The news this morning sucks.
Was really rooting for Suncoast. Hope they can pull out of this bankruptcy.

yea, I read that also. Weird part is they have been selling some games, but I guess overhead is a killer. Makes me really appreciate what Spooky has done.

The latest, from Pinball News: https://www.pinballnews.com/site/2019/09/23/suncoast-arcade-in-chapter-11/

Is anyone honestly surprised? From all the footage on Youtube, it appears this game is not the least bit code-complete or fun at all. Everyone I talked to who played this in person said it was anywhere from "meh" to "completely awful." The geometry of the ramps and orbits are horrible and can't be fixed by code anyway. I guess having a new guy on the block is nice for competition, but this was kind of an amateur hour shitshow from the looks of it. What am I missing?

Well, I would be interested to know what the codebase looks like. I am tentatively getting one and as a software dev would be open to working on the game for free once I have my example.

Tact? Empathy?

Those words don't belong on pinside lol

I hope they pull out, any one trying to create pinball in my books is good. And it's not easy! Fair play for even trying!

Ha! Tact was the exact thing I was thinking.

It turns out building pinballs is not easy, and selling pinballs is not easy as well. There is an abundant offer right now which leaves a very little entry door to new comers

dead on, market is flooded. Games are sitting for a very long time unless underpriced.

Correction, unless priced appropriately. But I'm with you on market flooded. Too many choices, so supply is high, old stock is normalizing IMO.

Very interested to see how deeproot affects the market, will it force prices down if they live up to there promises?

The paperwork in the Pinballnews article shows the complaint is for $30K. That is not a huge sum of money in this day and age. Hopefully all parties will be be willing to work together and get this resolved. I wish Suncoast Pinball the best and give them huge props for getting this far and bringing a game to market. That in itself is a huge accomplishment.

It's almost like people build pinball's with the believe that they are an inelastic good, and "if you build it they will come".

Fucking really?
Keep jokingly absurd deeproot posts in the silly deeproot thread...
Fringe ass pinball companies will all come and go regardless...

Many used games aren't selling as they aren't set to market price. Market price sells... The claim that they must be under market is foolish.

Games that are market priced are still not moving like 2-3 years ago. Look at the games that people post that are in the pinside range (what most consider underpriced) sell very quickly. Anything over the pinside average is sitting period. Everyone wants $1000-$1500 over pinside averages and that is what is foolish. NIB sellers are taking massive hits and many are not selling at all without being considerably dropped to UNDER MARKET to sell. Lots of this also depends on what part of the country you are in as well.

Untrue, the games 4k+ seem to be sitting. Problem is there are so many nib options that many people are trying to sell to buy nib games. Buyers are considering nib as well as used at that price range. Market is just oversaturated and with jjp and stern continually upping the price it will be interesting to see what unfolds.

To me, the only part of this that is wrong is you are using a blanket statement. It's absolutely not all games but certainly a good chunk of em. I've often wondered why pinside historical prices are often lower than what I see things being sold for. I'd just have to blindly assume it's over all condition ... more clapped out pins than nice ones for sure.
Anyway getting back on track, this pin is a great first try. With all due respect I do agree the best part of this machine is the artwork. All of it. The code is pretty bland (in all fairness it is new) but there's a 3 part element. Does it look good? No question.
Is the code good? Not so much as is
Is the layout good..satisfying shots? Again, not so much and code can't fix this. Something just feels "off" about this lay out. I do think it's ultimate kryptonite is having to maneuver around/avoid the center of the playfield. It just feels like a "chore" and chores take the fun away. Anyway I wish the very best of luck to Suncoast and thank them for their efforts to make a great hobby even better.

not necessarily, JM, maverick, (bang for buck games), etc... are still sitting for a while. I know because that is all I am buying now. I got out of that NIB trap years ago, because I saw this coming. It is all games in all price ranges. There is a ton of location play now and I think that is causing some issues as well. Why have $100k in games in the basement when you can have a couple monthly outings with some buds at the local game spot. One thing we have all agreed on is the market is saturated and that looks to be the theme for a while.

I forgot it's illegal to have a opinion around here.

Yup. My SM took weeks to sell and was listed under the Pinside range and it was a nice example w/ some mods.

Interesting, but sub 4k I have not had one issue. The higher end stuff is another matter. As for monthly outings? Its cheaper sure, but its not why I collect. Also not the case for my friends either.

not ideal for most of us and I do miss my high end games, but I did see the writing on the wall a couple years ago. I have friends who don't care, because they have enough money to just put the games in storage if they don't sell. I am just not at a place with 4 kids, 3 college age and younger in private school to take huge loses in a hobby.

Then I would suggest you walk away? This stopped being a cheap hobby a decade ago. For me the amount of money on paper that my collection is worth would buy a very nice sports car. The amount I have in it would not buy a cheap toyota.

On topic though I am surprised suncoast has gone silent in this thread. You would think there would be some amount of damage control going on.

I feel sorry for the Suncoast team if it will end now. Surely not everyone can survive, but I think it's quite an accomplishment to produce a game in the first place without bashing other companies, without taking preorder money and (as far as I know(?)) very much done by themselves from the ground up?

Totally agree with you.

Just curious...have they made any announcement yet?

