Welcome Back to Digital Pinball Fans - please read this first
For latest updates, follow Digital Pinball Fans on Facebook and Twitter

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="shutyertrap" data-source="post: 284389" data-attributes="member: 134">It's not a question of how long Zen has the license for, it's how quickly can they get a return on investment, thus maximizing profits.I'll show how this works in a completely different scenario...the custom car world.If you watch any of these shows on TV, there are 2 basic approaches; one is to build a show quality car over the course of a year or two (West Coast Customs, Custom Hot Rods, *****in' Rides, Fantom Works) which typically will put the car into 6 figures for the customer, while the other is to build the same type of car but within a month or two (Fast N' Loud, Misfit Garage, Iron Resurrection) and being able to sell for a lower price but higher profit. The parts cost the same for all the garages, and the skill level is all on par resulting in top quality custom vehicles. It's the overhead, how many cars that can be worked on at the same time, and how much your labor force costs that varies. So Gas Monkey has a crew of roughly 8 guys that do everything, while Kindig Design has closer to 20. Say both garages want to build the same car, with parts and vehicle costing $60,000 before fabrication. Gas Monkey turns it out in a month, all labor devoted solely to that vehicle, turns around and sells for $90,000. Kindig takes a year, but their labor force had 4 other vehicles they were working on at the same time. They sell the car for $140,000 which seems like it would have the larger profit, but having the vehicle occupy space during that time, all the extra employees, and the time spent with that vehicle wind up making the profit relatively equal to the shorter build while costing the customer more.So how does this relate to Zen? Well right now they are cranking out unlicensed machines for the Williams collection. This is the bread and butter, where maximum profit is going to be made. If they have all 19 DMD machines for sale before doing one licensed table (this is all assumption by the way), they essentially have a war chest built. Now they can pay for licenses from that, which will continue to generate revenue for some time to come, all the while never having to pass those costs on to the customer. I imagine this is why Zen has never had to do a kickstarter, nor ever will. FarSight had a tipping point where the back catalog of seasons was more than paying for future returns from current seasons, or that was the case while they had the WMS license. If Zen winds up making 'original' tables from licenses they secure for classic ones, that will only further stoke the value in investment. I think that Zen also knows the Digital Pinball Fans audience does not want to wait 6 years for all these tables, and if they have their sites set on getting the Stern license, they'll wanna crank through this catalog as quick as possible.Folks, this is nothing but my speculation. I'm seriously pulling these notions out of thin air, but I do think it makes a lot of sense. I would love nothing more than to be a fly on the wall during Zen's strategy meetings to see how on the mark I am. As usual, I'm happy to eat crow when we look back at all this, but more often than not I've been in the ball park with my guesses.</blockquote>

Verification

Members online

No members online now.

Total: 82 (members: 0, guests: 82)

Latest posts

D
Anyone still playing?
- Latest: Dan
- Mar 3, 2025
The Pinball Arcade / Farsight Studios