- Mar 14, 2012
- 7,334
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With part 2 coming very soon, figured now was a good time to post this for everyone that didn't listen (how dare you!) or wanted to revisit.
Many are wondering how many more seasons of The Pinball Arcade are planned, and what that means for future table choices. Obviously we know Season 5 is coming. Do you have a set number of tables you’d like at minimum, is it a question of license renewal with the parent companies, or does it purely come down to sales and customer demand?
BK - Mostly, it comes down to keeping each table that we add profitable. Part of that is paying upfront minimum guarantees to the manufacturers for the table rights, so yes renewing agreements is also a factor. Right now, I'm optimistic that we will continue at least through Season Six. That would add at least 20 more classic tables in Pinball Arcade.
Speaking of sales, how were The Addams Family sales figures compared to other tables? Excluding TOTAN (since it’s free), what are the top 5 best sellers?
BK - The Addams Family has been solid. It’s been outselling most Season 3 and 4 table two-to-one.
It’s difficult to compare sales since the Season One tables have a huge advantage in this ranking. Single table sales were much more popular before Season Packs were introduced. Plus, they've been on the market longer. Season Pack One is still one of our best sellers each month. Theater of Magic sold individually is actually still number one in terms of individual sales! Star Trek, Black Hole, Ripley’s, Medieval, Monster Bash, Twilight Zone, T2 are all right up there, though. TAF would be next.
It has been said a few times by FarSight that there really isn’t much interest in doing EMs in TPA, whether because of low sales, lack of interest, or the time and effort in scripting them. That being said, Big Shot and Central Park are hardly shining examples of popular EMs among real world pinball players, yet those are the two you have in TPA to base data off of. Or are Genie and El Dorado lumped in because they are essentially EM’s with digital parts? Anyway, with that in mind…
Are true EMs, not Solid State machines from the 70’s, ever going to make another appearance in TPA? Or are the chances slim to none?
BK - We have a plan to add more EMs to Pinball Arcade while maintaining our scheduled line-up of releasing one solid state machine a month. Big Shot is consistently one of the most played tables. We keep an eye on a lot of analytics. As I recall, the worst I ever saw Big Shots ranking in the number of gameplay sessions listed was #11 one month, so we know there's a market. Our fans definitely enjoy playing Big Shot, and we have noticed – to the surprise of most of us!
If there is no intention of making more EMs, and because you hold the license to do so, would you ever consider letting another developer build them on your behalf? Or if that is not possible, making a new app that features nothing but 1970’s and earlier machines?
BK - Both of these ideas are possible, but we'll probably add them to Pinball Arcade.
Let’s flip that the other direction now, and talk about modern Stern tables. Apart from licensing issues, the emulation of S.A.M. machines has been said it can’t happen due to older devices and platforms not being able to handle the processing power needed. Are there plans in place to move forward on this? Is there a risk of FarSight losing part of the Stern license to someone like Zen due to not putting out an entire subset of their product? Does the new Spike system help or complicate matters?
BK - Stern would like to see more of their tables represented in digital form. Yes, there are plans - but I can't elaborate on the details quite yet. The Spike system is a new challenge, but I don't think it will prove to be any harder than emulating SAM.
Similarly Capcom pinball was said to be processor heavy too. Is there anything new to report about that, specifically will we soon see any of the 7 tables Capcom made in TPA?
BK - I'd be surprised if we don't add a Capcom table or two before the end of Season 6, but there are still a couple hurdles.
It has been said, and can be seen, that FarSight wants TPA to run on as many devices as possible. When does FarSight finally say, “we are no longer able to support this device”? Even Microsoft doesn’t support Windows XP, Apple is already on iOS 8, when an ipad 1 or 2 are on iOS 5, and the user base of Android that uses anything older than Jellybean is like 2%. Are these not a boat anchor to making the game the best it can be?
BK - This is a very good point. Yes, it does require some attention to keep the game payable on older devices and older OSs. We've tried hard to not let the least powerful devices hold us back. In fact, as recently as earlier this week we made a couple decisions that will limit; one, the Android devices that support the new UI we'll be releasing soon, and two the OSs that will get updates.
Just recently we have seen the implementation of dynamic lighting via DX11 on PC, the introduction of new flipper physics, improved elements such as transparent ramps on mobile devices, and soon increased difficulty on select tables. What is behind this surge of improvements to the game? Is the full of FarSight back to concentrating exclusively on The Pinball Arcade? Is it finally having the monkey off your back known as the Xbox 360 debacle? Because we like it!
BK - Thanks for your patience on these improvements! Somethings just take time - especially when each member of the team has a full workload.
What other things can we look forward to being added to TPA? Ball spin maybe?
BK - Don't think we haven't tried to get spin fully implemented into our pinball physics. It will will be a huge change that affects a lot of tuning.
Flipper Physics 3.0 is slowly being rolled out. Is there a time frame for adding to older tables? Is this the final version or can we also expect to see something like flipper rise time, so weak flips and tap passes can happen?
BK - Over the next few months we’ll get the new flipper physics implemented. I’m confused by part of this question, we've got weak flips and tap passes working to a some degree, right?
