if you buy the game perhaps jack will put some leather shoes in the cab.

I don't begrudge JJP on price. Don't imagine the margins are huge for such a low volume, hand-built product. If they didn't have an angel investor step in, they'd likely be out of business.

Jack nailed the root cause/problem...unveiling the game much too early!

snaroff

Jack brought up a good point about value in the interview and that being that 100's of hours of programming are going into POTC. Recreating the 3x spinning disk map on the LCD with high quality animations isn't a cheap or quick thing to do. I don't know how many manufacturers would do what JJP did, recreating a mech on screen, in the event it didn't work out on the playfield.

Hardware / parts on a game are only part of a games perceived value in my opinion. Rules, audio and animation work play a big part into justifying a games price. JJP has been on point with delivering high quality and unique animation, rules and audio work across all of their games. Hell, WOZ is still getting code updates 6 years after its release!

For me, a shame we will not get to see the game progression and test. I love seeing earlier test versions. Oh well, we bitch when they don't show us stuff early enough and then bitch because they showed us stuff too early....

Funny clip

I think iceman has already said what a great job JJP is doing and the game looks fun. That doesn't mean that he and others are disappointed in the change, and nothing will really ever change that.

Might have to buy myself a pirate necklace or some earrings while I await code update on Hobbit to prevent goblin stacking with Smaug mb.

aztec3 (resized).jpg

aztec2 (resized).jpg

early adopters have every right to be irritated, but their decision is the correct one. If the mech is unreliable then clearly the costs to maintain these games gets too expensive. The only mistake they made was introducing the game to early. A mistake I suspect they will not make again. That being said its still a great looking game, and I suspect it will sell well..I thought his interview was spot on and I had zero issues with his responses

Not if you read some of his earlier messages and I'm trying to smooth things over stop stirring

How much do they charge pirates for earrings?
A buck an ear!

Hilarious -seriously

In my view (not much value except to myself) if JJP did one thing wrong it was not having Jack do the announcement like he did yesterday to make this change. After hearing it I personally felt he was sincere and did feel bad they had to step back from the challenge. You can tell he did not want to say mercy on this one but I do believe and Respect their end decision to look at our best interest and stick with reliable over function. Yes, I did downgrade my CE order to an LE as I no longer felt the price matched the product but the LE or even standard still look like an Amazing work of art and one Hell of an awesome amount of fun. (just not 12.5k fun!) Stinks but what Eric, Kieth, Joe and Yes even Jack created will still in my opinion rank up there with one of the highest bars in pinball for sometime. Still feel like this would have taken a Slightly less bitter direction if Jack or company would have dropped this news directly but lesson learned I guess. I will start working on my own barnacle mods having 3k for R&D now.....

Great post.

It did seem kind of cruel and ineffective throwing Eric to the wolves with that initial announcement!

I'm Betting his liver had a workout that night! lol Great person and a Huge talent. I can't Wait to see what he creates in the future!

Agreed.

Ditto

Did you catch where he was talking about17 new Euro distributors.800 games sold recently to them.That some jack right there for Jack

Most interesting to me was that Eric was already working on another game.

Yes, in the past there was only one distributor for Europe ... now we have many more.
800 games sold ... okay, but I know for sure that also here pre-buyers cancelled due the new design in the lower playfield.

Want

jjp POTC (resized).jpg
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From the looks of it....it looks like a lot of time went into this assembly. It's a shame that JJP ran out of time on this feature.

Does it have 3 concentric discs that spin independently with variable speed and which are bi-directional?

I played a proto at Louisville Expo at the beginning of March... the game underwhelmed me overall but, I can say the few times the discs actually seemed to really impact travel (I was surprised how often the ball sailed across as if they weren't even there let alone moving), it was in completely unexpected random WTF fashion and I was looking forward to seeing how it developed.

