Table Pack #27 speculation

[Nightwing]

You guys...
Sorcerer is not an EM. It is a fantastic SS machine with voice chip.
I don't know why FS has not rereleased it. It's definitely better than BK or FP.

Well,that's your opinion & you're entitled to it.

My opinion,on the other hand,differs from yours. Sorcerer is not better than either BK or FP.

Also,IMHO - if you are going to do only one table a month,than that table better be able to stand on its own. As much as I want to see some more EM tables - you won't see many of them unless FS either goes back to the two a month release or has a special release to go along with the TOTM.

 

[Zombie Aladdin]

Presentation is not everything in modern games

Look at Minecraft or Hotline Miami.

I can't say I know much about Hotline Miami, but Minecraft has a unique art style and a deliberate retro look to it, and it was released right during the retro craze (that continues to this day). Minecraft also has this unrefined indie look to it that's also really popular.

The overall level of tables was too high in season 1. So many iconic tables...

The people who make The Pinball Arcade couldn't be sure if there would even be a Season 2. Might as well make a splash while they still could just in case they wouldn't last.

 

[soundwave106]

As for sales this year, nobody knows the numbers besides the company. Anyone who says otherwise is full of it.

The closest we have to gauge these things is how many scores are listed in the weekly scoreboard.

Generally speaking, the season 1 tables do better than the rest of the seasons (except for the most recent table Junkyard, which you'd expect). This even includes EMs, "Big Shot" is #8 at this moment in time (and people don't like all EMs? ).

For some reason BK2K is low in "this moment" but generally speaking the Season 3 tables are getting far more play than the Season 2 stuff.

I know some of this is influenced by different platform release cycles, but in my opinion, if anything turned people off of Pinball Arcade, it would be the relatively poor table choices of season 2.

Data for anyone who cares:

2740 Tales of the Arabian Nights
1730 JunkYard
1060 Theatre of Magic
1050 Attack from Mars
1000 Medieval Madness
770 Star Trek: TNG
620 Ripley's Believe It Or Not
600 Big Shot
590 Monster Bash
570 Twilight Zone
530 Cirqus Voltaire
520 Bride of Pinbot
490 Scared Stiff
490 Terminator 2
480 Creature of the Black Lagoon
480 No Good Gofers
420 Genie
410 Taxi
410 Elvira and the Party Monster
410 Fish Tales
390 Gorgar
390 WhiteWater
370 Funhouse
350 Black Rose
350 Black Hole
340 Black Knight
330 Harley Davidson
320 High Speed
310 Catcus Canyon
280 Champion Pub
280 Who Dunnit
260 Centaur
260 Whirlwind
250 Cue Ball Wizard
240 Space Shuttle
220 Pinbot
220 Firepower
220 Teed Off
220 Class of 1812
210 Haunted House
200 Dr. Dude
200 El Dorado
190 Central Park
180 Victory
180 Flight 2000
140 Black Knight 2000
120 Goin' Nuts

 

[superballs]

The weekly high scores only indicate how many have posted scores in the last week. The overall high scores would be a better indication.

 

[DokkenRokken]

Nobody seems to take into account the length of time Season 1 has been out.

Again, nobody but Farsight know what the real sales numbers are.

 

[jbejarano]

The weekly high scores only indicate how many have posted scores in the last week. The overall high scores would be a better indication.

Actually, the weekly high score count is a pretty good proxy for what people are playing right now. A lot of scores for a table that isn't free (Tales Of The Arabian Nights) or just recently released (Junk Yard) indicates staying power and popularity.

 

[superballs]

But staying power isn't an indication of sales. Yes weekly scores indicate current popularity but a table that isn't popular now doesn't indicate that it sold less

 

[shutyertrap]

The closest we have to gauge these things is how many scores are listed in the weekly scoreboard.

Generally speaking, the season 1 tables do better than the rest of the seasons (except for the most recent table Junkyard, which you'd expect). This even includes EMs, "Big Shot" is #8 at this moment in time (and people don't like all EMs? ).

For some reason BK2K is low in "this moment" but generally speaking the Season 3 tables are getting far more play than the Season 2 stuff.

I know some of this is influenced by different platform release cycles, but in my opinion, if anything turned people off of Pinball Arcade, it would be the relatively poor table choices of season 2.

