You do realise F2P gaming as an industry is worth millions and growing.

If Stern had marketed this right (probably blinded or too focused on the few that will spend 25k on a TRON or 30k on a JJP POTC) and focused on the market as a whole they could have turned connect into a huge revenue stream.

You unregister the game in your normal account... then have to re-register it in your pro. Same steps as when you first registered it.

I'm a bit relieved at the $200 price. It is very easy for me to buy zero of them now.

Especially since none of the games you own are supported!

I know your a Stern apologist and I don’t mean that with any offence intended, but don’t go off someone’s Pinside list, I have JP and Stranger Things I haven’t added to my list.

I own a good majority of those supported - I will buy precisely Zero... at any cost. Not interested one bit.

Stats are still very buggy..

After the expo week I was trying to play as many of the IC connected games I could and played Thur/Fri/Sat quite frequently.

My 'activity' page shows I played 16 games for the dates... which is low..

Then look at my 'stats' page.. showing JP and LZ which weren't even on the activity page, and more plays for Aerosmith then the activities page showed.

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I was very interested in achievements and competing with pinball friends high scores and hopefully online co-op in the future.

But at 200 a pop, it’s a non starter, Stern over shot this one.

I can’t even remember what it did to register it in the first place and now I don’t even see a section to register a game on the site.

Because you register the game at the game... then confirm it in the web.

De-register the game in the website.
Goto game, goto menus to disconnect, and then reconnect to insider
Scan your QR code from your pro-enabled insider account
You'll be told to goto web to confirm/complete registration
You will see the game in the web, assign it to a location/venue and then confirm it.

Ahhhh gotcha, I figured since I had the serial I could re-register from home on the site. I’ll do it next time I head over to my location.

Think I did my all access last week of August, or first week of September, and got my swag box shortly after. 1-2 week after.

Whats your username? I'm ATL-Eric

When you say “go to menu to disconnect”. Do you mean from the internet? I see no menu item to disconnect from IC (ive already de-registered the game on the site. Now when I scan the QR on the LCD it just brings up my previous account from ‘gameroom’ (which doesn’t exist actually as none of my patrons can scan their accounts.

Update: Figured it out…very counter intuitive haha. Thank you for your previous guidance though. Much appreciated!

what about better menus then that are not the same ones from the MID 90's??

Tanio said something on the Godzilla Prem reveal stream that strongly implied they were working on them. Which would be nice, but better, more detailed/intuitive diagnostics would be cool too.

Same. I think I have 12 Spike 2s, but at $200 per I'm buying zero. I want to like this, but it's clearly not for home owners. Yet, anyway. Pindigo does a lot of what I want anyway, and is free and far less fussy.

You have 51 tables, probably at least 2 - 3 hundred thousand invested if your collection is accurate, and a $200 accessory is too much?… You’re talking $2400 total to outfit 12 machines. Sell your Elvira topper and you’ll be all set

Yes. Early October and it came about two weeks later. Quick actually!

Nah, no toppers here (well, my used Star Wars came with one, and I have the plastic ones from JJP, AP, and Spooky games, but those are mostly sitting on shelves somewhere). But anyway, yes, I think $200 per is too much from a home use standpoint. All we should need is a wifi/ethernet connection to send stats to the cloud on game end, not a system built around handling hundreds of users on one machine. I've said before in this thread IC makes sense for operators, not so much for home users. So be it, not the end of the world it's not better suited to home users, but I think it's useful that home Stern users let it be known they'd support a subscription model as long as we can supply our own wifi/ethernet. Even at $50 a year subscription, that's *50 years* of IC compared to what the hardware would cost me at once.

Haven't actually received it, but according to an UPS tracking code they sent me one.

I don't think Stern really expected many beyond some enthusiast operators and a very small percentage of basement owners to buy these "kits". Connected is really for everything produced now going forward for all practical purposes. This will mean a significant number of games still in production from the last 24+ months of course, not just Godzilla, Rush, etc.

Supporting ALL Spike 2 games including the earliest (Batman, Aerosmith, etc) was actually much more than I expected they would support.

Thanks for all the comments on my un-received SWAG box.

I have emailed Stern at the address on the email receipt several times and contacted via facebook but have never received a response. Any leads on who/ how I should reach out?

Will Stern be selling retrofit kits for future games to remove the fugly QR code reader and revert to the "legacy" style apron?

Well, $50 a year would be the $200 in only 4 years, unless you think they would let you put unlimited games on a single subscription. (And miss out on $$$,? I think not)
As an Operator, I will not put any games online if it is a subscription service.
As they have it now, I would put any games that already have it (Godzilla), and will consider doing more at one-time $200, if I think the players use and enjoy it.
But I am unable to get upgraded to Pro as it is. I think possibly because I have already made a basic insider account from the same email? Who knows? I want a helpful email from Stern…

A sticker to cover it would provide the same appearance, wouldn’t it?

