh work so when we look at well okay here's cap support as it stands what is the next thing to do that is the next thing to do so um that will that will be there i think we have actually a really really great solution um which i think will be ultimately enhancing what we can do there. It won't just be like a graphic. I think we're going to have something. Well, I was going to say, I imagine your licensors would probably be thrilled too to have a little, rather than people pulling random images from the internet to create their own backlash, to have an official backlash that your licensors are like, yes, that sells it for us. See, you have to understand this DIY effort now has been going on a lot longer than licensors have been open to the idea of what this is. It's taken a while for them to understand it. It's not for them to understand, oh, we can make money. Oh, this is a very right, like, how does this work for us? So like, while we all have been here knowing that cab support is like a duh thing for pinball, like, of course you do that. It takes, you know, with this big business, it just takes time for them to digest it and to know and to accept new kind of products to support it. So there's always a lead time there. A DIY community is always ahead of the curve in terms of how you can make that into a true business. Speaking of cabs, then let's shift over into what you can talk about with one up i know it's always like stepping into somebody else's party and talking about it because we should be talking to them about it and hopefully we'll be getting david on back um i'm waiting to find out when that'll be but in which case we can have some of these but speak to what you're able to but with regards to the response that was with the three cabs that you've guys have announced obviously pre-orders have been like you know the golden ticket and they're not even in stores yet how has the response uh surprised you guys uh it's been overwhelming it i'm probably the most optimistic pinball guy on the planet or at least here at zen uh for thinking what the potential is for this game on a global basis and with virtual pinball cabinets it exceeded even my expectation just to put it mildly we can I mean, it's a good problem to have, but I don't like seeing people trying to get units on eBay for $2,000.
    57:38
    I want everybody who wants one of these to have one. That was the reason why we did it, was because I know everybody wants a pinball machine. It just needs to be sized right and priced right, and that was the goal. And we need to address this, and Arcade1Up is addressing it, but we need to get more units in the market. Does it affect the choices that you guys make going forward for what you'd potentially want to see in more arcade one-up cabs? Not the three that you guys have made, but building more cabs for the future. Or even just the idea of, like you said, there was the idea of, okay, can we add games to it? All that. Because obviously, just within this past year, the three-quarter scale market, all of a sudden there were four products, everybody doing a different thing. I'm sure that you guys have been aware of what people's comments have been regarding what they like, what they don't like, what they wish to have, as that altered kind of the plans going forward.
    58:40
    Yeah, I'll be honest. I kind of was looking at the launch of Arcade1Up as a proof of concept. You know, let's find out if the market really does want these. Let's find out if we can move them at retail. Let's find out what people want to do with the machine. And a lot of our assumptions were confirmed in a lot of cases with the demand, which is, like I said, you know, totally beyond what we thought. And so, you know, what I what I don't want to ever have the perception be is like that. We just want to sell somebody who bought who took a chance on the Gen 1 unit, just be forced to buy another one to have the best stuff. So, you know, I want to make sure that if you've invested in a unit and we do updates and there's new content, like you should be able to get that. Of course, these wave one units, you can, you know, with a dongle, you can you can try to take it online. Plenty of people are showing how to mod it or, you know, take it go online. That's OK. Is it optimal? No, it's not the best user experience. It should just work out of the box to go online to do stuff. But this is a platform we have to take seriously. it's another again I said I don't like building platforms but here we go we've got another segment now to our portfolio we've got pc console mobile vr and now virtual pinball cabinets which we absolutely have to take seriously and support long term and you know this is a chunk of money that people fork out and I want to make sure that they're happy with it so our job is software and our job is you know to make sure it's the best experience our k1ups job is hardware and making sure it's available and we need to work together to make sure this is awesome for players. I guess that probably leads into a question that I had, which based on that answer, you may not be able to address, but what is actually happening between Xen and RK1 to address the supply issues and try and get these units into people's hands?
    60:31
    Yeah, well, what we're experiencing partially as well is some global issues that we have no control over. there's a chip shortage right now. There's a glass shortage as well. And these are things that, I don't know, I sit over here in software land, so I don't understand stuff like that. But then, you know, you see this report, and they're like, well, we only have this much glass, and we can only get these many chips. And this space is exploding, actually. And, you know, you look at just monitors and television screens and all the different things that require, you know, glass and sort of these raw materials. It's a global demand. So Arcade 1.0 is competing with everybody. for these sort of materials. We're trying to get creative. I would love to see manufacturing potentially done in multiple locations around the world. That way we can have better distribution globally. These are things that I suggest. Of course, I don't know. Yeah, it's all out of your hands.
    61:24
    Like you said, we need to get John D on. We need to get John D on, yeah, for sure. They know. They work hard to try to fix this. I mean, their business is about physical product. So they've got that in, and so on, they would be doing all they could to actually try and alleviate supply issues, obviously. But, you know, I guess stay tuned. With regards to software, though, maybe you can address some of the things that I know that – some of the things that I've been reading, because I don't have one of these cabs yet, but people have been saying that they wish the accelerometer they were able to set, basically, or recalibrate. I know that in terms of the display, that they wish that they were able to be able to change the brightness on it, maybe make it less washed out if they were experiencing that. And I know that that would be built into the software that you guys are doing. But then I'm even hearing things like that apparently whitewater, for some people, is a stuttery experience. And is that things that then you're able to look at and say, hey, we want to do a firmware patch and be able to put in?
    62:36
    Yeah, that's exactly what happened. Firmware patch, you know, we can make that available for download, throw it on a drive, put it in, update the game.
