A lot of speculation from people here, and I'm going to add to Paul's reply (which really outlines our core operating principles as a company quite nicely!)

When you approach a manufacturer, one of the largest concerns is tooling costs. This isn't just the cost of the tools to make the parts, but whats the setup and tear down time that the manufacturer incurs for producing the game (like training the assembly personnel, QA checks, etc). Putting a game out like Pinball Circus was really really difficult. We worked tirelessly just to build the first prototype of it, which many of you have seen. It was on a brand new hardware platform, and I had to rewrite all the software from scratch. Paul and James had to figure out how to assemble some very complex and very unique mechanical assemblies just to get the game to work. Don't even get me started on the wireforms. That game had some of the most complex wireform assemblies of ANY pinball machine ever. You can't just walk up to a manufacturer and tell them to build it, especially without a pretty decent minimum order.

The game we've been working on now for TPF (still tirelessly) has mostly standard pinball parts in it. The BOM is much more clearly defined, and the tooling costs, assembly setup/teardown costs are likely much more reasonable for this game. That makes it a lot easier to go to manufacturers since they're already tooled up to make machines of this form factor. We then use the increased demand for this game to build out our manufacturing network, which lowers costs for us and you, which we can then leverage to do more complex games in the future.

Everyone here that claims its not a smart move doesn't have any skin in the game. We're proud of that, we've never risked any of YOUR money, its been our own money, time, etc. That is a bedrock principle in how we'll continue to operate.

Come see us at TPF, you won't be disappointed.

Back to working on code for the game...

-- Jimmy