i've always said preorder system was bullshit. Mainly because it doesn't force anyone to release a quality FINISHED product. They already have your money. They can take their sweet ass time finishing code, have boards and toys take shits on you as soon as you get it. Sure they will use good customer service to fix your problem, but they can do it when they want. Your money is already spent. Everyone that preorders, is only fueling the bullshit further.

I skipped step 4. Now at peace with the Universe.
31 months after my first preorder, I feel like a Buddhist monk in Brooklyn Zoo

...except that y'all will all preorder my Tron Prequel pin, right...
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/tron-prequel-pinball

I understand. Some people are slower learners than others.

^^^^^

vvvvvvv

Taking preorders on Texas Titties Pinball. $8999 shipping in January. Pay up biatches!!

with things as they are (perceived to be now anyway) I agree with the OP here.
back when, doing stained glass, half up front half upon completion within 60-90 days.
I could understand 180 or 270 days max the same way for pinball machines, with production batch minimum of 50 needing filled to show real interest for production to begin.. but it should be fully developed FIRST! a complete working playable prototype model, not vague descriptives.
with custom glass we had consultations with fully developed cartoons of proposed builds same way.

there should be insurance involved too, like 15% refund option for every 30 days late no product.
s#it or get off the pot! if missing deadlines is going to cost them money by contract they will DO.
where someone waits 6 or 9 months, about 7 months beyond that time they get a machine half price or been fully refunded their half up front payment. how long would it be before an insurer refuses coverage to the non-productive? in many other fields, workers must be bonded and insured, so why not apply similar to others who like to make big promises?

IMHO something like this wouldnt be unreasonable when asking people for money to DO with. if there is demand for beyond the first 50, production and delivery time SHOULD be shorter than the initial batch. if new batch slots arent filled in a reasonable time, maybe the demand for the idea has been met? the idea of people shelling out thousands and waiting 2-3+ years, to me, is ridiculous.

No. It's different now. If just one preorder screwed up its one thing. But between the huge egos of these companies sometimes, the consistent money due timelines and the ' we'll let you know when something happens' mentality returned to us, even us hardcore supporters of new companies are burnt out and feeling a bit unappreciated.

When a hobby starts to feel like a poor corporate investment strategy, who's to blame?

I'm out of excuses for everyone, taking my money and keeping it in the bank.

Once PRED shows up, that's it. And only cuz I've already sunk the money into it.

Most boutique pin makers would say that model sucks.

You bailed on the only horses I would have wagered my $$$ on actually crossing the finishline.

It'd be one thing if one bad egg spoiled the bunch, but it does seem like every pre-order system involving a startup has failed, and that's pretty much killed the model now. The only company that has delivered on time (in a pre-order system) is Stern (minus good code).

SPoOky pinball just doesn't force buyers into that (but I'm sure they appreciated some pre-order money to get them started with parts). Even if spooky's next title isn't killer, they may get orders on reputation alone.

It's really the worst thing you can do with your money. I posted a thread that kept getting deleted but the gist was if people who pre ordered Woz when it was announced bought Netflix, they would have had $65,000 by the time the pin shipped.

The only thing driving pre order madness is the concept of LE and limited runs. But the car industry tried this and failed and so too will the pin market collapse the whole notion of LE, SE, etc. it's silly how many Hobbit editions there are and Jack's ruby red announcement was borderline criminal to all those who were sold an LE. It's hard to even name an LE that has anything that can't be added later. Games should just come fully loaded and the prices of all nib need to be around 6 not 9.

But the solve is so simple. Nobody on here should pre order and then these companies will have to go find outside funding. No matter how rare a pin is it will always come up for sale.

What a bunch of negative Nancys.

Hopefully, my Pinball Gremlins should be shipped any day now.

My name is Scott and I endorse this message.

