Quoted from Bublehead:Listen, if JJP pulled a fast one and secured Pixar licensing deals over the dead bodies of those people at Stern handling the SW account and Disney reps, they must have hit them with the “we charge more so we can pay more for the license” bullshit that just keeps hiking the costs of games up and up.
If Roger Sharpe were dead, he would be rolling in his grave right now. Costs and production numbers of current pins can not support the licensing fees that video game manufacturers can offer, and that is the reason a lot of licenses do not end up on pinball machines. You need a savy, industry tried and true pinball celebrity/realist to go in there and teach them that pinball licensing is not how you make money in Hollywood. You make money in Hollywood by putting butts in theater seats, and the only way to do that is with marketing and recognition. So lets talk about what money is on the horizon, and where that money will come from, and how best to use it in the pinball world.
Mature franchises, like POTC, or BTTF, or even Star Wars, or Wonka currently don’t have a direct tie in with a current film, so the marketing potential of a pin title is not that appealing to the owners of the IP. You come in saying you want to put their IP on a pinball machine and you tell them you will sell a maximum 4000 units at $100 per machine, that barely pays the lawyer fee to read and approve the contract. These people are used to seeing a video game maker walk in, saying we want to put your IP on a commercial console game and sell 2 million units at $3 a game, and then they start listening.
So for a non tie in, I would think JJP did well acquiring the POTC license, and hopefully maybe Wonka. I don’t see JJP getting Toy Story unless it is a tie in and they really did outbid Stern, and so June 2019 would be my guess... except the confidence level of delivering on time would make me cautious to trust JJP to deliver it with complete or near complete code.
Prognosticating on TS or WW, my money would be on WW before TS, only because Stern has a prexisting relationship with Disney/Star Wars license which would cloud a Pixar title going to JJP.
But POTC is a Disney license.