The Pinball Show

[Pinballwiz45b]

Pinball FX goes Epic Exclusive.

Welp, see you guys next year.

 

[joeblow]

They still did not directly address the new business model.

With that said, there may be some optimism in that they mentioned "bundles" and would try to lessen the blow of PFX3 tables not carrying over through how they offer "legacy" tables. Maybe that means at minimum they will sell us PFX releases alongside any other table acquisition structure (i.e., subscription model) that they put in place. We'll see.

 

[trash80]

They still did not directly address the new business model.

With that said, there may be some optimism in that they mentioned "bundles" and would try to lessen the blow of PFX3 tables not carrying over through how they offer "legacy" tables. Maybe that means at minimum they will sell us PFX releases alongside any other table acquisition structure (i.e., subscription model) that they put in place. We'll see.

Sounds like a subscription or freemium (like mobile) model could be used to "lessen the blow."

 

[sihumchai]

Pinball FX goes Epic Exclusive.

Welp, see you guys next year.

lmao, after that shoutout to you in that video, Pinballwiz45b disappears from the PFX scene.

 

[trash80]

May as well copy/paste this over...

Pinball FX as answered by Mel on Episode 3.

None of your FX3 table purchases will carry over to the new Pinball FX on any platform.
Exclusive to EPIC store for one year. (I think it may stay an Epic store exclusive, or at least we may have Epic store DLC exclusives in the future)
Using the Unreal Engine. (Will they support anything above 60hz? Or will they be developing with the Switch in mind.)
All Original Zen tables will be "remastered" and include Pro-style physics.
Walking Dead and Portal will not be coming over to the new Pinball FX.
Pinball FX3 DLC purchases will continue to be available on each of the current platforms.
No new tables for Pinball FX3.
New Pinball FX will NOT support VR.

So what does everyone think?

Next Zen original pack? Could it be... I don't know, maybe, Fortnite?
Will they "lessen the blow" of rebuying tables by having a subscription and/or freemium model?

 

[greatdane]

It could be a risky business model to abandon their Steam customers, but we will see.
I could care less what platform I buy a game on since I already buy games from both Steam, Origin, Uplay and Epic. But my main issue here is having to rebuy all the old tables again.
Maybe I will only buy new tables, depends on what is improved on the old tables and the price.
Will all old bugs be fixed on the Williams tables?.... doubt it.

My interest in Zen and Pinball FX has decreased a lot recently because of the lack of new table packs and bug fixes, so maybe I will just forget about it before it releases lol.

 

[trash80]

It could be a risky business model to abandon their Steam customers, but we will see.
I could care less what platform I buy a game on since I already buy games from both Steam, Origin, Uplay and Epic. But my main issue here is having to rebuy all the old tables again.
Maybe I will only buy new tables, depends on what is improved on the old tables and the price.
Will all old bugs be fixed on the Williams tables?.... doubt it.

My interest in Zen and Pinball FX has decreased a lot recently because of the lack of new table packs and bug fixes, so maybe I will just forget about it before it releases lol.

If multiplayer and clan modes are what Zen is hoping for, I doubt we ever see a Steam version as I would guess that each storefront platform is not compatible with any other. Switch isn't going to be playing with PC, etc.

 

[Pinballwiz45b]

lmao, after that shoutout to you in that video, Pinballwiz45b disappears from the PFX scene.

I'm not totally gone from pinball, just a reactionary post to the 1-year exclusive. Not making another Epic account just for pinball.

Granted, I've seen worse choices developers made. Tetris Effect being one of the worst examples, bar none.

 

[Narc0lep5y]

Lots more responses to feedback from Mel and Akos here. Some positive comments on cabinet support. Still not happy about Epic but unreal engine comes at a price I guess. Hopefully it doesnt put FX under while we all wait for the 1 year exclusive to end.

https://www.reddit.com/r/PinballFX3...urce=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[joeblow]

Sounds like a subscription or freemium (like mobile) model could be used to "lessen the blow."

For me and others, that wouldn't lessen the blow but instead would put the nail in the coffin. I'd skip PFX altogether unless I had full ownership of my tables somehow.

New Pinball FX will NOT support VR.

Eh, that's an incomplete summary of their take on VR. The host simply confirmed that automatic support isn't happening, and that VR isn't supported at launch. He still sounded positive about the future, and also said that the team had to look out for feature-creep in general that could throw off their launch plans if they juggle adding too many things at once.

 

[trash80]

For me and others, that wouldn't lessen the blow but instead would put the nail in the coffin. I'd skip PFX altogether unless I had full ownership of my tables somehow.




Eh, that's an incomplete summary of their take on VR. The host simply confirmed that automatic support isn't happening, and that VR isn't supported at launch. He still sounded positive about the future, and also said that the team had to look out for feature-creep in general that could throw off their launch plans if they juggle adding too many things at once.

Mel expanded on this in another forum. Due to how Zen secures licensing, VR is handled completely separate from the regular game. We should expect to see more VR releases in the future, but these will be stand alone IP centered products that are not associated with Pinball FX.

