That's kinda my point regarding being repetitive. Over a year ago they promised a deep and extensive ruleset. I hope that is still the plan, but this does not fit that description.

I didn't say anything about a narrative, just that there is more to do than shoot the left ramp of the original. I've had time on the game, at expo and away from expo. Is it done, no. Is it fun, yes. Will more get added, I hope so, that was the promise. I'm still on board and not really worried.

First off, I'm a huge supporter of the project and I do have "skin in the game". Buyers are concerned because of the big delays that have occurred and the fact that DP is on another bigger project. We accept that adding color would set back the project since all graphics would need to be re-rendered. The Metamorphosis is an important part of the game and if any modes should have been developed first, it was this one. I'm still really excited about the kit and can't wait to get it installed.

DP is keeping pretty quiet about this, I think they have something up their sleeves. We will forget about all of this dumb software drama soon enough.

I hope not. Meaning, I hope they're not being quiet on purpose to try and reveal some surprise. I'm tired of lack of communication.

Agreed, I just want my kit!

If I bought my TronLE and the Recognizer did not move, the disc did not spin and the wall did not move down, I'd say THAT was very broken.

The face metamorphosis in the Bride is kinda the whole focal point of the game.

I look forward to seeing the whole game working.

While true, and it should work, this is a different game than BoP.

if the code is in the Python framework at least we could finish it ourselves. Assuming we get our kits

I wondered if that may have been their thinking all along. Get the kit out and let someone else finish the code. I am sure someone with ambition will get sick of waiting and complete the code themselves. Then being the awesome community that pinball is, he will make it available to me. Er. I mean us... I meant us.

Maybe I have got this wrong, but . . .

After expo they had licensing issues with Rick/PPS/Williams that took a few months to resolve. I would have to think that during that time they were doing nothing on BOP2.0, since it was not clear the issues could be resolved satisfactorily. Maybe if they did not have TBL going on they may have taken that risk, but why would way they given the circumstances. So it is not that they have had a whole year since then to be working on code. If it was me, no freaking way I'd be working on the code until the license issue was resolved.

They upgraded the game to full color, and the leading edge graphics are even better. I believe this was done without raising the price, and based on my own experience, I'm pretty sure they also needed to upgrade the computer that is running this. Coloring all of the 3d animations they could not have been a quick activity for them.

It does appear that the upgrade kit is incredibly well designed, as they really thought of things to make it clean and easy. Just based on the reports here, I am pretty impressed by it. Not like they are asking folks to cut wires, re-crimp molex, etc. The design of the power board to cleanly handle booting up the game and the computer with out causing issues/damage is a really nice feature (nice work by Scott on that).

The software is at least what has been shown at expo, so not like it has regressed and certainly sounds like more has been done and that they have more stuff in the works. The game is totally playable right now, has added a tremendous amount to the game and how cool is that in the future there will be new stuff to explore and enjoy. I don't think anyone believes that DP is going to disappear on this. In addition they have been quick to communicate on issues and concerns. They were quick to work with those who some initial issues.

This thread is a classic pinside thread where there are folks who can't see the forest for the trees and just want to bitch and moan. This is a great time in pinball with all of these new players advancing the technology. If folks are not willing to have some ups and down, then maybe they should stick with their 80s and 90s games exactly the way they are and just be happy and stop getting involved with new leading edge projects like BOP2.0 or any of the pins being made by folks other then Stern.

Nope...I think you are 100% accurate...

I really doubt that they want US touching their code. I know people who CAN do this, but, I'm sure the source code will be off limits. I think it'll eventually get done. I still trust them since all of my e-mail messages to Barry have been responded to (eventually).

Given that the game is being done under license and as a commercial product, I'd be surprised if any of the source code is available. Way back when BOP 2.0 first started up as a single machine hobby project, the code was available (as is code for a lot of the P-ROC hobby machines), but when Dutch Pinball decided to go commercial the code was pulled.

I can't see the terms of the license from PPS/Williams allowing anyone else to make changes, but then I have confidence in the team to deliver themselves.

You're right. I spoke with Scott last nite and he calmed me down....I'm normally pretty patient about stuff - but even I've started to get burnt out on all the pre-orders, lack of communication, unfinished code, etc. Even though I'm on "Team Dutch", I was getting a bit wiggley. I wouldn't say it's "classic Pinside" though...you have to admit, there are a lot of quasi-F'd-up projects right now...and for the customer, they're all extremely expensive.

