they were at expo...with the game...don't laugh to hard..i pointed out that there was a fly under the glass in the play field of sonic the hedge hog pin....it was flying around trying to get out lol..they just had put the game on the legs,we were both laughing when he saw it. hes like ya agh that game was in my garage...he opened the glass and let it free haha

No horse in this race any longer. The guys were always very up front with things and I got my refund within 4 days of asking to get out. I had nothing but good vibes from Kevin and his team. I would be very surprised if this turned out to be anything other than wait time due to unforeseen issues.

Just my 0.02 I could be wrong it has happened many times before.

Well, I would not say scam,... I would say he has ran into some type of license issue, or parts..

I just hope whatever way this goes that both opposing sides are mature enough to NOT play the, "I told you so" game! I mean if Kevin were to post tonight and include massive details and photos....the believers should respect the other side having concerns based on existing ( or non-existing) information at the time of posting here! We all have to draw conclusions in life, and sometimes you do not make friends when doing it. With the delays, secrecy of Predator ( remember the YouTube video teasing what was in the other room?), Predator advertising removed from site, Pinside posting/sharing info. decrease, delayed refunds, etc. it is no wonder concerns were voiced here!!!

On the flip side. I really hope this does not happen and likely will not. Should somehow things go down the tubes nobody should be saying, " I told you so"! To the folks that had their hard earned money in the project. It has to work both ways no matter what the final result is! Professional and friendly courtesy!

Just my 2 cents

Im rooting for Whysnow

Oh, I think It will be made, just may take a little longer than expected, I am rooting for whysnow too,
AND all the other's who have an order. just having a little fun.
but I am very concerned about the absence of Predator from their website...

You raise a valid point. Is either party allowed to contact Skit b and possibly influence the result? Like say...." Kev...please move me up in the build order"? Or, " Kev....please move that guy down in the build order"

Gotta make you wonder....

Did I miss something? Kevin mentioned more than once about getting the license...also IIRC, he said the Little Richard song was the most expensive part.....WTF ppl ?

see this post:
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/new-predator-info-thread

Kevin:
Game information: 100% custom game based on the P-ROC hardware available at http://www.pinballcontrollers.com. Game is officially licensed to carry the Predator brand and has a giant list of sound and voice clips cut from the movie itself. There is a vulgarity switch in the settings menu to turn off all swearing, if you have a family-friendly game room and aim to keep it that way.

I recommend reading the whole thread and forming your own opinions or educated guesses.

There is also a time-frame for utilizing a license, as many of you have read, Companies have a time-frame to produce a "said" product by "said" time, and for a length of time. And many checks and balances..
And, there is a beginning and an end to these.
They may have missed a "submission" to the licensee , due to parts, over-looking a deadline, etc...

What I have the hardest time understanding is the boutique pre-pay model. Why can't these guys get an escrow account for pre-purchase money and then use that as the bait to get VC? A hard money lender at 15-20% would really light a fire under their asses and get them moving a lot more than $750k in a bank account. It's not unrealistic to expect timelines out of these guys when they're sitting on your money. The only reason for a lack of transparency is because something is fouled up. If they would just be honest and up front about their problems, they could probably find a lot of cheap help to solve them. But I suspect that all this smoke and mirrors BS comes from a lie. Otherwise, there would be no need to hide your problems.

They all should be crowd-sourcing solutions, not cash.

_{Post edited by SadSack: Because birds aren't necessarily bad.}

Haven't read this whole thread yet, but I will say, I got my refund the same week I canceled my order. I dropped off justifiably because Kevin changed the terms of the agreement, it was supposed to be pay half as your pin was near completion and pay the other half just before shipping. He changed the terms astoundingly to pay more than half many, many months before delivery.

I think this was fishy, plus the fact that communication was cut off, integral team members were removed from the project, no real gameplay footage for months after the 'mission complete' fiasco and still no games more that 5 months after the huge collection of money, more money than Kevin had ever seen in his life most likely.

I hope the game is delivered, but I dislike how Kevin has handled communications, deadlines (I believe these were supposed to be ready Christmas 2013 (or sooner). Plus a few other reservations such as the simplistic layout and lack of toys the game and non-working UV paint.

Good luck probably Kevin has bookkeeping or email issues or something which prevented him from refunding you, because most people I've heard have got their refunds.

