Official Announcement.

[Kaibun]

Well, those are some truly awful news, but I guess it's not Farsight's fault. No idea why Williams would choose to cancel the partneship after such a long time.

I guess I'll only be buying stuff for SPA now...

 

[Sean DonCarlos]

Now I'd like to compare my experience with Farsight to a trip to Olive Garden.......................

No. Just flatly no.

 

[Blkthorne]

Well, those are some truly awful news, but I guess it's not Farsight's fault. No idea why Williams would choose to cancel the partneship after such a long time.

I guess I'll only be buying stuff for SPA now...

Farsight said that season 8 would be Stern bringing their newer tables back to TPA, so I'm assuming they are going to stop doing SPA anymore???? Odd, considering they said the newer Sterns wouldn't work very well in TPA, we've already seen when happened when Ghostbusters was brought in, worked perfectly fine when it launched then when the Pistol Poker patch came out it started to stutter quite a bit and some people couldn't even get the table to work on lower end computers.

 

[karussellbremser]

Also quite appalled by this news. I'd like to think that TPA will continue to grow nicely without Williams/Bally tables, but I'm not sure if this is going to happen.

I also do not think that the decision by WMS is necessarily very much thought through, it may just be a Trump-esque move after a change of management, where the new management may just not care for the pinball licenses or may have misunderstood the market. Because I sincerely do not see another company, e.g. Zen, going through the hassle of recreating all the popular tables that Farsight has already digitized and a that big part of the target audience is and will be able to access without buying again from another company.

Thus, I think it may be worth a shot to try to convince the WMS license holder (that should be Scientific Games, right?) that they should care about their pinball licenses and inform them about the consequences of their decision. We all know what social media campaigns with many participants can change, so why not trying it in this case?
What are your opinions on this? Or does anybody have any ideas of the specific reason the deal was not extended? Could be helpful to know.

 

[wolfson]

karussellbremser , thank you for the info on Scientific Games , one look gives me the impression there out to make big money . that`s what I took in , gambling . Farsight would have been chicken feed for them .

 

[wolfson]

I just had a look again and read the whole thing on Scientific Games F.M.Dead , they are worldwide and they operate in the billions , Farsight were maybe lucky to get a deal in the first place .

 

[GregoroV]

I just dont understand their game, if you take licences no tables will be made digitaly, and after a while people will forget about them and this licences will be worth less and less. TPA existence brought back pinball back to spotlight a bit, not a revolution but still it atracted lots of people into pinball (myself included). As i remembered even stern admited, that tpa was a reason for more interest in pinball and their products. Its just plain silly not to give FS a licence, when noobody will use it instead. Pinball will get less spotlight, and their precious licences will get devalued.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Michael]

You don't have them for life. They will not be available on next generation systems like PS 5 etc.

The PSN account is not tied to a specific console. The same as you had for PS3, you use for PS4, and will surely use for PS5 also. If you'll be able to play PS4 games on the PS5 is another matter...

It is possible to dowload games as pak-files from the Playstation website to a PC. I used to do that for my (cracked) PS3 with a dedicated program and install them with multiMAN. I should look into pulling down the PS4 TPA in the same fashion to keep it for posterity, hoping the PS4 will be similarly cracked one day...

 

[Jay]

I heard this from a friend the other day and didn't believe it at first. I could see some of the tables with complicated intellectual property (like Addams Family or Star Trek) having a limited license. But Fireball? Funhouse? I'm glad the tables won't be wiped from our accounts and will still be supported. So I bought up all the ones I previously had passed on.

 

[HotHamBoy]

We now have our first look at TPA in a post-WMS world.

The Switch version has been relisted on the eShop and will be back tomorrow.

Frankenstein is the free table. All of the new SPA sterns are in the screenshots.

SPA is well and truly redundant now. I'm actually irritated I even bought SPA tables on Switch.

Hopefully the tables aren't sold in bundles that force us to rebuy these tables or buy all the garbage ones if we want the few good ones left.

 

[shutyertrap]

I just finished my interview with Bobby King, VP at FarSight. It will be part of our next podcast which should drop no later than Tuesday. I specifically asked him about SPA being redundant, but he said it's going to shift in how you can play it. TPA will be where you can buy the games outright, SPA will be more of a free to play version. And yes, your first glance at what the new TPA will look like will be with the Switch release tomorrow.