-Jpop behind schedule and possibly delusional
-Skit-B behind schedule and "hiding" in silence
-Stern games with bugs and unfinished code, and their apparent lack of perspective about why it's an issue
-Dutch losing Phil and BOP 2.0 not shipping yet & being incomplete
-Heighway taking orders for Aliens before Full Throttle comes out
-All the Hobbit shenanigans
-MMr delays and drama

Did I forget anything? I think we as customers have understandably become upset about the state of things in the Pinniverse....not just usual Pinside Drama for the sake of drama IMO.

BTW, I really should just say - kudos to Spooky Pinball....with all the B.S. going on, their successful completion of a game kinda gets lost in the shuffle of insanity!

That's actually kinda funny huh? The one place making a game drama free and releasing them is the ones getting no press

Can't disagree with much here. Still don't get why people think losing Phil is a concern/issue. To my knowledge he was not involved in the design of the game, the coding of it, the production of it, or the original kick ass marketing. I continue to see that as a total non-event. Of all the guys on that team, he was clearly the least important -- imho

I think heighway's machine is really innovative in what they have done with it , whether you like the new cabinet, LCD placement or not. I am curious to see how their LEDs perform given their design on that and we all know the issues JJP had with that and my impression is there is a similar approach -- but I could be wrong. I agree it would be nice for them to have gotten throttles out the door (which I assume they haven't based on your comment), before announcing a second game, but I suspect the clock is ticking on how long they have to get Alien out based on the license. The same may be true with Skit-B and while I don't think Kevin needs to respond to every post, a monthly update on progress would probably appease the majority of folks.

It's because at Expo they seemed like the unstoppable Superfriends or something...finally a company with everyone on the same page working toward a common goal. It was refreshing since Stern and JJP seem so internally fragmented. It was a bummer when it turned out to be somewhat of an illusion, and they were just as flawed as the rest of us.

Or, alternately, maybe companies should stop taking our money and delivering half-finished products, with poor communication.

I'm done with the slack cutting. For anyone. I love what Dutch Pinball is doing, I was in on TBL, but I just can't support this model anymore. Stern, JJP, DP, SkitB, I don't care who it is.

This is a software project. The hardware exists only to support that fact. Shipping it with the software so unfinished sucks. There's no hand waving that away. Rick, blah blah, I know all about it. They chose to not finish the game during all that BS, and I think it's lame. Just because I like Dutch Pinball doesn't mean they should get some free pass.

I like Stern, I like Steve Ritchie, I'm pissed about Star Trek being so broke ass still. And the reason they get away with it is because we keep rationalizing it. Forget it, no more buying new stuff until you actually are ready to give me what I paid for.

Does anyone here think Keefer isn't rad? Guy is awesome. Does anyone here think Hobbit will ship with even vaguely complete code? I sure as hell don't. That's the new status quo, and we accept it. Bleh.

Wow

Honestly I'm still as excited for a bop 2.0 as I was one year ago when I sent my money in.
If you don't have the stomach for a pre order maybe you should wait on the sidelines.
Imo

You have all the stomachs.

Nobody is holding a gun to our heads. They present a product and ask for our money, we can say no.

That is probably the most sensible thing to do. It will certainly save a lot of worry.

On the other hand...

This statement matches my expectations. I'm in on a few pre-orders because I would prefer to get a break on the price and I don't think many of the new companies would exist if there weren't people willing to take a risk and pre-order machines. Would there be a JJP and WOZ if no one pre-ordered the game?

I expect the games will take much longer than initially stated. That's the thing with a new company, they haven't been through the whole process before so there's bound to be many things they don't anticipate.

Doesn't matter much to me how long it takes or how good their communication is if the games get made and are good. I figure there is plenty on their plate without having to hold my hand through the process. But that's just me. I understand that the project could fail if enough people who are more sensitive to poor communication, time delays, etc... make a "run on the bank".

Yay somebody else sees the big picture.

This doesn't have anything to do with having the stomach for pre-orders or seeing the big picture. I was in on the original BBB and I'm on RAZA, so I know all about being patient. It's about following through on the expectations you set. This is far from a DP-specific issue. Unfortunately we've all been lemming enough that none of the companies respect us as typical real-world consumers. It's our faults for conditioning these companies to think it's OK.