There's nothing to announce yet, it's just a complaint. Suncoast Pinball has to respond to it and hopefully will get caught up on payments or negotiate new terms with the landlord. This happens everywhere all the time. A declaration of bankruptcy is a whole different animal and that's what we don't want to see. We are still far from that.

Nope. The landlord sued suncoast over the unpaid rent and was filing for eviction on sept 4. On sept 13, suncoast filed for voluntary chapter 11 protection. FC2D625D-EBB3-4AF6-AA05-699D741BC757 (resized).jpeg

Going for chapter 11 just a week after a small 20kish lawsuit isn’t all that promising. That probably means they don’t have much to fight with and we’re truly on the ropes.

it was announced Monday morning

Yep, the fact they filed over such a small amount means they are toast if I had to guess. I am sure it is deeper than whats on paper.

This is sad and I wish them well. Groovy art, love it! Shitty game by all accounts.

I wonder if this is the canary in the gold mine?

What a shame.

By Suncoast?

I know that wannabe pinball gadfly posted about it.

Doesn't anybody know how to plan to cash flow anymore? Does any new business now have a B or C contingency plan for investment funding support cash infusion means if the damn landlord comes looking for rent? Seems ridiculous.

I am wondering if sales have been slower than expected. For awhile just about anyone who announced a new machine would have pre-orders lined up. Now there are too many games and not enough new blood pumping money in. This game did not get the fanfare from day one which is kinda odd. It is an original theme which people keep clamoring for, but there just never seemed to be much buzz.

People don't want original themes, they just say they do.

I do, though I am not a nib buyer. That said I am serious about wanting to continue developing the software on this game once I get ahold of the one I am trading for. Problem is suncoast hasn't been on in days.

Even still... companies shouldn't expect to be in the black on their first game. Startup costs are just too high and per unit costs are too high until you hit higher volumes. You have to have a nest egg to expect to get through the red times until your volume increases to the point to increase revenues to pay for overhead, debt, and new investment/next stuff.

Just getting a game done is not enough.

Layout looked mediocre and too symmetrical. If this theme had Jurassic Park 2 like layout and rules, it would have been an instant buy for me.

And if my grandmother had wheels she'd be a wagon.

How do you expect a startup company with no experienced designers or experience putting out pinball machines to do that?

My point (in response) being is that if they wanted to run with original themes, failure still could have been averted with better layout and rules.

I agree with this. I'm sorry, but the layout of this game was awful. It was a boring, cookie cutter EM layout with two mismatched ramps with stationary toys and a scoop right in the freggin middle. When they realized the top rollovers weren't going to do jack to help the scoring (since it was only accessible from the shooter lane or from a lucky pop hit) , didn't they redesign the RHS targets to allow the ball into the shooter lane so you could maybe get more than 1 rollover per ball? How was that never considered?

It was amateur hour layout from day one... just with a killer artwork package and an LCD. I do think though that the theme in concept was good. TNA as an original title sold well, but had a good layout and fun ruleset and didn't even need ramps. To have 2 ramps and still have practically everyone criticize the layout I think shows it wasn't the theme that was the issue.

If that was true TNA wouldn't have sold out. Poor reviews saying the layout was not great could be a factor here.

Scott Danesi managed to make a hit game in his basement by himself.

I see first timers making the same mistake over and over - they focus on the wrong things. It has to be a package. The most important thing is it needs the play good. Then it has to look good. Then it has to sound good. Then it needs to be manufacturable and have people in charge with a clue. Then you need serious cash to ride out the startup phase.

Let's run down the list, starting at the beginning:

JPop. Games looked good, sounds fine. But he went straight to art without making a playable game. 2/5

Predator. Played like ass, looked bad, not manufacturable, no money, useless management. 0/5

The Big Labowski. Plays okay, looks good, sounds good. They actually managed to get 90 of them made. Would technically be a hit if those a-holes had their shit together. 4/5 - closest one yet!

Jetsons/Dominos. Plays crappy, art is passable if not great, sound meh. Both games managed to get their full run, Spooky is doing okay. 3/5

Alien. Plays great, looks great, sounds great. Manufacturing so-so, idiot management. 3/5. So close!

Thunderbirds. Plays shit, looks shit, sounds shit. Management is the biggest asshole in pinball, but sort of managed to limp itself to production years late and the company is still around, technically. 1/5

Mafia. A game so forgettable I had to use Google to look it up to remind myself. Plays bad, looks bad, sounds bad. They managed to build it so I guess they're not complete nimrods but just conceiving of that thing in the first place tells me all I need to know. 1/5

Cosmic Carnival. Plays shit, looks okay I guess (not my taste), sounds bad. Didn't take a dime of pre-order money, seemed to be able to pump games out okay but with questionable quality, and now in bankruptcy. 2/5

The take-away from this would be to concentrate on making the game actually FUN, look GREAT and sound GOOD. Take your time on this part. I think if Suncoast had made the game FUN they'd be fine.

Pinball is hard.

Then again - what is the contingency plan if sales don't come through? Especially for single high dollar items like pinball.

Ii think something you are missing is that code is a massive part of a game. I think given a code update this one code be improved dramatically and not knocking the developer for this. Just not given enough time to bake. A lot of games that were dogged were later saved by code updates. It will not save a terrible layout, but it can vastly improve a so so one.

That's the "fun" part. It needs to shoot smooth and play fun. It's really hard to nail that.