I'm not guessing nor prognosticating whether they lost the liscense or hit a stumbling block. However, the wording of the partial quote you posted is very ambiguous. What is the "Predator brand". Name, fonts, themes, actors, all of the actors? I know that certain stars stipulate how their likeness can be portrayed (ala Wesley snipes/demo man or Micheal J Fox/back to the future pins). Perhaps one of the celebs balked at being featured in a pinball game or they never had the right to display them in the first place. It says sound and voice clips but that could be limited to sfx sound and bit part characters that didn't have the clout to negotiate restrictions to the usage of their likeness and or audio. Predator brand is a very open ended statement when going back and looking at it now. It was easy to assume it meant the whole shebang when we were seeing proof of concept of the whole primary cast.

Again, I don't have a horse in this race. I was never in to begin with. The phrase just struck me funny in light of everything. Food for thought. I'm sure everything would sort out ok.

It's funny that myself, Ted and Navajas dropped out of the project, looking back we were three of the most active supporters of Predator, but the delays and the lack of communication and the change in payment methods at least for me were unacceptable.

I have even donated money to Kevin (hard to believe that happened).

I'm guessing he got the rights to the movie, but not the actors in it. Maybe Arnold saw this and was like, HELL NO! Either way, I'm glad I bailed on this game when I did...Love the theme so much, but I just got the feeling this game was going to become a circus. And here we are, circus and all.

This thread need a Hitler vid

No scam, just poor business.

Predator lost as a theme, that is sad.

I had heard that they had run into issues with the license and using the likeness of Arnold. Could this have been true or not, i dont know. But our souces are pretty credible in the pinball industry.

I dont think these guys are scammers ...at least not yet anyways. I think they bit off more then they can chew and now they have to figure out how to fix it.

The situation is this. I can make a kick ass Breaking Bad pinball machine and feature images and sound clips from the entire cast of the show, and take my "one off" game to every pinball show in the world for everyone to enjoy my personal super fan made pinball. The problem i would run into would be when i then decide to make more Breaking Bad Pinballs for profit, taking deposits from buyers that want to reserve a game..before actually having the license from AMC and Bryan Cranston and the rest of the cast.

All in all i wish no ill will for the buyers and Skit B. I hope this issue gets resolved. Im just glad to not be in on this as I think this could get messy for all parties.

I was in way early and out about a year ago. Like I mentioned earlier my refund only took about a week. So after receiving it I basically stopped following the Predator threads. When I resumed recently (hoping to read feedback from owners with the actual pin at home) two things surprised me. 1st was the pin not shipping...I thought no biggie, almost every project anywhere gets hit with delays. The 2nd though..all mention of Predator gone from the website. I do not get this at all. There should be another years worth of info there since my absense visiting there. For Pete's sake, Duck Hunt now has tons of info and that was supposedly a fun side project while main focus was Predator.

Back when I was in I spoke to Kevin and his mother several times. Very exciting and honest appearing people! So the web site removal of Predator without any explanation totally surprises me!!! Does Kevin ever post here anymore? Anyone have the exact last day he posted here? A year ago it seemed like almost every day or every other day he was active here.

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welcome to pinside...

They should post here, I would think.

I don't understand what your questioning? I'm getting a Predator, and don't care how long it takes must have theme, looks great as well.

I hope they post soon.....

Does SkitB have that license? Most of us are puzzled on that question.

What is this a riddle? All I was saying was with first time manufacturing etc. it could take a while. WOZ, took a long time for some pinsiders to receive theirs, I shouldn't post after beer. I better stop.

I'm waiting to see if whysnow is going to take alllll of our bets, I'm actually rooting for him to win lol

When you are sober I suggest reading the whole thread, especially since you are in on Predator.

Yep, not too smart right now. I see by simply reading the initial post what he was asking. Sorry

It is cool. I just want to see everyone get their games or money. I am hoping the actual games are the end game so to speak.

Hazoff-- Im digging the new avatar...The Iatola of Rock and Rolla!

all i can think of;
i don't care how busy you are, don't tell me you don't have 5 minutes to explain exactly what's going on, seriously!

now is the time.

Don't hold your breath....

God Bless that Gary Stern

Speculartion?

