Evidently, that's an "unofficial" site by some guy in Chicago.

Sure sounds good and yes I agree with you about Eric and his crew, regardless of my opinion of the Pebble Time. I just hope that they can keep up now that Apple and other Tech Giants are full force in the Smart Watch game.

Wow sorry about the triple post.. Web Browser completely acted like my send request didn't go through.

Yeah I see that now.. Thanks for the heads up.

At least supporters know the money is going for a documentary of a player that really exists

No worries. You'd be surprised how many of those we delete.

Heard on the radio that they were making big lebowski 2 to begin filming in december. But it looks like a hoax.

I read about it, looks legit but who knows for sure.

http://nbc.com.co/the-big-lebowski-2-announced-filming-begins-january-2016/

this was debunked 3 pages back in this thread. Not true.

Good.

can we get back to whatever the hell that stupid pebble thing was?

I know you're making a joke, but you have to understand that the speculation and Monday morning quarterbacking from the naysayers is annoying and not very productive or healthy.

The speculation stems from:
1) People without money on the line. Will their opinion matter when the game is shipping and people are enjoying their game? You don't hear from the MMR skeptics anymore. I wonder why?
2) People that are anti-crowdfunding (even though it's capitalism and no different than asking friends/family, banks, or VCs for funding).
3) People that are OK with a "monopoly" (like red dot displays and cheesy artwork).
4) People that have never shipped a global product or done business from an expensive country like the UK or Netherlands.

I just ask that these people support their opinions and statements with facts instead of disrespecting DP and those that have pre-ordered the game. DP has already shipped an awesome product (BoP 2.0), yet there are d-wads that refuse to acknowledge this fact.

JJP, DP, Heighway, and Spooky are all trying to change the status-quo. Why not embrace change even if you're not involved in it? Competition is a good thing, no matter how it's funded.

Good point.

Because, especially in the face of the recent prepayment schemes, the one thing we need LESS of is scrutiny and accountability. MORE blind faith and shooting down of critics is EXACTLY what is needed.

Sarcasm aside, your "speculation" of the speculation is dead wrong.

Criticizing prepayment (with zero accountability) does not equal "supporting monopolies" or "support of the status quo." You conveniently ignore that not everyone in boutique pinball operates in this manner.

Please put your torch and pitchfork down. This thread is about TBL and I was specifically referring to DP (and others that I listed). What has DP done to imply they won't ship a product?

I was part of the Predator pre-order and the conversations in this thread are starting to have a familiar feel.

Notably, people with money on the line not wanting negative speculation to make things even more difficult for DP. Especially when the negative speculation comes from people with nothing at risk.

Predator guy was a crook, and JPOP is an idiot. DP has delivered BOP2.0 already and is a team of people. They also havent taken any more pre orders (new money) since the first of the year.. Unlike JPOP who is still trying to do that.

Everyone that is on pre order currently was in during Phil gate.. So we've all already had our test, and got out if we weren't comfortable.. We've already heard plenty from the peanut gallery plenty during that.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying DP is anything like SkitB or JPOP, only that the conversations have a familiar feel to me and that I can understand people with money on the line not wanting the peanut gallery making things needlessly difficult for DP.

It's not difficult for DP, it's just annoying and ignorant. I don't think DP cares what the skeptics say. I'm sure they've had doubters since Day 1 prior to Bride of Pinbot 2.0. It should serve as motivation to hush the naysayers.

I'm sorry that you were in on Predator. I hope you were able to get your $$$$ back. I'm glad that you don't see this project in the same light.

Jvspin - These conversations also sound eerily familiar to the Jersey Jack threads prior to WOZ shipping. My point being that we can assign any outcome we anticipate but at some point reality will intervene to define the final script

Thinking further about this, perhaps one could argue that there are a small sub-set of themes that covers scores of threads and all we'd have to do was name the theme!! For example:

Theme 1. Give them time, it will come (we can call this the "Kevin Costner" theme)
Theme 2. They are going to head to the Caymans with the $ (we can call this the "Dr. Evil" theme")
Theme 3. They mean well but will eventually fail due to incompetence (we can call this the "Dumb and dumber" theme)
Theme 4. The machine will be a shadow of what was promised ( we can call this "The Grifters" theme)

As Kevin would say, I'm just spitballing and I'm sure there are other variants that could be defined. But, given the tornado that is often created on Pinside, I can understand why credible players (and I think JJP has earned that title with WOZ and DP, to a slightly lesser degree, with BOP 2.0) are very careful with what they reveal.

Just a Sunday ramble to avoid doing real work!!.

PS to Jvspin - its been a while so let's find a time to get together for some Silver Ball - HB

I just PM'd you about hundred more thumb's up!

Listened to the audio of the Expo talk on Pinball News today. I like Jaap, he spoke well. He joked about last year's talk and he seemed sincere in his explanation of the break-up with Phil. Some of the things which surprised me given the negative atmosphere on here after the talk:
-Jaap said that they already have 2 production games in their office.
-The production games only require some minor changes before they start shipping to customers.
-They are "very close" to shipping.
-They have sufficient capital to produce the games.
-John Goodman's call outs will be in the game. They will have 2 voice actors doing custom call outs, one of which is the stranger sound-alike.
-They had people write to them saying that they liked the apron and others who didn't like it, so they will work out a compromise.
Seemed like an extremely positive talk to me. Lots of good news.

Reading this thread.
I'm now at page 7 and I feel the urge to comment, sorry if what I'm about to say has been covered in pages 8 to 11.

There is no need to use crappy General MIDI renditions.

Music licensing is generally made of two parts :
a) You pay the original artist who created the song to get the rights to playback the lyrics and notes. This is cheap.
b) You pay the label to obtain the rights to use the version recorded on the original release. This is $$$$$.

You can skip the b) if you want. It's legal.
That's why you hear musak renditions in big malls, they play re-recorded versions to avoid paying the labels.

I work for a karaoke company and we hire musicians to re-create songs and TBL could end up with songs like ours.

Check this one for example :

We also have versions with lead vocal made by impersonators.

Karaoke mode on the TBL display would probably be a first for pinball! If they string a few mics out of the coin door, it would really open up a world of possibilities.

Pinside idea of the day award.

solarvalue, I think the first burst of negative comments (including my own) was from people who got the news second hand and was not there.

All we heard was first probably no apron and then at expo no license songs, with no word from Dutch pinball.

I agree that it does not sound so bad at all, after actually hearing the seminar.

I also think that most of those with a pre-order calmed down after we got a news-letter explaining everything (I know it was reassuring for me at least)

It's amazing how much a few words from the producers actually mean.

But misery loves company and you will still find a few negative comments about the situation. I have a feeling, though that those are from
people not in on a game. More like people who loves to talk trash about pre-ordering in general and jumps on every thread when unexpected stuff happens just to stir the pot.

This reminds me so much of WOZ - the people saying we'd never get our games or "$100 says value will drop big time". Well I got my game, it's great, and I'm very pleased with resale value. I wish the best for TBL buyers - it looks like a great game to me. Hang in there.

It reminds me of WOZ as well - especially the part where a company pulled a price out of its ass which they later realized was not sustainable.

$8,500 should be sustainable

More than a "tich" but less than kinda close.

You sure can switch from being on DP's jock to hating in a matter of a few posts lol

On a side note, I am glad I DIDNT pre-order this for a non-pin buddy. He wants this game in the worst way and was really pushing me to get him added, but given the previous issues with DP, and Predator and Jpoop, there was no way I was going to facilitate that.

Glad I didnt.