    62:46
    So, yeah, you know, that was one of the things we knew. And, again, you know, we go through a rigorous QA testing process. And knowing that we're shipping without, like, you know, built-in Wi-Fi connectivity and that we would require people to go through a very manual process to update was, again, a decision. We just didn't feel good about having an online presence when it just would have been. We just weren't ready. We couldn't build it. And we just didn't know. So, yeah, we need to do an update. There's some, you know, we hear the requests for these updated features. so it's like everything like this list of red things that we want to fix I just kind of imagine because I know that obviously some of the things that Arcade1Up has done with their past arcade machines I mean just even things like with their volume control it used to be just high and low volume and then they wound up doing that little switch to just make it be a progressive bar but that was obviously then when they did other generations but some of these things I was like, well, it's not a hardware thing. It's purely a software that you guys could go ahead and do if it was something that you felt needing addressed. So there's the question though, is it that arcade one up has to say, Hey, we need this addressed. Or is it something that you can go to arcade one up and be like, Hey, we would like to address this.
    64:06
    Well, that's a good question. I mean, usually when we hear about the issues it's addressed to both of us. Right. And then I am informed of it. So it's not really like we need to go to them or they need to go to us. It's just, yeah, we need to get together, make a concerted effort, make sure we wrap everything into one patch because I don't want to have to do multiples.
    64:22
    Decide what the delivery mechanism will be, make sure it's well communicated, make sure it's not messing up other stuff. Like, we need to go through a rigorous test again. You go through an entirely new QA process because, like, you release a firmware update and you screw something else up. And then, oh, now the game doesn't boot up at all. You know what I mean? Gotcha. And then you have to scramble to fix that problem. It's like whack-a-mole. It's software. For anybody who knows it, yeah. I mean, Jared, you know what I'm talking about. Yeah, I do.
    64:47
    Has there been, since these things are exploding, have you had licensors now come to you and be like, we want part of this. We want our own cabinet.
    65:00
    Oh, yeah. Yeah. Like, they don't even necessarily, they're like, can we just get a cabinet even if our game's not ready? You know, it's like, can we just have it in the office? Can we just have it in our house?
    65:12
    That's the cool thing. I mean, that's why we all love this hobby in this game, right? I mean, like, it's like, that's one of the fun things. So, yeah, it's bringing people that we haven't even made games for yet.
    65:23
    They just want a machine. It's like, they shut up and take my money. They're throwing the money at the screen. They just want it. It's not a bad problem to have. So, we all know that Zen is all about, like, using past experiences to influence future decisions. And I'm sure that you've got a lot of lessons learned from the whole process of releasing cabinets. If you could change one thing, and I know it's probably hard because it's probably a lot of things you would change. If you could only change one thing, the way that you've produced this first range of cabinets, what do you think that would be?
    66:00
    It's a good question because I think the product is good. I think the services, we should have built in a service element. And maybe, you know, because I'm not going to pat myself on the back, but maybe I will just a little bit here. Because I've been believing in this for many years. You know, it was a hard sell internally just to turn on vertical monitor support. And that spawned a whole overnight movement from people building things. I believed in BP cabs with Brad over there in Ohio and worked with him to get him onto Shark Tank. And he got a deal done. and I was like, okay, we got something. I've been hard selling this along internally for many, many years and I knew that we would see this result but I didn't push hard enough to push for the service element. So I think, yes, we got the product. Yes, we see the demand but I do think that being able to service the machine is something that would have changed.
    66:59
    I'm guessing that you hear a lot of people asking, oh, wave two. I'm going to wait for wave two. the fact that these things are still having a hard time even getting into a retail spot, I imagine that's going to carry us through the end of the year just with these three that we have.
    67:17
    But obviously, Arcade 1UP is known for incrementally improving their cabinets down the line. What do you see as goals that you would want implemented in a cabinet of the future? I want an online store I want people to be able to easily get more content somebody who invests in a $500 brand new Xbox they want to play a bunch of games on it somebody who's buying a $600 pinball machine I think that they want to play a bunch of games on it I think they want to play in tournaments I think they want to be connected to friends they want a pinball effect style experience so that's what I would like to see in terms of software support and the user experience. In terms of hardware,
    68:05
    I think that there's a place in the market for a more robust unit, like an arcade one-up premium or something like that. I also think there's a huge part of the market that still can't afford the $600 price point or they don't have the space and they want maybe something that's more on their desktop. I want to fill the gaps, man. I want everybody to play our game because I think it's fun. And I want to give it to them in a format that they can experience it in a way that they might not have done before. I mean, that's really what I want to accomplish. So that's what I think in the future we could see happen.
    68:36
    All right. Well, we've dominated your time plenty here. Hopefully we cleared up some of the follow-up questions. I think me and Jared exhausted every question that we can think of for the most part.
    68:49
    So again, Mel, hey, we really appreciate you coming on. Happy whenever you're able to do it. we're definitely obviously going to be paying attention to whatever happens within the pinball show because that's just fuel for the fire for us because we already have something that we're speculating about that planning for our next show that we're like well we can't ask Mel because he's not going to tell us that but we can speculate about it so we appreciate you playing along with us and answering what you're willing to obviously as honestly you're able to it's always a pleasure guys.
    69:25
    I always tell you thank you for the way you do things and the way you cover this segment of the industry and pinball in general. I think you do a really good job. Let's just clear something else up because we've been accused of this. No, folks, we are not in any way paid by Zen. Correct, Mel?
    69:45
    Very correct. There you go. It's just opinions. We happen to like the game. Yeah. Sorry about that Darn I get asked to go talk on other things And do shows You see I've done a few others But honestly My time, I just don't have time I'd love to talk more If I'm going to go and talk somewhere I like to do it where I think it's time well spent So I hope that's the deepest level of respect I can show to you We'll accept it 100% absolutely Alright Mel we're out of here we've run up the time thank you so much again Jared what are we going to talk about next time as always stuff and things until next time folks bye bye see ya