 

[Hinph]

All I needed to hear is that VR support for the new FX is “on the roadmap” and that it sounds like they will be releasing a Williams VR Collection of tables sooner than that similar to the Star Wars VR set. I don’t mind repurchasing tables, especially as I’m going to be switching platforms from Switch to PC anyway and I appreciate the amount of work that is going into putting the new physics into all of the tables (which is something that I care about very much). So that’s a lot of tables that I will simply wait for holiday sales on and such before repurchasing to save a little dough. Maybe the bundle prices won’t be so bad to start.

Other than that, eh... I know it isn’t the news everybody wanted to hear but it is what it is.

 

[joeblow]

I just listened to his answer for not carrying over PFX3 tables again, and he said that to lessen the blow, some examples for acquiring legacy releases might include "lower pricing or bundle pricing for the older tables". That sounds more like the purchase option is retained instead of being forced to subscribe.

My guess is that they don't come right out and say we can buy tables now because they are waiting to do so when they describe all the business models at once so we can compare the options in context.

 

[Hinph]

Yeah, I’m no longer worried about a forced subscription model being a thing... and if they introduce one as an option, then that’s good for people who maybe aren’t as big of enthusiasts as us and want that option to mess around with all of the tables a month at a time.

 

[Narc0lep5y]

The Pinball show Youtube like/dislike status.

Episode 1 414 up votes, 90 down votes (2 months) ~11000 views
Episode 2 213 up, 55 down (3 weeks) ~4400 views
Episode 3 119 up, 107 down (7 hours) ~1700 views

but at least the forums got a shout out from Akos.

 

[shutyertrap]

Wow, that's quite the ratings dip

 

[trash80]

Wow, that's quite the ratings dip

No kidding, but this had to be expected. There wasn't really a single announcement in this episode that could be considered current customer friendly. And it gets to live on in Youtube land... I'm beginning to wonder if Zen is being guided by hubris at this point.

Had this been announced via a regular old press release (published by Embracer Group) there wouldn't have been quite as much fallout.

 

[FunktionJCB]

No kidding, but this had to be expected. There wasn't really a single announcement in this episode that could be considered current customer friendly. And it gets to live on in Youtube land... I'm beginning to wonder if Zen is being guided by hubris at this point.

Had this been announced via a regular old press release (published by Embracer Group) there wouldn't have been quite as much fallout.

And don't forget, they had the cheeky nerve of "hyping" up this episode on the Steam forums!
I mean: https://steamcommunity.com/app/442120/discussions/0/3096760955445941178/

« The third episode of The Pinball Show launches Tomorrow!
The third episode of The Pinball Show launches Tomorrow at 11:30AM PDT / 6:30PM GMT! Check it out as Mel Kirk will be joining us to share exclusive information about Pinball FX! »

What a great idea: let's announce a stream on Steam, so that Steam users can get the news in first hand that we are taking the game somewhere else.

 

[trash80]

And don't forget, they had the cheeky nerve of "hyping" up this episode on the Steam forums!
I mean: https://steamcommunity.com/app/442120/discussions/0/3096760955445941178/

« The third episode of The Pinball Show launches Tomorrow!
The third episode of The Pinball Show launches Tomorrow at 11:30AM PDT / 6:30PM GMT! Check it out as Mel Kirk will be joining us to share exclusive information about Pinball FX! »

What a great idea: let's announce a stream on Steam, so that Steam users can get the news in first hand that we are taking the game somewhere else.

Crazy huh? It may not be hubris guiding them, but just complete ignorance. The irony of Mel saying he understands they did a poor job with the FX2 to FX3 transition while then going on with how the new Pinball FX roll out will be handled is pure gold.

What I don't get is Zen said their intention for the Pinball show was for there to be a forum for them to communicate directly with the community, but so far, all three episodes have required you to do a deep dive into the subreddit immediately afterward to get clarification.

 

[Narc0lep5y]

This really seems to stem from the decision to use Unreal Engine to develop FX and the price (and discounts) they get or don't have to pay to Epic to use it. It really is a damned if you do damned if you don't situation they seem to have put themselves in by making the decision to go with that Engine vs Unity or another engine when they decided their in house engine wasn't the right solution for future development.

There may or may not be a price to pay at the consumer level. But I think that all of those features users have been requesting over the years are now the standards you are held to in order to get those customers back in.

Some examples that i can think of:

Would cabinet mode support go a long way to bringing in part of the community? Yes, but at this point you need bigger and better. It can't just be a retread of the existing cab support. The lack of any new development on that feature for what is now the entirety of the FX3 life has made all of those "we'd like to do that in the future" statements almost empty promises. The changes announced means that the product needs to have better features built in. It can't be a bare bones feature with the promise of something down the line because we've seen what happened in FX3 and that isn't enough on it's own to overcome these other huge hurdles (like EGS and table repurchases) to get there.

Same for Pro Physics. If you're going to re-charge for all the tables, they need something significant to justify it. Are the pro physics and any bundle pricing enough to warrant repurchase Zen Originals? We've been told it's been the number one request for some time, but would it be the number one request if we knew that it required us to re-buy everything and change store fronts? Time will tell. For me the pro physics was really this promise of something out there that might actual make those Zen originals that i already own worth playing. But now, when faced with all of these other changes in order to see it, I really find myself realizing that I just don't like the Zen Originals so it's very easy to just skip out on them.