Delivering BoP 2.0 almost a year late, in a state far more premature than they led people to believe it would be is not the right way to do business. I'm still hopeful that the end product will be cool, but I can't say they've instilled the confidence that they'll carry it through. Yes there were licensing issues, but there were months after expo 2013 before they ran into those issues, and there have been months now since those issues were resolved in principle. However, there hasn't really been any perceivable progress on the game code. You may be cool with that, but frankly you shouldn't be.

Two way street though...
The code is being worked on, it's likely the U.S. versions will ship with more completed code and hell yes it will be completed in the near future.
If you don't prepay we're pretty much stuck with stern and that's an idea I do not like.
Refunds are available if you're outraged or you can wait it out with the rest of us.
I think there's alot more to this issue than is reported on Pinside and I'm resting comfortably knowing that DP is working hard on this project.

That's certainly a legit way to look at it, and it's entirely possible that without people willing to step up and play the pre-order game that (new) pinball would die off. I get that.

On the other hand the big picture I see is also one that includes enabling the kind of stupid behavior that means you pay $7,000 for a game, and over a year later it's still full of bugs and broke ass shit.

You know who didn't do that? Spooky. AMH is being built, as promised. Ben's working on a "final" update with some fixes and features that have been requested and I applaud that, but they shipped the game done. So it's obviously possible, even for a small shop.

Maybe TBL will ship on time with finished code, that would rule. But I'm okay with being in the "doesn't have the stomach for it" camp. It's just not enjoyable for me.

So did you really cancel Aurich or still chewing on it? Haven't revealed it to the RTR preorder list yet I see... so there's a chance...

There are a lot of things that have to be taken on faith here. And DP has not earned that faith yet. How do we know they are even working on the code? The expectation on a code only project was that it would ship completed. Not even having a wizard mode in it or having the metamorphosis try turn, it's not even coming out of my shop that way.

I hear the project had been completed and the hold up is only PPS. If so then why hasn't the project been finished during that long delay? Now that it's shipping incomplete, I do not believe the lie that the hold up was all licensing. They still have a lot of work to do. And as for having faith that it'll get done, absolutely not. If the reason they waited for all this time not working on it was because it was a licensing risk, that means that after taking people's full payments they silently had it in their mind that they may not deliver. It's not a leap to think that with that mindset that they won't finish.

It's also not as simple as asking for a refund. Many of us have bought bop machines we otherwise wouldn't want and restored them. There is really no going back. We don't want refunds. We want the finished game we ordered.

sorry but it's not true. After having the game in my house a couple weeks I realized just how buggy it is. It was almost impossible to play through a 2 player game without hitting some of the game ending bugs that I listed in some of the other threads. There are different ways to consider a project complete. Rushing through the code to get the features implemented but so buggy you can't play through consistently is just as bad as carefully coding with some QA but not getting everything done. The AMH has some of the worst and most glaring bugs of any game ever released. It's far from finished like this. I'm not going to go into detail of what they are here as other threads discussed it. Normally I consider software can be completed with a few small bugs. But this is way beyond that. AMH DID NOT SHIP COMPLETE.

Emailed Barry already, done deal. I guess it's too late now, but I didn't want to make a big deal out of it, wasn't going to go into the pre-order thread and announce it or anything.

The truth is I've always thought pre-ordering was bullshit. Thought so on WOZ, on Jpop, Predator, etc etc. But I can't lie, I fell under the spell of Phil and DP at Expo. Got excited and wanted in. I still think it's a fabulous project that could be a great game. But it's too much money, and too much stress, and too much heartache, and I just want to play pinball and enjoy it.

I bought Star Trek NIB because I wanted to make new art for it. That's really the reason I didn't wait to pick up a HUO one, I wanted to play it, but I wanted to "play with it" too. Lesson learned though, it's been over a year, and the code is a mess, Ritchie is pissed, and I doubt I'll ever buy another Lonnie game that's for sure.

So no more new games that are half assed, no more pre-ordering games. I don't care what the theme is. If I just want to look at something I'll get a nice print.

Sorry to hear that. Coding pinball isn't easy, or it wouldn't take so long. Ben's probably learning a lot from this experience. I still respect what Spooky is doing though. They communicate, they do what they say they'll do, they're available. It's like the polar opposite of the SkitB mess.

