I like that the barcode area was removed entirely. A small, but nice touch.

I had been on CPR's list for over 3 years--some had been on it longer. They had no definitive release date until about a month or so before they started shipping.

I somehow doubt Mirco intended to compete--the pinball market is so small that it would be foolish to do something like that intentionally for an expensive product selling at basically the same price point. Prepping a new product for production takes a lot of time. With CPR not having a timeline for many years and Mirco probably too far along in his production process with time and materials already invested, it was probably too late to cancel the project and move on to producing something else by the time CPR *finally* made an announcement after 5(?) years of waiting.

So, now we have the unusual situation of two competing products.

Since there are similar competing products, both companies have to do a bit of marketing this time around to compete for customers by highlighting what's different and what's better about their particular product.