Data for anyone who cares:

2740 Tales of the Arabian Nights
1730 JunkYard
1060 Theatre of Magic
1050 Attack from Mars
1000 Medieval Madness
770 Star Trek: TNG
620 Ripley's Believe It Or Not
600 Big Shot
590 Monster Bash
570 Twilight Zone
530 Cirqus Voltaire
520 Bride of Pinbot
490 Scared Stiff
490 Terminator 2
480 Creature of the Black Lagoon
480 No Good Gofers
420 Genie
410 Taxi
410 Elvira and the Party Monster
410 Fish Tales
390 Gorgar
390 WhiteWater
370 Funhouse
350 Black Rose
350 Black Hole
340 Black Knight
330 Harley Davidson
320 High Speed
310 Catcus Canyon
280 Champion Pub
280 Who Dunnit
260 Centaur
260 Whirlwind
250 Cue Ball Wizard
240 Space Shuttle
220 Pinbot
220 Firepower
220 Teed Off
220 Class of 1812
210 Haunted House
200 Dr. Dude
200 El Dorado
190 Central Park
180 Victory
180 Flight 2000
140 Black Knight 2000
120 Goin' Nuts

While this might show what is currently being played, it obviously is not indicative of sales. Especially when you consider there thousands of scores on many tables in the leaderboards, and more than 10,000 on some.

 

[jbejarano]

Just looking at the count of all-time high scores has a bias for tables that have just been around longer. I don't think that bias is avoidable.

 

[Zombie Aladdin]

How come all of the leaderboard score quantities are multiples of 10?

 

[Kratos3]

How come all of the leaderboard score quantities are multiples of 10?

Base 10.

 

[soundwave106]

But staying power isn't an indication of sales. Yes weekly scores indicate current popularity but a table that isn't popular now doesn't indicate that it sold less

Like I said, this is as good of a proxy as we have. It is *far* from perfect -- duh. Scores don't indicate sales; they only indicate staying power. Overall high scores is tougher to sort through because various tables have been out for longer. (And even for weekly, some tables are not available on all platforms, diluting the data). Also, it's pretty clear Farsight has some sort of formula / timeling for releasing scores (the position count is divisible by 10 which is not realistic) so even this is filtered a bit. Because this is a popularity contest, furthermore, I'm sure the positions will change from week to week.

But I don't think it surprises anyone that tables like ToM, AfM, and MM sit at the top of the list, and Goin' Nuts is dead last. Honestly in that list I see very few surprises.

The real point I guess is that I would be surprised if Season 3 is selling half as well as Season 2 with this flawed dataset. (Though, if I saw weekly data from a year ago and saw far more people playing the tables overall back then, perhaps I would be less surprised.) I certainly wouldn't be surprised if Season 1 sold the best overall of course, most of the top tables are there. But it's hard to imagine overall more popular tables selling worse than the many relatively "dud" DLC in Season 2.

 

[Kratos3]

I think season 3 is selling better than people think.

 

[Mark W**a]

Like I said, this is as good of a proxy as we have. It is *far* from perfect -- duh. Scores don't indicate sales; they only indicate staying power. Overall high scores is tougher to sort through because various tables have been out for longer. (And even for weekly, some tables are not available on all platforms, diluting the data). Also, it's pretty clear Farsight has some sort of formula / timeling for releasing scores (the position count is divisible by 10 which is not realistic) so even this is filtered a bit. Because this is a popularity contest, furthermore, I'm sure the positions will change from week to week.

But I don't think it surprises anyone that tables like ToM, AfM, and MM sit at the top of the list, and Goin' Nuts is dead last. Honestly in that list I see very few surprises.

The real point I guess is that I would be surprised if Season 3 is selling half as well as Season 2 with this flawed dataset. (Though, if I saw weekly data from a year ago and saw far more people playing the tables overall back then, perhaps I would be less surprised.) I certainly wouldn't be surprised if Season 1 sold the best overall of course, most of the top tables are there. But it's hard to imagine overall more popular tables selling worse than the many relatively "dud" DLC in Season 2.

You can look at total leaderboards by going to:

Pinball Arcade official websight.

Leaderboards. Press < once. Boom totals.

Fish Tales and Black Rose are close to 10,000 units sold so far.

The worst selling pack of season 2 was Cue Ball Wizard at 11,000 units.

The best selling pack from season 2 was either White Water or Terminator which were both north of 20,000 units.

Best selling season 1 pack was Medieval Madness at 80,000+.

That number grew 10,000 units since season 3 started.

Best selling table (not counting Arabian Nights) is Theatre of Magic at 200k+.