I believe the licensing issues hit immediately after expo and took quite awhile to resolve.

I would consider moving everything to color to be 'progress on the game code', given what I know about the procgame framework on which it was originally built on, it had zero support for color. So not only did they have to go back and upgrade all of the animations to color, they and to make significant changes to the framework to support color. In addition, unless someone played the crap out of it at expo in 2013, not sure how anyone could assess how much the code has progressed since then.

Nah they could have quickly copied anything Eric did on CCC for color support for the framework portion. Unless they're not using the p-roc supported libraries anyway. Colorization does not take a year. Nor does the lead programmer need to spend 8 hours a day every work day to work out licensing issues. None of this is a decent explanation. Sorry.

The approach Eric took has extreme limitations in both the amount of color it can support and system performance, (a factor with the frame rate being used on bop2.0). Eric will be the first to tell you that the approach he took has serious limitations and was a hack that got him just enough for what he needed.

At one point I implemented Eric's method and quickly abandoned it due to these limitations. I've been working with another developer, who also looked at Eric's approach and abandoned it, and we have done our own upgrade to the procgame framework to support full 24 bit color and I can tell you it took us months to get it working effectively. This method was on display at expo on three machines: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the Kugler Family and Casino

I am fairly certain that while DP started down a similar path as to what Eric did, like us, they found it was not going to get the job done and they then took a much different approach.

And as I said, why would they have a developer working on BOP2.0 when they had licensing issues going on? There was certainly no guarantee they could reach an agreement on it, and there were rumors at one point that DP was ready to shelve it.

It's more complicated than that. But it doesn't matter, because that was someone like Phil's problem, not the programmer. The legal stuff had nothing to do with whether or not it could be finished, that wasn't the hold up. So they chose to focus on other stuff for at least part of it I guess.

Not sure what you mean by this. If they could not reach the licensing agreement, the ability to play the original game would not be there, without physically changing things back, and aspects of the new version would have needed to be changed since they featured the bride image. The inability to play the original would have probably been a show stopper for the project, since that would have had a huge negative impact on sales.

So, yes, given all of that uncertainty, they probably were putting their focus elsewhere.

Is what it is now, and the details aren't something to talk about in public anyways. What's more important is seeing the communication going forward, and more importantly, how quickly the game gets updates and attention.

I'm pulling for DP, I still think they have enormous potential.

Because they took money for sales of it. That's why. Nowhere were the terms of preorder "up in the air" pending hopefulness of sorting out licensing. If they were thinking that they might can the project at any time then I would trust them even less!

100%

DP has pooched the BoP 2.0 thing and I don't understand why so many are willing to give them a pass. They can still right the ship, but that doesn't excuse how poorly they've handled this up to now. They had unforeseen issues for sure, but they could have dealt with the situation much better than they did.

Here's hoping we're all happy in the end.

That said, at least they're shipping SOMETHING.

Can't say the same for the rest of the field.

I don't think they anticipated the licensing issues. I know if it was me, I would not have thought that including a version of the original software to owners of a machine, that have the rights to that software, to be an issue. And if it was going to cost them a huge amount of money to include it, to the point that they would either lose money or have to jack up the price big time, that is certainly not something I would hold against them and make me trust them less.

Those guys have done nothing to show they are not trustworthy. And not sure how you think they could have handled it better. I believe they indicated there was some licensing issues there were working through and I'm sure the details of those had to be kept confidential. All I know is it seemed to take a pretty long time to reach an agreement, and I am sure part of that was Rick wanting to have an agreement that would work for him with future projects like this. There were plenty of threads with Rick talking about they were working through it and ultimately they came to an agreement, and it was not long after that Rick and FAST announced plans around 2.0 games to make it easier for things like this to happen. This was clearly uncharted territory, so it is not surprising that DP ran into unexpected challenges.

It is clear to me that lots of folks here have totally unreasonable expectations relative how these things work, when a company is moving into uncharted territory and the challenges of a new business. However DP has been pretty communicative on what has been going on, just go back and look through the threads on this. Scott was regularly jumping in with updates.

As I said earlier, I suggest those that have the level of impatience where something gets delayed several months is enough to attack the company behind it, should not get involved in these product offerings. Clearly there are plenty here who have had little issue with the delay, are happy to have an amazing upgrade to their machine, and understand that there is more to come.