Those pics are the first time I've really seen the mech itself. And while I am not a qualified mechanical engineer, one design aspect really jumps out at me as a failure mode. Consider the one gear that is visibly exposed: it applies its torque against the edge of a ring that cannot be centrally retained because it "floats" around two other elements. So instead of simply spinning on a fixed central pivot which would securely keep it in place, that ring always wants to basically fling away, along the path of a tangent vector opposing the pinion (motor gear) rotation against its edge.

JJPTOCringtop (resized).jpg

And since the motor can change direction, the ring will want to fling away in two directions - and now wobble is induced into the system.

Now obviously the 4 small metal keepers are clearly meant to retain the ring in a centrally fixed location, but the ring is *always* going to be torqued into them... it will literally be rubbing and wearing its outer edge down against those keepers every time it starts spinning. This would be bad enough if it were smooth, but here it is worse because it's actually teeth!

And that's just the outer ring destroying itself against external keepers. Now consider the middle ring, which I presume uses the outer ring as its own retainer (the top, inside edge of the outer ring overlaps the middle ring's outer teeth; the middle motor pinion is underneath the outer ring), and you've amplified this problem. Ouch! Nevermind either ring being torqued into/against the other one, sometimes in conflicting directions...

The only "ring" that might not want to destroy itself is the center one, which is actually a disc, so it *could* benefit from being mounted on the spin axis so it wouldn't want to fling away from the torque applied by its own motor. But it doesn't seem like it was mounted that way, either... so instead, it's both influencing and being influenced by the movement of the other two.

It looks like the three small sprung brackets on the bottom, are tensioner/dampers meant to keep the rings from wobbling off-center and vibrating too much, but clearly this proved ineffective. The three roller cams are idlers, simply there to support the rings and keep them flat.

Ugh, I wish I could explain this better But just going by what I see, the mechanism is almost beautifully elegant in its simplicity, but I am not surprised it would self-destruct after a length of time.

A materials change (nylon or delrin keepers to reduce friction on the keepers) and a focus on retaining the discs opposite the motor pinion torque vectors might help. Move the dampers or better yet add another set, maybe.

The real challenge for this design concept concerns how the rings are meant to "float" level - they obviously cannot be restricted anywhere topside, so you're limited in how to mount and retain them, while letting them operate independently.

Anyway. Lots of folks speculating / asking / wondering what the actual problem is and why it wouldn't work long term... so there's my armchair engineering poke.

I understand Jack feels bad about the situation, but we the customer are bearing the brunt of the pain. The price didn’t decrease, there wasn’t anything else added to the game. The BOM drops now as well with these adjustments. So JJP gets made “whole” at their new +$500 price point, and the game has been significantly reduced. That should not be acceptable to this community. The pin should have a mix of good software, fun play field, excellent animations, and innovative toys/mechs. It sounds like some of those items are going to be well done, but it’s going to fall very short on toys/mechs. The bar should be very high for a $9500 discretionary expenditure. I do look forward to playing it, perhaps it’s strong points will be enough to overcome this debacle.
‘

Excuse me Levi, BUT i don't give a flying F whether or not they lower the price $1 or $500.

In fact, its the first time I've even brought it up.

So me and my ilk, whatever the F that is, doesn't care. Get it?

Willy Wonka and that's a good thing.

To bulletproof this design, the middle disc should be steel and mounted with two sets of ball bearings around a central axle. The next disc mounted with larger bearings on the outside of that, and the large outer disc on that. Each disc then has it's own axle and can be belt or chain driven at different levels by it's own motor. No plastic.

Edit- mounting the optos would be a challenge, but this is basically how automotive gearboxes work.

Huh? If the machine looks like it is worth the money buy it. I accept that they are producing pinball machines that people enjoy.

Obviously you have no idea maybe you should concentrate on Iron Maiden

What's the point you'll just want them to cancel it and move on.

I know from my end that Jack can shove that pirate game right up his *port* for pulling this kind of bullshit 2 minutes to midnight but I'm a drop in the bucket compared to the people lacking the balls to follow through with their threat of cancellation. I had originally put my deposit in for Pirates the week following the reveal. However, I swapped my deposit to Houdini in early Jan because I knew Houdini was going to be done first. Pirates was going to be next in line. So while I don't have any money in now, I was going to have it in later.