Unfortunately Stern doesn't really ship complete games either.Real life conversation with a big time op here in NYC last week.
Me:Hey man did you get a TWD?
Him:Yeah I got 2 on route right now.
Me:How does it play,what do you think?
Him:You gotta wait at least a year with ALL new Sterns....till they finish the code.
Me: O

Is it? Really?

pink bugatti.jpg

I will never understand how you guys pre-order these machines before you even see and play them.. big risk if you ask me.. I give those of you that do, a lot of credit!

It is funny to see Walking Dead LE's for sale already, and the STLE's how many of those went right up for sale after it came out?

Just not a risk I would take, I would like to know I am going to enjoy the game before laying out the money for it.

In the modern internet-connected, SaaS world, this is something you'll just have to get over. Granted, I do agree that Stern and others are taking advantage of this fact, but it really has nothing to do with pre-orders. It has more to do with poor SDLC practices.

Pre-orders can really fuck your books over. With pre-orders, recognizing the revenue for the sales in one quarter but still having development costs associated with the project for the next 2-4 quarters is probably a bitch. This "rob from peter to pay paul" model can exist as long as the company stays in business, but once they break the cycle, someone gets hurt.

Without the blind faith and support from our early customers, we were dead before we even started... plain and simple. We still have to take deposits, and I pretty much hate that. At our level we can't build a pile of games and hope that someone buys them down the road... sadly.

Flat out... the goal is to get to a minimum down payment on future games AFTER you've had a chance to see it, and NOTHING more before the game is ready to go to you. Trust me... that's a tough goal to achieve when you're eating all the 2 year minimum development costs, rent, payroll, insurance, taxes, utilities, and everything else associated with doing this job. But it's where I want to be...

Basically I'm just saying thanks to everyone who helps and supports us, either by buying a game or verbally on here. We aren't perfect, but we've pretty much killed ourselves to get this far.

It was worth it.

Same amount of STLE as any other title. TWDLE isn't flooding the market with stock. I've seen an average # of NIB and HUO so far, but within the next 6 months as stock either dries up or stagnates, will dictate title success.

No idea what you're seeing, but way too soon to call foul on recent titles, except Mustang, as that DOES seem to have been sitting in distro stock, not moving.

Charlie, this growing pain you're going through has forced you to adapt, improvise and overcome, which will help your business achieve greatness as long as other factors work out...(timing, market conditions).

You and Stern along with Heighway (since they seem to have a running factory), are doing it right.
Shoulder the risks and hope for greatness. Your alright in my book Chuck! ;D

You do know the object of a pinball machine is to get those quarters out of your pocket as fast as it can while at the same time a great game is just one quarter away. Remember some states/counties still consider it a game of chance. (Operator advantage) This is what happens when pinball hobby people mix with pinball business people. Just let the pinball business people do their thing.
Believe it our not most are very good at it considering the budget, resources, and timeframe they work at.

Common sense warnings after 4 wacks to the head is interesting. You should spend an hour every day at a busy intersection yelling walk/don't walk to the folks passing by.

I also think you are overestimating the likelihood of actually finding said 3rd party funding sources for a pinball manufacturing start-up. Your only shot is to find a billionaire financier that loves pinball, and is willing to take the risk. I don't think any lending institution, or regular investor/angel, would ever put up the money.

Dang this is starting to remind me of the video game crash of 1983. Not because there are too many pins in the market (although we are approaching that point), but because there are too many start-up companies that all of a sudden want to produce a pin to get in on the profits. These boutique operations (heck even bigger ones like JJP) try their darndest to upsell their first game by making announcements of announcements, taking "start up" preorder money from people, then figure out pretty quickly that making pinball machines is hard and oops, that "start up" money collected from preorders isn't enough to cover those tremendous tooling and production costs after all.

