Zidware's door is locked. He does not have to let anyone in.

** Warning - Opinion pulled right outta my hind end **

About Stern bailing any boutique out:

If I'm someone at Stern, I am not going to lift a finger to help bail out any boutiques. Short term they may make a few dollars, but long term they benefit from people having an inherent distrust of the small guy.

Skit-B failed. If John fails completely, they have everything they need to legitimately say, "Are you sure you want to tie up $8000 indefinitely? Or would you like to buy this machine that's available today?"

Why would they want the message to be, "It's OK, if you buy a competitor's machine and don't get it, we'll pick up the pieces." ???

interesting point. If this should fail, I think the resounding question would be "Who would ever preorder for $8K plus ever again?"

Chris

Stern, Heighway and JJP are going to steer clear of this mess. They didn't make it, they'd only enter a world of pain.

Better to let it die and buy a patent if they wanted. But even those patents don't seem that valuable, not sure if anyone is dying to make deep cabinet pinball.

Like Ice, I could think of a few paths to success even today, so it doesn't have to be over, but John is so dug in he is beyond help.

I worked for a company that our main competitor approached us with an offer to sell to us. They were in $$$$ trouble. Our response was " Why buy you out? If we wait long enough we will get your customers for free"

Remeber what Gary said once..........come on in.........the waters cold.

I think the message would be "If people are willing to risk between $8-$17k for a pinball that doesn't exist, surely we can start charging $20k for our premium that does!"

And Jack did... and has done pretty darn well.

Difference is Jack ran a preexisting business. He knew what it would take to conquer such a mountain and did it. (not without plenty of stumbles and falls but he did it!)

I was in the early WOZ production batch. Had some issues with the machine, ALL of which were taken care of professionally and personally by Jack and his team. Absolutely NO issue of wondering where I stood. I'd buy from Jack again anytime.

John on the other hand.... is creating a disaster for future consumer faith and trust. Once this is over and done, come good or come bad, I'm TOTALLY DONE dealing with John Popadiuk EVER again.

No offense, but Jack has not conquered anything. I'm glad he delivered WOZ's to those who put money on the line years in advance (despite the BS they had to put up with including the 75th Ruby Red edition). However, he still has to deliver a bunch of THLE's as well to a lot of customers who have also put money on the line years in advance.

JJP has to be deep in the red at this point. DEEP. Seriously, if I had money in on a pre-order right now I would be seriously concerned. JJP had enormous startup costs. They endured the board issues and whatever costs were associated. They endured the lengthy delays to getting a game out the door. There is a reason they desperately needed an outside investor to step in. Unfortunately for them (and the new investor) it has been the same story with Hobbit. We're at almost a full year delay from when it was originally targeted for delivery (July 2014.) It costs a lot of money to keep paying for a large factory and for the workers (and everything else.)

Who still believes game #3 from JJP will ship in 2015? Do you really think JJP can afford to manufacture and ship #3 (cutting into Hobbit sales to boot) in 2015? JJP is likely the next major fiasco for pinball on the horizon IMHO.

No because he keeps getting pre order money and he also has been the largest distro for PPS . JJp has money .

Keep ur Jjp crap on a Jjp thread...jacks not going anywhere and the factory is a quarter the size of what stern does. Less overhead... In other words u don't have money on hobbit so don't worry about it...pats game is right on the heals of hobbit

Back to jpop...

Even though he's most likely broke or going that way... Why the hell not show a populated real art game... It's sitting there we all know it.. Even if it's not working or missing a few parts just show the awesome already

Just my personal opinion based on some educated guesses, not a legal opinion on which anyone can rely:

You won't find embezzlement when you do a tracing of his accounts. You'll find he paid himself a salary (my guess is around 100k per year plus expenses). His legal defense basically be he was incompetent to do the task but not in bad faith. He will say he had no contract limiting his salary and based on his crazy hours and experience his salary was reasonable.

I don't see anyone getting criminal charges to stick on JPop, he has too many defenses (the incompetency defense is a good one against a bad faith argument). Just my personal opinion.

Stupid place to argue about JJP. He is building and delivering pins. JPOP is not. To my dismay.

JPOP is not bad faith. It's not criminal. But its "criminally" incompetent.

I agree with this completely.

To say that Jack jumped in to the "cold water" that Gary was talking about and "has done pretty darn well" is not something that can said with any degree of certainty at all. I am not talking about how well JJP did (or didn't) with the actual manufacture of WoZ and getting it to customers, I am talking about making pins and turning a healthy profit, which I am sure is what Gary was referring to.

Clearly JJP had a decent amount of capital to get things rolling, but I agree that the costs involved in doing so have been very high, and I would be very surprised if JJP isn't still well within the red. Which makes the delays with Hobbit a bit surprising, as you'd think they'd be all over that to get them out the door to generate additional cash flow. I doubt that they are selling a ton of new WOZs at this point.

Well...that was off topic.

A bit off topic but not as much as one would think. The topic being pinball startups finding it VERY difficult to turn a profit.

I sincerely hope that if and when JJP's current run ends that you will be revealed as the disgusting shill you have constantly served to be.

The fact is a lot of startups (including JJP) are finding pinball manufacturing to be a VERY difficult business to make a profit in. Sadly, the pattern is showing repeatedly that those who ask questions are shouted down and random buffoons like yourself who think they're such good friends of the various proprietors act out of stupidity as shills despite having zero common sense in regards to financials.