My take on it is that there are delays due to changing the controller boards used inside the machine. Originally they were using P-ROC boards (I wonder if the demo machine is still using this) and now I believe they have switched over to using the Fast boards. I think the Fast boards are possibly cheaper (not certain on this) or planning on being cheaper but I don't know if they are even available yet.

Everyone wonders why dutch pinball made a working prototype of TBL so quickly but when using P-ROC it is really quite easy to get something up and running quickly. I am working on my own custom machine and my time to first flips wasn't long at all. The P-ROC hardware may be more expensive but it really is quite solid. If SkitB have decided to go for a cheaper option with Fast, then who knows what kind of issues they may be facing with unproven hardware.

Some interesting bits in this thread for me. (and a lot of waffle )

I'm actually reassured that there has been a reference to two licences being needed as even if the film company had licenced the movie rights this would not include the non-film score music in the soundtrack. So Kevin stating the most expensive bit would be licencing the Little Richard song would make perfect sense.

Pure speculation on my part but possibly the lack of info on the website is due to the length of term on the licence. Once the first machine is "released" they may only have a certain amount of time before it expires. This in turn could mean that there then is an official deadline to get the 250 machines built. By not having info on their site maybe they are buying themselves a little time to go from the prototype to the finished models. As I said this is pure speculation on my part

Kevin and co could kill all this tread pretty easily though with a bit more communication. My gut feeling though is that 99% of the "worried" posts are coming from people who aren't actually still paid up in the deal. I'm 100% paid and would like more communication. However, I'm actually not that stressed about it. If it was $8k then maybe I would be more stressed but for now I'm happy to wait. If I'm still waiting this time next year then I'll probably change my tune.

The one thing that I do think is very wrong though is the couple of posters who haven't had their $250 back yet. Again I suspect this is poor communication/organisation rather than anything more sinister but this simply shouldn't be happening

Hope we all get some communication soon

I sent Kevin an email about this thread im not holding my breath that he'll respond but its worth a shot.

LOL. I hope Gerry gives you a T-shirt or, at least, a few extra stickers for this post.

Predator is a P-ROC game. FAST has nothing to do with any hardware related delays that may or may not exist.

See what I did there? I can also make a statement that means a lot and nothing at all, at the same time.

This thread is just getting ridiculous. But for fun, I'll throw out a few conspiracy theories of my own!

- Stern bought the Predator license out from under Kevin
- Jamie and Adam had some suggestions for Predator and Kevin just can't say no to last minute changes
- Gerry convinced Kevin to release Predator as a video pinball game on his new platform for its unrivaled serviceability.

I let Kevin know about this thread (as many people have) and he'll be getting the post-Expo Predator update (which he had already planned to produce) out there. Let's cool the whacky theories and crazy made-up-guesses-stated-as-sorta-facts. They aren't helping anything.

Aaron
FAST Pinball

I can really imagine that Arnold S could be the problem as he has millions of dollars so if he says no, no amount of money will get him on board. All speculation of course.

image-925.jpg

Thats good because here is so many BS in this thread from people who want Predator will fail for whatever reason. Only Kevin personally and no anonymous SkitB support team has to clarify and cool down ASAP

Skit B must have had the licence, no one could be that stupid to sell a product without the relevant licence.

I do not think it is a scam at all they are just snowed under, hence why their new machine will be built by JJP.

However it seems to me the biggest winner out of this will be the pinside bank account!!!

Why no Bush or Obama or Carter or Washington vid??????

Don't drag politics into this thread please. This thread is derailing just fine on its own.

I made some emails. We'll see how things are really progressing. ( in a good way. Not assuming and making theories into facts.).

Information kills speculation. As JPOP found out it's easy to sway bad feelings just by being a bit more open. I can understand the slowing down of information a bit as once you can get tired of answering every little nit pick. Even a monthly update will easy customers who have hard earned money on the table though. Arnold is a savvy guy. If he knew about a predator pin his head would have to be twice the size of the predators as LAH Even though they are both the stars of the movie

We as a group have created a mess, we give money to people to form companies to design and build pinball machines and now are surprised when it goes bad? Really? Quit giving money as deposit on machines. Stop the madness.

You are just plain wrong. WHy would you think anyone sitting on a million dollars of customers' money would have 3 or 4 minutes per month to actually think about and type a short update? You must be crazy.

BTW, I'm thinking the license holdup has something to do with arnie and Jessie "the mind" having an ego battle.