Point is, season 3 has the lowest sales so far. But when you look at the game as a whole, they are selling a lot of dlc each month, altogether.

So I believe they are doing well (with ps4, Xbox 360 and Xbox one sales yet to come), but I think they may be thinking of going back to 2 tables per release (one EM per pack?) next season as the 1 table per release has hurt them sales wise.

 

[Mark W**a]

Season 2 hasn't released on PS4 yet. When that happens there will a boost. If they do a season 2 disc, who knows. I don't know what the season 1 totals were prior to ps4 disc and digital release, so I can't say how much it will potentially go up. I only just started tracking it around March.

Printed discs have a bare-minimum print run. Something like 10,000 I believe. And the season 1 disc has actually just had a second printing on ps4. So that could account for why season 1 totals keep going up significantly the way they have. That and continued sales mobile and PC, obviously.

 

[Zombie Aladdin]

Base 10.

I still don't get it. Isn't "base 10" the decimal system? Or are they just monitoring one-tenth of the time and multiplying their results times ten?

Point is, season 3 has the lowest sales so far. But when you look at the game as a whole, they are selling a lot of dlc each month, altogether.

So I believe they are doing well (with ps4, Xbox 360 and Xbox one sales yet to come), but I think they may be thinking of going back to 2 tables per release (one EM per pack?) next season as the 1 table per release has hurt them sales wise.

Season 3 is still ongoing. It WOULD naturally have the lowest sales because it has by far the least amount of time on the market. The Pinball Arcade is a long-tail type of game--that is, unlike most other releases, which have lots of sales at the start but dwindle rapidly (franchises with this sales pattern include Kirby and Call of Duty), The Pinball Arcade should theoretically (I haven't checked yet, but it's easy to identify a long-tail game) have lower sales at the start but get steady sales for years on end (franchises with this sales pattern include Pokémon and Sonic the Hedgehog).

Hence, more accurately, one should keep track of sales a certain amount of time after it's come out (perhaps a year) and compare it with sales of other tables from when it had just come out for that amount of time if you want to gauge popularity.

 

[Mark W**a]

I still don't get it. Isn't "base 10" the decimal system? Or are they just monitoring one-tenth of the time and multiplying their results times ten?



Season 3 is still ongoing. It WOULD naturally have the lowest sales because it has by far the least amount of time on the market. The Pinball Arcade is a long-tail type of game--that is, unlike most other releases, which have lots of sales at the start but dwindle rapidly (franchises with this sales pattern include Kirby and Call of Duty), The Pinball Arcade should theoretically (I haven't checked yet, but it's easy to identify a long-tail game) have lower sales at the start but get steady sales for years on end (franchises with this sales pattern include Pokémon and Sonic the Hedgehog).

Hence, more accurately, one should keep track of sales a certain amount of time after it's come out (perhaps a year) and compare it with sales of other tables from when it had just come out for that amount of time if you want to gauge popularity.

When Fish Tales released, way back in January, Cue Ball Wizard was at 10,000, 1812 and Haunted House 12-14K so no.

I get your point however season 3 has shown a drop off of sales from season 2 in the same timeframe. In the same time that FT, BR, and BK2000 have been for sale, the -lowest- selling Season 2 tables outperformed them.

And to make things worse, season 2 has yet to release on ps4. When that happens it will get even further away from FT and BR.

 

[Mark W**a]

In case that was confusing, let me explain.

When Fish Tales released, Cue Ball Wizard was 1 month old, Class of 1812 2 months, and Haunted House 3 months.

The sales were: CBW: 10,000, 1812: 12,000 and HH: 14,000

Fish Tales is now 4 months old, BR 3, BK2000 2 but for sake of argument let's disregard the extra month of sales.

Fish Tales , prior to ps3-4 release, was only 7,000. Now it's 9. BR is 8500, up from 6500, and BK2000 is <6000.

Keep in mind, Season 2 is not for sale on PS4. Fish Tales and Black Rose are.

ALSO keep in mind, were talking about the low end of season 2. White Water, Terminator, Champion Pub etc is above 20,000 units.

So it's anywhere from a 30% to 50% dropoff in sales depending on how you look at it.

 

[Kratos3]

I still don't get it. Isn't "base 10" the decimal system? Or are they just monitoring one-tenth of the time and multiplying their results times ten?

Yeah it was just lame joke.

 

[canuck]

They should get a good boost with pinball after dark tables. sex sells.