I hope that these types of attitudes, don't discourage others from doing 2.0 and other type of projects.

I suspect that if DP did the math on this project, they probably ended up making about 25 cents an hour for their work. Clearly this project was a labor of love and obviously it bothers me that they are being attacked by some on pinside.

I personally don't give a crap about bop1 working. I mean it's nice but it's no deal breaker. Most of us went out and bought a bop machine just for this software. That indicates that the original software wasn't good enough to own the machine. Shelving the project due to bop1 issues should never have been a consideration. They should have been working hard to complete it (licensing issues aside) as bop2 could be completed without licensing at all I think. They could have updated later to include bop1 and whatever had to be licensed.

I still don't buy the colorizing problems either. You say Eric's method wasn't very good as it limited colors and had performance issues. But CCC runs plenty fast. Modern computers are cheap and fast now. Performance shouldn't be a worry at all. And as for color palet limits, who cares? It's DMD dot graphics. I bet you can't really tell the difference either way unless you compare side by side. Certainly the difference is not worth an extra year of development at least. Plus your timeline argument is hard to follow. On one hand you say it takes a year to implement the dots correctly then on the other hand say they shelved the project due to licensing. Well, which is it? It can't be both.

I agree we don't want to discourage people doing side projects here. But this isn't a home brew side project anymore. DP is an actual pinball company making a real game and selling for profit. There needs to be some communications to customers of huge things like software shipping half done or potentially canceling the project while we are all told it's about to ship any day. I just can't see your argument against these things.

Regarding the bop 2.0 software, Koen posted today on the dutch pinball forum that the 1.09 revision should be released very soon

That's cool. Does anyone know what's in that vs what ships?

The alphanumeric display emulation should be full screen (from a previous post from Koen in this thread)

http://www.dutchpinball.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=20

For the rest, i don't know. I hope it will bring some new modes. Wait & see.

This thread has me stressed out. I'm going to lay down.

I didn't say Eric's method wasn't very good, it was great for CCC, and his solution was very innovative, and would work well for other games that need to run at the current frame rate animations on WPC and Stern games use and with a limited palette, which is probably 99% of them. Whether that amount of color would have worked with the BOP2.0, I don't know, I am not sure how much of a palette they wanted/needed, but suspect more than what Eric's solution would support, given the types of gradients there are using on their 3D objects. I will acknowledge that I can't say that for certain, since I have not looked deeply into their new animations (I've only had a couple of games on the color version). I am pretty confident that the method would not have worked well with the frame rate that I believe BOP2.0 runs at.

In addition, once they decided to go to color, which again they did without a change in price, it would have been pretty dumb to pour a ton of engineering time into a solution that would then not work for their next project. So, maybe they could have used Eric's approach, added some optimization to squeeze more performance out of it, and get BOP2.0 to market a month or so earlier, but all of that engineering time would have been a total throw away relative to TBL and other projects -- and in my opinion, that would have been a pretty dumb business decision.

I don't think I said it would take a year to implement the dots correctly, if I did, I misspoke, what I believe I said was it was not as easy as just plugging in Eric's solution, and did require some real engineering.

I find it interesting to be challenged on some of these technical aspects, when I have a ton of experience and knowledge on what Eric did, having discussed it with him at depth, reviewed his code line by line, and having initially implemented it for my game, before moving in a different direction, when I decided to move to a larger screen and wanted more then a couple of hundred color/shades. In addition, based on a few comments from Koen, I'm pretty sure the approach they have now taken is very similar to what I and MOcean have done, and I certainly know what is involved in that, and while it would not take a year, it would not have been done in a week either. I do think you should respect that I know what I am talking about as far as the technical and software aspects.

I am confident that the use of the "Bride" in the new animations, would have been impacting the need for licensing, just like the use of CC images and sounds became an issue with downloading those with the CCC code. And while they could have removed the Bride and most folks would have been fine with that, I seriously doubt everyone would agree with you that losing the original game was okay. I am 100% confident, that there would have been as much, if not more, griping, on this board if it shipped without the original code, since that was the original commitment on the project.

Whether they were going to can the project was my impression from a variety of things I read on pinside, other forums, and conversations with other pinball enthusiasts, it is not something I ever heard from Barry or Koen. I know if it was me, and I was trying to get TBL going, at some point if I could not resolve the licensing issues on BOP2.0 in a way that made financial sense, I would have canned it.

