I know a couple people who work on The Pinball Arcade. The guys who run TPA wanted a feature where there was actual wear and tear on the cabinets and you could simulate parts acting differently depending on their condition. So if a machine is set to "just cleaned and waxed" the ball will fly across the playfield. But if a machine hasn't been 'cleaned' the ball will move slowly. They also wanted adjustable flipper strength and other physical features on the cabinets. So you could get a feel of what a cabinet is like after it's actually been broken in and played on. Rather than the cabinets playing the same after one play and ten thousand plays.

But they can't afford any of that as they have almost no budget at all. I'm sure programming all the machines to accurately simulate mechanical breakdowns would not be cheap. I know they've almost gone bankrupt and already lost one publisher which is why the X360 version hasn't been updated in forever. They've had to turn to crowdsource funding just to push out new tables on the other platforms. Still though it's a good product if you own something other than an Xbox 360 that is.

Pinball FX2 is fun as hell but it needs to have better nudging physics. When the ball is on the playfield you can barely control the movement. Outlane saves are damn near impossible. The slingshots are million times stronger than a full nudge so you can't counteract them at all either. Yet oddly enough death saves are almost braindead easy on any of the later tables. I'd say that 80% or more if a death save is possible I can get it cleanly with a double danger. And because the tables are programmed to let danger warnings wear off after a few seconds you aren't really penalized at all.

As far as I can tell, death saves are impossible on The Pinball Arcade. I've never been even close to getting one. You can tilt and then slam the cabinet ten more times and not come within an inch of a death save being successful. Odd physics once the ball has traveled through the outlanes.