From JJPs standpoint he knows that people are big talkers and will still buy it. So if you guys want any hope for a price drop you have to

a) follow through and cancel
b) tell your distributor exactly why you are cancelling (I called my distributor just to tell him not to expect a deposit from my end and voiced why I wasn't going to put one down)
c) don't buy the game until the price drops
d) talk about it on social sites and #tag Jersey Jack, this helps people "not in the know", know important information. Pinside is also just a drop in the bucket of places people talk about pinball.
e) don't buy the game until the price drops
f) rinse and repeat

More than 1 million dollars in gross sales is lost for every 100 machines that gets cancelled. That is not something to take lightly.

CE - $12,500 (Firm)

Shove the pirate game right up his portside WOW I was under the impression from the media that Canadian guys were enlightened and chill.Man, reading these forums is giving me a new perspective on our brothers up North

You are right, I'm sorry #notsorry

Not a pinball fan

Are you dating Gary Stern?

LMAO! Don't get me started on Stern. I've been good for the last little while, I don't want to relapse. Iron Maiden is killer, no complaints there.

Yeah, after my post I realized I overlooked the optos as another major design constraint. I had a couple revision ideas in mind but all of them are... inelegant.

I like the idea of a spin-axis-mounted central disc anchoring the mech, with ball bearings between the rings surrounding that disc. That could keep everything more or less concentrically fixed during operation, with no slop. The challenge of mounting motors remains. Not sure how belts could span all three. But maybe if you only motorized the central and outer rings... let the middle ring "float" and spin naturally via momentum transfer from the ball bearings. You could still get interesting results based on the speed combos applied by the center and/or outer rings. It would even spin counter-rotaionally, with flywheel action for more WTF randomness.

Huh. I would really love to know how far JJP went in reconsidering the design. It's fun to speculate on how it could be made to work, even if they had to pull the plug and carve the decision in stone.

Does anyone know if there is a live feed this afternoon? Didn't see anything on facebook.

YEAH! This is what we want! Pinball companies to fail! Anyone else you wanna put out of business?

No he’s a jackass

I don't want them to fail. It would certainly make them reverse course. You sleep in the bed you've made.

What if the rings had no tension on them from the motors so they just moved freely? Would that totally F up the play, or make it random? That way, the inserts could still light up, and you still get SOME motion of the ball.

Crap, why doesnt th center spin and the two outside ones just move freely. That would still put randomish motion on the ball.

We are talking about pinball machines here. What is wrong with you?

LOL @ "lacking the balls." It's a good thing absolutely nobody here is lacking perspective or any sense of reality.

Until JJP increases their manufacturing volumes they will always have very little margin for error or flexibility in terms of pricing and game features. Their present business model of low volume production and high prices requires maximum/full featured games to entice the buyer at the highest pricing to have any chance for financial survival. The lower volume they produce puts them in a precarious position because if they have a few titles in a row that have mediocre to poor sales then that likely results in big losses. I would guess Hobbit had mediocre sales. DI also appears to have been less than a homerun in sales because of the theming and pricing of a non-licensed game (I really like the game, just not the price). JJPOTC looked to be a hit when initially shown, but now with the recent news the sales forecasts are hard to determine.

i have not heard either. im doubting there will be one. Seems JJP are going to crawl in a hole until production starts and hope people forget or ever find out.

Personally im still on the fence. And imo jjp should be doing everything they can to persuade people like me. But im starting to realize apparently jjps most passionate collectors are not the bread winners in jjp eyes.

You are dating him. I'm sure of it. LMAO!!

That was also how I felt after listening to the podcast. Our concerns dismissed and insistence the game would sell a ton of copies without us.

That may well be true, and honestly I hope they do very well on the game. JJP are true innovators.

For me, the poorly licensed theme (no clips, wrong music, no jack sparrow callouts) was a concern but overshadowed by the features and depth of the pin. Once those got watered down the whole thing became a disappointment.

Hopefully, Toy Story will be a different outcome.