Scorbit and Stern Are Bringing Pinball To The Internet

[shutyertrap]

This is a must read.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90369134/inside-the-race-to-finally-bring-pinball-into-the-internet-era

It has wide reaching implications. Even though it makes no mention of digital pinball, the cabinet Zen is going to be putting out into the wild this fall is going to operate under very similar conditions as talked about here.

 

[wilbers]

Both very interesting. Mentions that Stern's Spike system (1&2, or just 2?) was designed for an add-on module for online features, so that implies that in addition to whichever machine comes released with it first, that it may be retrofitted to some other modern Stern's (or at least fitted in the factory to some that are still in production if the system takes off).

Didn't think anyone would have bothered to do what Scorbit are doing. Will be interesting to see if Scorbit/Stern work in partnership, or as competitors.

 

[HighFive]

Its always interesting that they trying to find a way to modernise pinball. Just hope when it happen there wont be some cheaters out of it, like someone removing the glass, simulating a good game out of it to have his high scores show up like we unfortunately see on digital representation. Im always curious how they can improve the building out of pinballs, like how can they could make it more durable. Always wondering, whats next for pinball!

 

[shutyertrap]

I'd say this is more for the operators than anything, increasing the efficiency use of their machines on route.

The idea of being able to change game/operator settings remotely is huge. You get a spread sheet's dump of data, make some tweaks remotely and see how that affects your profit margin, without ever having to step foot into the arcade.

For tournaments, having that data flow directly to a computer rather than having to physically watch and record all the scores, doing real time board updates, that's pretty major too. You could technically have tournaments running at separate locations, but the downside would be a TAF at one location might play completely different than a TAF at another. Flip side to that would be, if you had two arcades within walking distance of each other with different sets of machines, you could run one tournament that pulls data from both, increasing the amount of titles everyone is playing on.

I wonder if Scorbit allows for ROM and code updates?

How cool would it be though to log into an arcade, download the high scores for say Fish Tales, and then have those be what you are playing against in FX3? To log in to PAPA and have whatever settings they are using applied to the same table in FX3, so you can see how you'd fare against actual tournament players? (obviously for your own amusement, not as an actual score entry)

All sorts of interesting scenarios.