Haha blow me!

Wait...you break 350+ song JP? How about encore

DAMN YOU!

Please. WOF as it stands today has better/deeper rules than XMen ever will (apparently). And the playfield is more interesting too, imo.

Thanks for posting this here. Appreciated.

Nonsense, total nonsense.

Is disappointing SR mentioned update was doubtful I hope this will not be the case.

It doesn't jive with what Borg has said in the past, but it DOES make sense. Code is in development hell right now. That's too bad. I had hope with the new hires that Stern has made, that they were getting their coding-house in order. Maybe not.

-Wes

i don't own xmen and i really feel bad for those who have one.

another nail for stern into their coffin!

Don't feel too bad. Xmen is still awesome and addicting! It just won't have that final polish it needs and deserves.

Another orphaned game isn't that big a deal. I'm expecting quite a few more of them, but this will probably be the last one they talk about. I'm pretty sure Gary would have rung up Steve's phone to explain things right after that. Pinball nerds are less angry without actually knowing the game they bought has been deprecated.

Moved to Stern pinball sub forum. Thanks for the summary of the presentation; was a good. I sure wish I didn't ask him that XMen question though! Ha!

What's a little scary about this is that as early purchasers, we're sharing the software development risk. If they have staffing problems or other team difficulties, Stern should transfer it to another team and have it completed. The fact they haven't and are willing to essentially walk from the title means buying ANY new Stern is quite literally a crap shoot. So chalk up X-Men as a misfire.... wow. If I were a X-Men owner, I'd feel flat out betrayed.

That's how I feel. And as such no more of my $ to Stern.

+1 to that! Although I am getting a STLE it will be my last Stern as now there is FINALLY competition!

I'm with you guys, unfortunately I'm not as strong. Stern has me on the fish hook of addiction in this hobby. That said, after I get 3 pins back in my lineup, I'm gonna 'try' to take 2014 off from buying nib. When my distributor hits me up on the next title (and those afterwards) I'll tell him I'm not interested until xmen gets an update. It's the distributors now that have to hear this from us, not stern. Hope my will is strong. Time will tell; need JJP to start producing games faster...and not the same kiddie one over and over!

Premium is best bang for buck.

Kinda glossed over this one.....did he mean an LCD?

very sad. Guess that solidifes that I will not be buying the John T. pin no matter how cool it looks/plays.

Stern confirming that they do not care about code means you can't really trust them to finish anything.
No way I would want to drop big $$$$ on a game that never gets finished.
What a joke.

I've said it before, Stern needs someone to come in and straighten things out technology wise.

I nominate the Wolf. He solves problems

This is what I do for a living. I go in and fix these types of issues with software development teams. From 2 developer teams to 100 developer teams. The biggest issue that I see, consistently, is that the management team just doesn't understand software, or software developers. They don't give them the tools or structure or schedule they need to be successful, and they don't know how to measure success or failure during the development process. Stern has to invest some time and effort here, and until they do, the customer is going to continue to be disappointed.

-Wes

Couldnt agree more with mgmt not understanding software development/developers. Another common mistake i see is "throw some more bodies at it" mentality. Not all software developers are interchangeable. Often throwing new developers at a project will slow it down, because the existing people have to take time out and train or answer questions from the new ones coming in cold.

Im not saying stern has these problems. I have no way to know. But i see this problem a lot.

Great post, and mostly all great news!

Software has always been the biggest problem with electronic pinball.

Could be TOTAN or Kings of Steel; tons of unfinished games out there.

Let's not paint with too broad of a brush here.

I'm very far from disappointed with the rules/code on AC/DC and Tron LE.

I was 2 shots away from Portal last night. Damn you Tron!

Sure, now. These guys both shipped with very basic rulesets, and took several revisions over several months(years) to fix. Stern has conditioned us to think it's ok to wait that long for polished code, but in reality, we should be expecting complete code shipped WITH the game, and the polish to come soon afterwards, worst case scenario.

For the record, JJP is also following this model too, it's not JUST a Stern problem.

-Wes

easy fix. STOP BUYING THE GAMES. No one seems to do this. They just buy them and then jump on line to complain about it.

Stern is losing customers for sure. There's a lot of folks that HAVE stopped doing that. That said, is it enough for them to feel the impact, or care enough to address the code issue? *shrug* who knows?

-Wes

Right.

It would be great to have pins shipped with finished code.

It would also be great if I had a money tree in my backyard.

Haha, no. There is *never* $2000 worth of additional BOM in the Premium. Maybe $200. I mean, buy away, it might be the better version of the game, but as far as bang for your buck it's just never going to be true.

I really hate to hold up JJP as a shining model of what people should do, because what happens with Jack is so often ridiculous. BUT that said ...

If Stern had a rep in the forums who was honest about what was coming, even had the actual developer (Keefer!) responding to people, providing occasional updates, and even responding to suggestions, and then on top of that was releasing solid code updates once a month or so ... that would basically eliminate the issue for me personally. I'd buy with confidence, even if out of the box still needed a little work. Of all the issues with WOZ, the code getting completed just isn't one of them IMHO.

None of that is perfect, but a little communication goes a long way. Instead we get this "Lyman will come through!" stuff. And yeah, he probably will. When and how who knows. And can you say that about any other coder? We need more than that, it's just too much money to toss into such a gamble.

Perhaps you should stick to alternative translites......

Yup. Back in the EM days.....rules were finished and locked in!

Or maybe I should just sell them for an extra $2000 to people like you. I'll add some glitter.

Nah.....your translite doesn't crash into playfield......

The code news really stinks. Stern really needs to step it up in the code department and commit to finishing games and listening to players feedback.