So really, What do you think is up with Zen?

[Chasnotchaz]

So here we are mid June, and haven't heard anything about any new tables. I get it. These things take time, but this seems like a really long drought. Do you think this is because of the 1-Up cabs? Now with the announcement of Castle Storm 2 and that release date of July 31, I feel like this is going to drag out even longer than it has. I just want to play new Pinball!!!

 

[Gorgar]

I’m guessing the “which is your favorite pinball part” ad campaign will end this Friday with ramps and they will have an announcement to make. (Hopefully they don’t do inlanes/outlines or rollovers)

What’s interesting so far is that Cactus Canyon won for slingshots and it appears that no one voted for it on any of their social media accounts.

Also of note: Scared Stiff won for flippers

I am still predicting that they will announce a customizable table mode. I don’t think they would package Scared Stiff with Cactus Canyon since they said they would package only tables with the same 3rd party license together.

 

[francis247uk]

At some point in time, I guess they'll also have to make an official announcement regarding pinball plans for PS5 and Xbox Series X.

Will the plan be to bring Pinball FX3 to those platforms, or will there be an entirely new Pinball FX4 or something?

I know people in the industry who've had the dev kits for both for quite some time now (previously under NDA's) so perhaps that may explain some of the delay if that's what they've been working on.

Ray tracing support and the recent Unreal Engine tech demo make me excited to see what they could so with the extra horsepower at the very least.

In any case, would be dissapointed if they didn't bring out Cactus Canyon, Whodunnit & Jackbot to complete the unlicensed DMD's, they're some of my favourites....

 

[trash80]

I’m guessing the “which is your favorite pinball part” ad campaign will end this Friday with ramps and they will have an announcement to make. (Hopefully they don’t do inlanes/outlines or rollovers)

What’s interesting so far is that Cactus Canyon won for slingshots and it appears that no one voted for it on any of their social media accounts.

Also of note: Scared Stiff won for flippers

I am still predicting that they will announce a customizable table mode. I don’t think they would package Scared Stiff with Cactus Canyon since they said they would package only tables with the same 3rd party license together.

If Zen got the Casandra Peterson (Elvira) rights, then we can expect a two pack for Halloween this year of Scared Stiff and Elvira and the Party Monsters. Cactus Canyon may come in a Vol 6 pack along with a couple of Alpha Numerics. I'm not sure how a pin construction set will work since there is no way different licenses will be able to be used within the same table, and considering how many man hours it takes to fine-tune the physics for a current table, it just doesn't make sense. There are myriad other reasons that make a customizing package a poor legal and business idea, but I guess at this point we'd welcome any sort of news from them about new stuff. Maybe the "best parts" thing has been something just to keep the natives from getting restless.

 

[Pete]

yeah the custom table part swap sounds too far fetched to pull off. you couldnt actually swap all those parts and have them line up with each other, you'd end up with ball trap spots to get stuck on. but maybe custom parts that do plug into each other that are made to perfectly line up instead of being just cut and pasted from different tables? i sure wouldnt complain about a table maker being added, but not something i really care about. elvira would be awesome!

 

[Gusbomb]

Maybe not a customizable mode, but a Frankenstein table of Fan Fave components. Either of those options would be a total throw-away for me and an enormous disappointment after all this time. If the Zen community is so easily distracted so as to rejoice and emoji at being able to type the word /mashup/, then I pray for mercy upon our wretched idiotic souls. I can imagine tweaking one assortment of pre-existing blocks from different tables to work together. Issues of technical practicality could explain bussing in illegal voters to provide three million (five) fraudulent votes for Cactus Canyon. Nightmare Land: If our next voting option is 'What is your favorite irregularly sized DMD that doesn't comply with the parameters on your home setup?' then we might see a pack containing the worthless Fan Designed 'Frankenstein' table, Cactus Canyon, and the Mary Shelley's Frankenstein table. Thus the big news they have suggested: Stern launch, licensed table launch, Cactus Canyon (the illusive Playing Catch-Up version) and home-cab improvements. This is not a prediction but only mockery, as the 'vote for your favorite' thing deserves only mockery.

 

[mystman12]

If they were to add a table designer as robust as Future Pinball and add Steam workshop support alongside it, that would be incredible. Not getting my hopes up though.

 

[Captain Caveman]

At least one new table that's not in tpa or I ain't buying.. I need something new to play

 

[ZREXMike2]

Elvira pack would be cool.

 

[Cloda]

Zen said on twitter that this is just a game for "funs"! Cactus Canyon was suggested for slingshots on twitter.

 

[shogun00]

Zen said on twitter that this is just a game for "funs"! Cactus Canyon was suggested for slingshots on twitter.

Indeed! I wouldn't read too much into this. Everyone from Zen Studios is now working from home (photos shown on FB). Obviously, this is creating a delay in releases.

 

[wolfson]

At some point in time, I guess they'll also have to make an official announcement regarding pinball plans for PS5 and Xbox Series X.

Will the plan be to bring Pinball FX3 to those platforms, or will there be an entirely new Pinball FX4 or something?

I know people in the industry who've had the dev kits for both for quite some time now (previously under NDA's) so perhaps that may explain some of the delay if that's what they've been working on.

Ray tracing support and the recent Unreal Engine tech demo make me excited to see what they could so with the extra horsepower at the very least.