I don't think they ever said 'it will be shipping any day', when the licensing issues were going on. I believe when the agreement was reached, that Rick posted, they could start shipping, but as I said, I'm pretty confident they had not been putting a ton of work in getting it ready until after the agreement. Do you think they should have been buying computers, speakers, amplifiers, LCD displays, having speaker panels made, creating wiring harnesses, etc. when they were not 100% sure they would be able to ship? Would you?

Don't let it...I am really looking forward to reading back through this in 6 months....

I could see this aggression with other companies that have a proven track record of games not being delivered on time and code not being complete. But no matter how much we want to think DP is in the same league as these other companies, they are not. I see DP catching a lot of flack because of frustration that has been created by other companies.....

DP is fast approaching becoming a competitor. But they are new, and cutting teeth is painful. Putting all your faith in a new company is something to be proud of, but thinking they will not have bumps in the road might be a little short sighted.

Here's a thought....maybe the guys in the US could wait until they have their own kit, with the code that's provided to bitch about it. For all we know, the US guys could be getting a finished product. Maybe not. But if so, isn't this just turning into a huge circle jerk?

Yeah, and I agree with you, new companies will have issues and when you back them, you are backing those potential bumps in the road. I've backed enough things on Kickstarter and Indiegogo to know that sometimes you just gotta let it go, give them time and space and in the end, you'll get what you were promised. Delays suck, it's just a bummer that it seems to be becoming the norm for anyone who isn't Stern...yet at the same time, those are all relatively new companies. It's tough to remember sometimes that you're not just paying them to build your machine, you are also paying them to build their company, and that's more often than not the difficult part.

That being said, it still worries me that I may be getting a product much later than anticipated, or in much worse condition than I expected (code wise). You mention track record, but really, BOP 2.0 IS their track record. That's a concern, and I think it's a valid reason for people to worry.

I'm riding out the storm that may or may not exist for TBL, for better or worse, because it's a game that I really want. It just doesn't get my hopes up when I read through this thread and it sounds like everything BOP2.0 is just a massive clusterfuck.

burningman - You have a lot of good feedback which is what is really surprising me that you continue to say that the frustration towards DP with BOP is not justified and that we have unreasonable expectations. That is very surprising. Almost like you have only read back to after the license stuff started. DP brought on most of the frustrations themselves. There communications has not been good. It was getting better but that's yet to be seen on if it continues. At first we would go months without a word after production was supposed to start. That's not other companies causing that frustration.

Here are the facts that have caused the frustration's towards DP -
- it was said, this time last year, that once __ orders were made they would start production of the kits. If that number wasn't reached the project would not go on. This forces the pre-order so to say we all should have waited shows that you don't understand how this all started.
- That number was hit and things were good to start production. Communication went dead for a while then we all found out about the license issues. When that first happened a simple - "hey, guys. Looks like we need an official license to produce this since we want to keep BOP 1.0 in the game. This will delay production but we'll keep you in the loop." would have prevented a lot of the concerns. Again, frustration not brought on by other companies.
- Then we were told all parts were sent to the US for building. That turns out to not be true. Again, not a frustration caused by another company.
- Then we are not told by DP that the code is behind what we all were under the impression it was at but we found out by a test installer. Later confirmed by DP. Again, frustration not caused by another company.

These are just the high level events. To say that we went in with unreasonable expectations is nonsense. Our expectation was to buy a $2K kit and have a fully working $2K kit early 2014 as that is what was "sold" to us. Once neither of those actions happened buyers are well within reason to start showing concern. Remember, this was sold as a kit not an idea they wanted to research for possible delivery.

At the end of the day, I also still think DP will be a key player in future Pinball projects and I think they will grow as a company from there mistakes on this project. Markmon is right though. We as a community seem to give a bit to much leniency with these types of situations. It's up to us, as customers, to start showing the market we are tired of being treated in this fashion. If we cont to sit back and keep our mouth closed we are not helping to improve the industry. Companies spend millions in market research to get the information that we provide in these forums for free. They would be smart to listen to the good and bads so that they can better their business for the long term. Judging by the calls I've personally received from feedback I've posted in the past, I think a few (DP included) are listening.

uhh no, i highly doubt this. I know several people in on this and none of them bought a BoP for this conversion, we all had them already.