It's clear that this trend will continue as long as people keep preordering (oh and they will) so I believe it would be a step in the right direction, just like Nintendo did with the NES, to have some way of moderating the quality and timeliness of new machines with a community seal of approval to prevent this market from collapsing upon itself like it appears to be now. Maybe an independent committee run by customers to approve prices, if there should still be a preorder model and if so preorder terms, deadlines, playfield features, build quality, etc. etc. Something has to give here or the market is in deep trouble. This hobby will die without manufacturer diversity. I mean just look at how Stern has stepped up their game since the competition arrived. We need more of that kind of thing.

2 pre-orders, 2 cancelled pre-orders. Risk v perceived benefit ratio is way out of kilter for me.

And besides in a small market 500 - 1000 LE is hardly a limited edition. The original Iron Man only sold around 1100 and that was 1 model designed to sell unlimited.

I consider 1 - 250 maximum to be truly limited.

A nick Danger sighting !!! WOW!!

Hope you are well buddy!

on topic:

I find it funny that ICE needed to captitalize the SOBER in the title I agree you should get back to drinking more.

Preordering anything is not for the faint of heart, but I think Pinside has gone into a spiral of doom and gloom lately when we should be focusing on the positives and some hearty reality.
Spooky made it abundantly clear that if you want new pinball from new manufacturers then you are going to need to support them with your dollars (at least at the start)! What they are doing is nothing short of amazing and those that are delivering machines now, even more so.

This is not to say that pre-ordering can't be done with your healthy critical eye, but there is lots of good to be seen.

Spooky/Ben Heck has delivered on a great game for a decent price and is plugging away each week to make more. At the same time, Ben continues to improve on code and take feedback seriously! This is a HUGE win that would not have come to light without $$$ backing at the start and commitiment from us pinheads. REALITY > AMH is BY FAR the most complete game delivered in the shortest amount of time in the past 10 years. The code is already great and the game is pretty polished. This is a huge WIN for all of us that love pinball.

WOOLY/RIOT currently has a model that is very realistic, they have set clear expectations for a go/no go and have been very open with their plans and progress even at these early stages. 1k down to hold your spot, ~50% when they get 100 commitments so they can buy parts and go towards production, and partnering with a proven maker. These are again all WINs for those that love this hobby.

SKIT-B while lacking in communication, ONLY required 3k down as of July?(maybe June?) 28th. That means they have had the big bolus of cash for less than 6 months. This is not very long in the big picture and by all accounts they have a plan to get the lines of communication in check and deliver the first games soon. This is again a huge WIN. A real limited game, with a fun theme, for similar price point to a pro STERN (which comes w/o finished code for the next year).

There are other examples, but the take home picture is that WE need to continue to make WISE decisions on where us as hobbyists spend our money. If you only buy STerns with unfinshed code then you can expect to only get that for the future. If you choose to support startup pinball with new and innovative ideas, often very polished code at delivery, and can bear the hiccups of production issues and part sourcing set backs, then we will likely be rewarded with the same sort of great games in the future.

IMHO, the future is very bright for pinball, but if all you pussies start getting wishy washy about your money being in the hands of a startup company for a few months longer than planned, then you will sink the startup ship before is gets really sailing.

Have faith, do your research, and then choose wisely. Some people will get burned (hopefully not many), some people will get rewarded with great games, but if you sit on the sidelines and piss and moan then you are only hurting the current state of our hobby.

It ALL boils down to this...preorders for a start up cost shifts the financial risk, deadline requirements etc from the company to the client.

There's likely a name vendors call clients that assume that responsibility.

If you open your wallet in these situations, then that client is you.

I've been in on one pre-order; BBB. I remember walking up to Gene's booth at the Expo and he had a BBB on paid play for charity along with a stack of BBB glossy prints for perusal. Next to the game was a clipboard and a sign up sheet; Illinois Pinball would be producing a short run of the game. At first there wasn't much hype, more of a lark, but what the hell, what if it does get produced?. I put a few 'bucks' in the game and initially liked the game play; I signed up, why not.

Then the letter came requesting payment schedule along with initial payment,....., in or out? I paid up and crossed my fingers. Total outlay: $4500.00.