The thing holding us back from quicker flippers is simply optimization of our collision detection. Even running at 60 fps with 5 sub frames - there are limitations. We still have improvements to make.
Many are wondering how many more seasons of The Pinball Arcade are planned, and what that means for future table choices. Obviously we know Season 5 is coming. Do you have a set number of tables you’d like at minimum, is it a question of license renewal with the parent companies, or does it purely come down to sales and customer demand?
BK - Mostly, it comes down to keeping each table that we add profitable. Part of that is paying upfront minimum guarantees to the manufacturers for the table rights, so yes renewing agreements is also a factor. Right now, I'm optimistic that we will continue at least through Season Six. That would add at least 20 more classic tables in Pinball Arcade.
Speaking of sales, how were The Addams Family sales figures compared to other tables? Excluding TOTAN (since it’s free), what are the top 5 best sellers?
BK - The Addams Family has been solid. It’s been outselling most Season 3 and 4 table two-to-one.
It’s difficult to compare sales since the Season One tables have a huge advantage in this ranking. Single table sales were much more popular before Season Packs were introduced. Plus, they've been on the market longer. Season Pack One is still one of our best sellers each month. Theater of Magic sold individually is actually still number one in terms of individual sales! Star Trek, Black Hole, Ripley’s, Medieval, Monster Bash, Twilight Zone, T2 are all right up there, though. TAF would be next.
It has been said a few times by FarSight that there really isn’t much interest in doing EMs in TPA, whether because of low sales, lack of interest, or the time and effort in scripting them. That being said, Big Shot and Central Park are hardly shining examples of popular EMs among real world pinball players, yet those are the two you have in TPA to base data off of. Or are Genie and El Dorado lumped in because they are essentially EM’s with digital parts? Anyway, with that in mind…
Are true EMs, not Solid State machines from the 70’s, ever going to make another appearance in TPA? Or are the chances slim to none?
BK - We have a plan to add more EMs to Pinball Arcade while maintaining our scheduled line-up of releasing one solid state machine a month. Big Shot is consistently one of the most played tables. We keep an eye on a lot of analytics. As I recall, the worst I ever saw Big Shots ranking in the number of gameplay sessions listed was #11 one month, so we know there's a market. Our fans definitely enjoy playing Big Shot, and we have noticed – to the surprise of most of us!
If there is no intention of making more EMs, and because you hold the license to do so, would you ever consider letting another developer build them on your behalf? Or if that is not possible, making a new app that features nothing but 1970’s and earlier machines?
BK - Both of these ideas are possible, but we'll probably add them to Pinball Arcade.
Let’s flip that the other direction now, and talk about modern Stern tables. Apart from licensing issues, the emulation of S.A.M. machines has been said it can’t happen due to older devices and platforms not being able to handle the processing power needed. Are there plans in place to move forward on this? Is there a risk of FarSight losing part of the Stern license to someone like Zen due to not putting out an entire subset of their product? Does the new Spike system help or complicate matters?
BK - Stern would like to see more of their tables represented in digital form. Yes, there are plans - but I can't elaborate on the details quite yet. The Spike system is a new challenge, but I don't think it will prove to be any harder than emulating SAM.
Similarly Capcom pinball was said to be processor heavy too. Is there anything new to report about that, specifically will we soon see any of the 7 tables Capcom made in TPA?
BK - I'd be surprised if we don't add a Capcom table or two before the end of Season 6, but there are still a couple hurdles.
It has been said, and can be seen, that FarSight wants TPA to run on as many devices as possible. When does FarSight finally say, “we are no longer able to support this device”? Even Microsoft doesn’t support Windows XP, Apple is already on iOS 8, when an ipad 1 or 2 are on iOS 5, and the user base of Android that uses anything older than Jellybean is like 2%. Are these not a boat anchor to making the game the best it can be?
BK - This is a very good point. Yes, it does require some attention to keep the game payable on older devices and older OSs. We've tried hard to not let the least powerful devices hold us back. In fact, as recently as earlier this week we made a couple decisions that will limit; one, the Android devices that support the new UI we'll be releasing soon, and two the OSs that will get updates.
Just recently we have seen the implementation of dynamic lighting via DX11 on PC, the introduction of new flipper physics, improved elements such as transparent ramps on mobile devices, and soon increased difficulty on select tables. What is behind this surge of improvements to the game? Is the full of FarSight back to concentrating exclusively on The Pinball Arcade? Is it finally having the monkey off your back known as the Xbox 360 debacle? Because we like it!
BK - Thanks for your patience on these improvements! Somethings just take time - especially when each member of the team has a full workload.
What other things can we look forward to being added to TPA? Ball spin maybe?
BK - Don't think we haven't tried to get spin fully implemented into our pinball physics. It will will be a huge change that affects a lot of tuning.
Flipper Physics 3.0 is slowly being rolled out. Is there a time frame for adding to older tables? Is this the final version or can we also expect to see something like flipper rise time, so weak flips and tap passes can happen?
BK - Over the next few months we’ll get the new flipper physics implemented. I’m confused by part of this question, we've got weak flips and tap passes working to a some degree, right?
The thing holding us back from quicker flippers is simply optimization of our collision detection. Even running at 60 fps with 5 sub frames - there are limitations. We still have improvements to make.