In any case, would be dissapointed if they didn't bring out Cactus Canyon, Whodunnit & Jackbot to complete the unlicensed DMD's, they're some of my favourites....

francis247uk , i`m thinking the same , PS5 and XBOX X will be out around October , i wouldn`t be surprised their working on a new engine for FX4 .

 

[trash80]

francis247uk , i`m thinking the same , PS5 and XBOX X will be out around October , i wouldn`t be surprised their working on a new engine for FX4 .

I'd agree, though there isn't any technical reason for them to do so. The new consoles are literally just AMD Zen 2 PCs and will continue to run the current Pinball FX 3 just fine, but Zen could see this as an opportunity to remaster most of the previous tables to support 8k at 60hz and require new purchases under the guise of Pinball FX4. This could justify from a business sense the recent announcement by Mel that the Bally/Williams physics will be retrofitted to all Zen original tables.

Edit: Does anyone remember if Zen has ever released a new pack while the digital stores are having their big sales? The summer sales start up the last week of June and run till early July and Castlestorm II comes out July 31st. Just thinking out loud about a possible release window for the next Williams pack.

 

[wolfson]

trash80 , you might be very close here , with everything else they are bringing out in the meantime , early August would sound realistic for the new Williams pack .

 

[wilbers]

I'm wondering if the plan was to release the next Williams pack about 2 weeks ago, and then the Zen originals pack that has been rumoured for some time if its 3 tables based on their own games and one was Castlestorm II if they were aiming for July 31st for that one. Something has obviously changed to delay the Williams pack so its either complications from coronavirus or some aspect of licensing taking longer than expected, or a major change that they haven't told us about.

 

[trash80]

I'm wondering if the plan was to release the next Williams pack about 2 weeks ago, and then the Zen originals pack that has been rumoured for some time if its 3 tables based on their own games and one was Castlestorm II if they were aiming for July 31st for that one. Something has obviously changed to delay the Williams pack so its either complications from coronavirus or some aspect of licensing taking longer than expected, or a major change that they haven't told us about.

Some of our forum members have been beta testing so we are at the pointy end of the cycle, and in the last two weeks Zen has actually named the next pack to release as Williams Vol 6 as opposed to the previous amorphous statements. But from a rewind and speculate view, the original Zen table pack got held up and delayed and/or cancelled at a time when some of the guys at the studio expressed surprise of them getting a specific license. Something about this license or related elements was also mentioned as to why the Vol 5 pack contained the tables it did. We should probably keep in mind that the dev cycle for tables is 12 to 18 months, so it isn't like Zen just dropped everything and pivoted to the Vol 5 contents without other tables in the pipeline. But I do think the complete destruction of the movie release schedule this year has drastically altered the timing of possible third-party IP original Zen table releases, and has probably impacted the Bally/Williams plans from when Vol 5 was released.

This is when we should be reminded that the Zen policy of holding releases and dev progress so close to the breast is in everyone's best interest, even though we think it sucks right now.

Oh, and for something completely different. The tables in the Marvel Arcade1Up cabinet will be the tables that run properly at almost a rock-steady 60fps on the hardware (which tables have the least bells and whistles?), which is likely an all-in-one and locked down android-based smart screen. Though I suppose they could go down the Linux/Pi hole using something like Wine which is more in line with typical Arcade1Up hardware, and then there could be the possibility of modding the cabinet without the need to replace all the innards.

 

[shutyertrap]

These are some very level headed responses, especially this last one from trash80.

The COVID-19 lockdown has screwed everything up for multiple industries. Just look at all the release date shuffling going on with blockbuster movies, some delaying by a year. Zen employees are doing what they can at home, which means lots of coding and working on tables or aspects of tables that don't require an actual physical machine as your baseline. Jeno seemed to indicate in the last stream he did that they'd be back in the studio in a couple of weeks, so hopefully that will accelerate things forward. Until then, play something else, try out Demon's Tilt, Pinball Wicked, the Deluxe tables from Zaccaria, or something pinball adjacent like Rollers of the Realm or Yoku's Island Express

 

[HighFive]

Think we all know covid impact lot of works, but didnt they said , i think in march? that the situation should not impact too much on what they were doing? Perhaps a note to the fans that there is some push back to july or august would just be cool to hear. Its just we havent heard anything about that.

 

[trash80]

Think we all know covid impact lot of works, but didnt they said , i think in march? that the situation should not impact too much on what they were doing? Perhaps a note to the fans that there is some push back to july or august would just be cool to hear. Its just we havent heard anything about that.

For the stuff "not impacted," and based on yesterday's, "Arcade1up is excited to have announced its first ever first digital pinball release! Marvel Pinball is coming Fall 2020! Check out the link for more info #arcade1up #Marvel," I'd say Zen is pushing the "Pro" physics over to the 10 Marvel tables that will be featured in this cabinet. It would make sense that they are also doing the same for the tables going into the not-yet-officially announced Star Wars cabinet.

 

[HighFive]

For the stuff "not impacted," and based on yesterday's, "Arcade1up is excited to have announced its first ever first digital pinball release! Marvel Pinball is coming Fall 2020! Check out the link for more info #arcade1up #Marvel," I'd say Zen is pushing the "Pro" physics over to the 10 Marvel tables that will be featured in this cabinet. It would make sense that they are also doing the same for the tables going into the not-yet-officially announced Star Wars cabinet.

God, if the pro physics is incorporated in all their old tables from Marvel, Star Wars , etc. That could be very huge.