Then the wait,......, and waiting,........., etc. I had a chance to visit the factory late in the process and saw the production line, parts, playfields, tooling, and met the people actually doing the assembly. It was a very large operation and many bright people were involved; starting with Kerry Stair, who was fundamental in the initial process.

Then the rumors and banter on the pinball newsgroups, bets placed on production dates or whether it would ever be produced aka 'when pigs fly' etc. It was difficult at times but I never thought of pulling out; Gene did have all the parts from Capcom and all the necessary tooling.

Approximately three years later I picked up the game and had options for extra parts, playfields, plastics, and shot glasses; it was a joyous occasion In retrospect, I should have purchased a few playfields.

That said, the market has changed dramatically since then. P-ROC and other advancing technologies have allowed innovation, and disruption, like never before; I love it! However, prices have climbed significantly and it's not uncommon to see price points nearing $10,000 per game, 'gulp'. Back in 2005-2006 I had an opportunity to purchase AFM and MB for $6000,...., for the pair; not anymore.

I have come to appreciate what it is that I already have. This explosion of new games and innovation is fantastic and I commend all involved in their expertise, passion, and work ethic. However, I don't have the energy and 'head-space' to go through another 3-4 year stint of speculation, supposition, and 'gut rot' waiting for the coveted item to arrive; let alone a spare $10k burning a hole in my pocket. For those that do, I tip my BBB shot glass to you.

Everyone have a great day!

HT-Mergatroide

20141211_080617.jpg

Exactly. And once the timelines aren't met, (no manufacturer wants to admit they're short of funds or having issues getting the game made) customers get nervous and want their money back. Now it's like a domino effect.

Agreed^

I need some help Ice, I still can't get out of Aurich's stage 4 and I think I'm pretty much into most pre orders! Hi my name is ........ I'm too embarrassed!

f it ! I'm taking Centerflank's advice pass the Captain Morgan!

I have been waiting for the Dominos to fall. Will be a run on the bank; and several of these manufacturers will fold at once.

Ironically, I think all of this helps Gary Stern. He gets abused a bit in Pinside, but he is proving again and again he is the smartest of the bunch.

This won't be popular, but as I tell my kids "what's right isn't often popular and what's popular isn't often right".

Preordering is a function of two things rampant in the pin community - greed and immaturity.

Greed - there is a fairly large group that jumps at preorders simply as an opportunity to flip and make money. Fortunately, the market has started to correct due to basic supply and demand, so profiting this way is less and less a certainty.

Immaturity - there is a larger group that essentially has the mentality of a six-year-old. They have no patience and have to have their toy as soon as possible. They fear that they might not get their toy if they don't scoop it up now and/or want to make sure they are one of the select few to get the toy.

This immaturity is seen in the rants against failed delivery times - "I gave you my money and you better push it out the door now!" So, on one hand there is a rightfully vocal outcry about incomplete games rushed to the market but at the same time an outcry that they don't get here fast enough.

A mature consumer simply will wait for a quality finished product to be available and THEN commit their money once it is available. No preorders, no promises to buy, etc. it's left up to the seller to figure out financing and manufacturing. If it doesn't work out? The mature consumer moves on and puts his money somewhere else. He doesn't get emotionally involved in the product or it's availability.

Preorders also exist because of fear...fear that no one will make nice shiny new pins if money isn't carelessly thrown at manufacturers.

I've never preordered, nor will I. If less pins are made, then so be it. It will sort out the dreamers and hucksters from the legitimate manufacturers.

Sadly I think the pre order model cannot simply go away. I would like to say I am done doing this, but I dont think I can say that with 100% certainty. But what has pushed me to the point of no longer paying before I can take delievery, is the incomplete code issue. If any of the manufacturers can give a guarantee that they will fix all the bugs, complete the features they advertise and impliment some code changes that enhance gameplay that are pointed out esp by those on Pinside (one of best collections of pinheads with a voice)....then I'd be willing to support them. Otherwise, I'm waiting on the sidelines to pu an huo.