It's a half hour interview, so a lot of stuff is covered. There's another announcement coming not from FarSight but Arcooda (who makes digital pinball cabinets) tomorrow also that I'll make sure you all see as they are just as affected by this loss of WMS license.

 

[yespage]

We now have our first look at TPA in a post-WMS world.

The Switch version has been relisted on the eShop and will be back tomorrow.

Frankenstein is the free table. All of the new SPA sterns are in the screenshots.

SPA is well and truly redundant now. I'm actually irritated I even bought SPA tables on Switch.

Hopefully the tables aren't sold in bundles that force us to rebuy these tables or buy all the garbage ones if we want the few good ones left.

FS would be wise to not double dip on the new tables from SPA going into TPA (for those that bought the SPA's).

 

[Kalio]

Well, I guess this means we're never getting Bad Cats then. This is sad to hear after waiting and hoping for years.

 

[Citizen]

I specifically asked him about SPA being redundant, but he said it's going to shift in how you can play it. TPA will be where you can buy the games outright, SPA will be more of a free to play version.

So now it's going to be redundant and the ghetto F2P version. That was $40 well spent.

 

[Locksley]

Noooo…. Jhonny Mnemonic (Williams).
I had hope. Now, I live in a one room apartment, I just can't fit any pinball machines in here - I already made it into a music production studio :/

Glad that there will be a Season 8. And brush ups on all the seasons, GFX and bugfixing? I will now continue reading this thread… maybe some of my questions have already bean answered.

 

[Kaibun]

Yep, I wanted Johnny Mnemonic or The Shadow, so this news makes me sad too. Aw well.

At least we still have the promise of more Stern tables, which has almost all the same designers anyway.

 

[wesman]

So now it's going to be redundant and the ghetto F2P version. That was $40 well spent.

I bought that thing on cartridge, and a couple tables on the eshop. This would be my third time buying Stern tables just from Farsight...

 

[HotHamBoy]

I just finished my interview with Bobby King, VP at FarSight. It will be part of our next podcast which should drop no later than Tuesday. I specifically asked him about SPA being redundant, but he said it's going to shift in how you can play it. TPA will be where you can buy the games outright, SPA will be more of a free to play version. And yes, your first glance at what the new TPA will look like will be with the Switch release tomorrow.

It's a half hour interview, so a lot of stuff is covered. There's another announcement coming not from FarSight but Arcooda (who makes digital pinball cabinets) tomorrow also that I'll make sure you all see as they are just as affected by this loss of WMS license.

How will that work if you already own the table in SPA, especially on Switch?

How will the F2P be intergrated? Ad supported? Energy timer?

This all feels like a slap in the face to people who bought SPA.

Let me tell you about Arcooda. Their $6000 table is still worth $6000, even w/o the WMS tables. And Farsight nixed cabinet support for users just to end up providing it for them.

I guess a running theory is that Farsight shot themselves in the foot by partnering with Arcooda for a product that directly competed with Planetary Pinball.

 

[shutyertrap]

How will that work if you already own the table in SPA, especially on Switch?

How will the F2P be intergrated? Ad supported? Energy timer?

This all feels like a slap in the face to people who bought SPA.

Let me tell you about Arcooda. Their $6000 table is still worth $6000, even w/o the WMS tables. And Farsight nixed cabinet support for users just to end up providing it for them.

I guess a running theory is that Farsight shot themselves in the foot by partnering with Arcooda for a product that directly competed with Planetary Pinball.

Arcooda hired FarSight, not the other way around. There’s video I’ll be able to link tomorrow where you can see this isn’t some flip the switch and it’s cabinet mode by FarSight, but actual improvements. On top of that, the thing you’ll soon discover that is available exclusively to Arcooda cabinets is simply better than any other cab out there. Lastly, whatever cabinet Zen is currently partnered with us a knockoff if Arcooda’s 2015 offering. Arcooda has a brand new cab close to release that will prevent this sort of thing while making it more reliable and flexible to boot. All this has been expressed in their past videos.

 

[Cowboy]

Quick question here.

I bought several tables before I became a beta tester, but I need to be sure I buy them before they go off sale in June....I was just wondering how I need to do that.

If I uninstall the test flight app from my iPad will that do it....or are they tied to my user ID that I'm using for the Beta Testing ?