Dude relax that's a bit harsh. Agree it's taking long and that burns money but let's keep this thread focused on jpop and hope we don't have to have a similar one again for now.

You should sign up for a new account when trying to make the Jpop thread about JJP. PM Pinchili, he can tell you how to do it

Guys, no need to make this personal. And really, no need to drag Jack into this. John has enough drama as it is to support a drama thread, don't you think?

19 buyers at $17k does not make a market.

Maybe with your title and this image, we've got a winner

QSS

Back to jpop talk

As an observer (no skin in the game), is this number accurate?

It represents a portion of the money sent to JPOP years ago, with at this point no games in sight.

I have read the total amount over the multiple games is over a million.

Let's ease back on the dramatics here! There are games in sight (see pic) there maybe no code in sight but there are games in sight.
image.jpg

The dollar figure is, but I think it's supposed to be more than 19 now right? I can't keep track of how the edition has been expanded though.

It's 16K each and he has collected from 19 people. Additional buyers are on a waiting list with nothing invested. Total limited to 50. At this time...

the thing that has bothered me about the pic of those machines is that stuff seems to be out of wack from each other. that ramp especially. I know they are prototypes but man it just gets me

Were there ever white woods of this game? I don't think so...so these are working protos without code??? Hmm? My guess is that these are going to be orders 1-3 at some point.

Close up public pics of these would only help the guy.. To find investors, to do something other then treat his customers like shit

Agreed!

Jpop must be afraid joe Balcer will steal his layout lol
It's going to take two more years at this rate... He has to hide the design so no one copies it in his mind

yea.. 2 years ago (or was it 2 days ago?), it's a mystery!
https://magicgirldev.wordpress.com/2015/04/04/flipping-you-didnt-last-long-did-you-huh/

Anyone going to confront him at Michigan expo or just ball lap him?

It would be a fascinating scenario if the owners got together and hired a programmer after the game was delivered with little code. A physical game delivered without much code but open to code mods would be way better than no game at all. We all know the art will be outstanding.

Maybe that would be something the pre-buyers should group together and discuss with John to get something for their hard earned money.

No way. Full game or full refund. All or nothing.

I had that mindset too, but trust me, you'd rather have the game. The latter isn't an option...

Pred #50

I'd rather bankrupt him if it came to it. Who wants a pretty boat anchor?

It would not be a boat anchor if the owners got together and had some code done the way they want it to be done. Bankrupting John does not appear to be a good end result for the pre-buyers as they would end up with nothing. At least with delivering a game lacking programming there would be the possibility of modding the game to have good code.

I am certainly not on John's side, but am merely trying to be realistic of what could be salvaged so that everyone gets the most possible of what is left. Iceman obviously has lost hope so that should tell people things are not looking rosy at the moment.

This would really depend on the hardware platform. I'm doubtful the source code would be made available, so you'd really be starting from scratch.

I’m pretty creative at problem solving and I’m fairly knowledgeable about business and finance. So yesterday I spent some time Googling crowdfunding and taxes. I need to verify this with my CPA but I like what I found. In brief, losing money in a crowdfunding deal is a legal tax deduction just like any investment loss. And for any tax bracket.

Here are two notable paragraphs cut and pasted.

"The Tax Implications of Equity Crowdfunding in the U.S.
Crowdfunding is a term used often in the startup space. Depending on the context in which it is used, it refers broadly to crowd-sourcing donations, securing financial contributions for a start-up in exchange for perks, pre-sale of a development-stage product in order to finance production, or a general solicitation for the sale of equity interest in a startup organization

"B. Capital Losses
Capital losses are realized when an equity stake in a company is sold for less than its original purchase price or the company in question declares bankruptcy. The shareholder can write off short or long-term capital losses, depending on the life of the organization in question or the duration for which the shares were held. Short and long-term are measured by the same standards for losses as they are for gains.
If capital loss is greater than net capital gain in a given year, up to $3,000 of the net loss can be offset against regular income in order to reduce tax exposure. If your capital loss exceeds $3,000 or your taxable income without the capital loss deduction is less than zero, you may carry the deduction over to the next year. Capital gains and losses should be reported on Schedule D of IRS Form 1040

You can read the entire article here. http://www.lawforchange.org/NewsBot.asp?MODE=VIEW&ID=6362

Now I don’t want Jpop to go tits up on this. My first choice at this point would be a refund so I can get off this roller coaster. My second choice would be delivery of a fully functional machine. But as a disaster recovery I see great satisfaction here.

As always, I never mind being proven wrong and I love to learn. So please feel free to dispute my findings. - Any CPA’s have a clue here?

The million dollar question, and I'm guessing the IRS would call it a non-deductible personal expense.

I haven't a clue about that and always depend on my CPA for the fine print details.

Edit/Add: In re-reading the description of crowdfunding, I don't think so. It seems to be treated as an investment.

I'm curious about this as well. I wonder if you had a machine on rout already and were planning on putting this one on rout if that would change the status . . . (clearly it would be pretty wild to put a 17k machine on rout . . . but who knows, Kingpin is on rout right now and it is a 40k machine).

Where? That one's rare enough that finding it on route would be a trip.

Vegas. PHOF.

King pins more then 40k, at least the one I sold was

How have I missed this? I was just there for the PAC12 tournament, but wasn't able to make it to PHOF this time. Guess I have to find another reason to go to Vegas. Oh darn. :rolleyes:

Might not have been on the floor?

So do I need a secret handshake to put a few games on it?