I was cautiously optimistic when I saw Fliptronic's Twitch stream with a functional, playable table. The business history and too many red flags like the NDA previews (Review embargoes are never a good sign), the PinPod announcement (Really?), and general lack of communication or manufacturing pictures/updates still kept me from preordering. Delays in manufacturing happen, more so with COVID and chip shortages, although it would be expected that they would attempt to keep up hype with media posts. In hindsight it all makes sense.

Putting all the drama aside it's still a bummer. The table looked interesting and seemed like a CV 2.0, and JPop designed some of my favorite tables.

Agreed, although it felt more like a solution in search of a problem. I'm all for companies innovating, although if I were an operator I'm not sure a touch screen is something I'd want on a table. Talking to local arcade owners and hearing horror stories of kids hanging off of extended plungers and bending rods, drinks/food over glass...yikes. Seems like it would be expensive to replace, and doesn't add enough value over the current flipper button, start/action, LCD/DMD display process that currently exists.

I liked that the cabinet was visually different, although they invested a ton into the cabinet side art technology which is usually sandwiched between other machines. Same with the short LED screen. Why do machines need a backglass in this era? JJP has the right idea, just make the whole backbox a display with speakers and be done.

The gem functionality on AIQ feels very similar to how B66 minor villains work during play. The level of the Avenger dictates the the level of improvement the gem provides, with different functionality for the drop targets and Captain Marvel spinner/ramp. For the most part it's just remembering which gems do what.

I had my AIQ Premium for about six months before I sold it. Outside of score min/maxing, the game boils down to collecting gems and Avengers, wash, rinse, repeat. Looking past the very hungry outlanes the table shoots great, I was just ultimately disappointed with how the rules turned out. To be fair, I'm progression focused and not score focused, so AIQ just doesn't resonate with me.

I think the point you are trying to make is pre-ordering Stern tables isn't zero risk either. This is true. However, I wouldn't use a 35 year old company with leading numbers of annual pinball tables produced and sold around the world as an equivalent risk comparison to Deeproot.

This is how legitimate business works. A new company secures start-up capital, uses that money to develop and produce a product that gets sold to distributors, then use those sales to sustain and grow the business.