A mature customer realizes the reality of what they are doing when the plunk down any amounnt of money to preorder a game >>> they are taking an educated risk that they may lose all of that deposit, but that they are in fact investing in a dream.

I have Pred, WOOLY, and AMH all on order. I personally WANT new pinball and new options beyond the unfinished code stuff that is currently available in mass production. I understand that any startup company that I am willing to put money in (i.e. real pinheads making games for real pinheads) is unlikely to have a cool million to start their own company nor are they willing to take out a loan to try and appease a bunch of fickle pinheads. I don't blame them for this and I am more then happy to get in on a dream. I also believe I have the needed patience to wait for my game.

At this point ALL manufacturers are providing a product with unknowns at initial delivery. Pick your poison if you want new pinball.

Stern quick build but, "Will the code be finished? and when?" Will they remake it at a later date/ do I need to buy now? No such thing as limited it seems?

JJP moderate build timing and things seem to be getting worked out from the lessons of WOZ and we can assume code will hit completion in a reaosnable time but still questions of what you are getting and when? Again no such thing as a limit or collectability (if that is your thing).

PPS has had changes and suprises along the way of the remake, and still questions of when they will get delivered and reliability of a new system? Plenty to go around.

Spooky and AMH provide the clearest picture of WYSIWYG. They have clear timing, clear cost, clear communication, and clear commitment to the product.

All other startups have questions also and at this point nobody is perfect. TBT if STERN would commit to code completion, a template ruleset, and a timeline to get it done, then that alone would help push things in the right direction for them to remove their biggest roadblock to purchase.

The road to hell is paved into good intentions.. None of them set out to lie to people, but all got in over their heads and reality strikes and stuff happens. Pinball startups aren't unique here I would say.. But when combined with pre orders and real chances companies will fail next year, it does suck. I don't know an alternative for new projects though.. I can't imagine there's a lot of muscle out there to provide financial backing to get these kinds of companies off the ground.

This being said, I'm still so very in on TBL. will ride that one to conclusion.. Good or bad.. But presuming good so far

Really?? That sounds like a boring person. Myself and my friends do this and other hobbies for the passion. Hell if its not emotional its not fun. Pinball is a fun thing for me.

Not advocating pre order models but totally about the passion and fun in chasing games.

This must be why you are called Robotron.

I have seen 3 TWDLE not to mention the pro's come up for sale used already... who is crying foul??

Never said these games did not SELL.. I said I have seen them come up HUO for sale quickly..

There are a certain number of people who feel the need to buy a NIB game every six to twelve months.Many of these people expect to sell all there games a a profit.

Me!

Not me!

AMH got done because it had to.

We didn't have an industry vet or a license. The only way to get money thrown at us was to build a complete game that shoots well with finished code and have an actual procedure for building and shipping them.

It's the consumers love of LICENSES that allows these delays to happen - which also makes it the consumer's fault.

Nope, not boring, just a lot wiser than you and your friends.

You can be passionate all you want. It's that passion that creates the hobby for you. You said "passion and fun chasing games". Preordering is about passion and fun chasing smoke - no final product, no definitive timeline that there will be a product or when it does exist that it will be complete. Or more crudely put, preordering is about parting a fool from his money. Sure, it turns out fine some times, but more often than not it doesn't

FYI, my name comes from the game Robotron, which in my opinion was one of the greatest vids of the 80's.

Well said....

I want options, but the per-order market is a mess. Totally a speculative market. I don't know if Pinball can support this many producers for very long....

Pinball is a hobby, but when you turn it into a business; your approach has to change. At least a few of these per-order chaps are running on too much "passion" and not enough common sense.

You have to loose faith when you promise a machine (still no delivery), and have 3+ in the works (and taking funds). Get one out the door for god sakes....