Yep as long as it looks like the old aprons that's all that really matters to me. I don't want to break up the artwork with the QR reader and instructions on how to use it.

Lol, thinking the same thing myself.

I’m a home user and really don’t want the reader on the apron of either of my supported games (Batman and Elvira)

I’m hoping that someone will make a mod for the QR reader that houses the board/reader in a more rectangular box (small as possible) that would connect to an RJ-45 fit into the tournament button hole so you could easily move the reader from game to game. I’d have an Ethernet cord a few feet long connecting both ends so the box could be easily positioned on the outside of the game somewhere (Velcro/magnets). This obviously doesn’t work for location games but home users could easily move the reader from game to game.

Not sure if the power for the QR reader also comes in on that same RJ-45 cable . If not, another power cable might be needed as well to power it. You would also need the wifi dongle installed for each machine you wanted to swap the reader with (unless you wanted to open baxkbox and move it each time you wanted to . Not sure if dongle can be any off the shelf version or if you have to buy the one Stern sells. If you need the Stern one, will they sell it as a standalone without the rest of the kit.

you can also just use an network cable.

The Wi-Fi dongle that Stern is using is an off the shelf CanaKit Wi-Fi adapter.

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Putting a $20 dongle in each machine is a no brainer or I can hardwire the games to the LAN. Multiple options in my arcade room since I didn’t know initially where RFM was going to go. As long as the internet connectivity can be used without an active QR reader I’ll connect the games.

Good point on the power cable though. I presume there’s no PoE support.

The reader seems only connected via the Spike Bus.. so it gets all it needs from from the spike bus it appears.

I doubt you would be able to plug the reader in/out w/o the game off and cycling it once the node board is in place.. and you'd have to terminate the spike bus (same RJ plug they use now) when the reader isn't there.

At this point there is no connectivity value without the reader - though obviously that could change. We also don't know how the game will react for insider if the reader isn't present. I haven't bothered to monkey with that.

Thank you, any idea where to grab a couple of these from? I can’t quite make out the model spec from that pic on the box.

Why?

Don't you think Stern would have advertised this path of network but no reader as an alternative if they had intended it to be functional?

It takes like 3 lines of code to nuke all IC if no node board 4 is found.

Until people can workout functionality without the reader attached, what's the point of adding network?

Wasn’t expecting hot swap support so assumed games would be powered down/rebooted. Forgot about termination but that should be easy enough.

No of course they wouldn’t have advertised that. Here everyone IC $200 per unit, but if your clever you really only need one!

It’s like Jacks JP Pin reveal stream, Jack got asked about being able to upgrade the small lcd and he went into something like “yeah probably if you get….” Before Watson cut him off real quick with “no no no nah you can’t do that” it was so obvious from the exchange it can be done, but stern won’t advertise that similar to them not shouting from the rooftops you can likely get away with one IC.

It’s really simple if Stern to sell more units lower the price and bring IC into the market as a lose leader type product which it should have been from the start.

And what about code updates over Wi-Fi/Ethernet? Are they going to require a QR reader to function? That would be really dumb. Sure most will have the QR reader but don’t nerf connectivity if you have a connected machine.

Someone should try it with a WiFi dongle and the new code on a supported game. But my bet is that the game looks for that node board for the reader before it enables connectivity. Maybe also something to do with that microSD card? An authentication key?

Maybe it does, but why? IC supports two main functions — logins to IC and remote code updates. Why deliberately disable a key feature?

is that just to get an bigger disk?
Do they not have full restore images anymore?

Yes they have full SD images on the website, but the SD card (full size) is already in the game. Wondering the purpose of the microSD.

i guess you need space to save the image? like Elvira the SD card ist quite full, if you want either to download an update image or a full image you need space to store it. My guess is they will save the game-code, not the sd-card image on the spare card with maybe some update code. The SD-Card could be the same like a usb stick with the game code on it.
only guessing here, but makes sense for me.

About payment via the SIC system:

As an operator at a location where we currently use tokens, but would like more flexible payment options: I would love to be able to sell "credits" by issuing cards with QR codes on them.

Since each game would be connected (which I am comfortable with assuming in our case), the QR code could be validated online according to flexible rules before given a credit. E.g. a QR code could be valid only for a given time period and be limited to one active game at a time, for example. Or it could be valid for X number of credits per day. Or unlimited credits on certain game titles on specific weekdays. And so on.

I don't want Stern to handle payments for us, but that wouldn't be needed for a system like that to function.

My guess is similar to yours. The new sd-card is probably temporary storage for the update image so that it is completely local before the actual game SD card is flashed.

or just that they need to replace the smaller cards in some of the older games with bigger ones. They may need lot's of free space to fit the game updates for online updates.

I believe Kermit stated that the SD card currently in the machines is a full size SD where the one that comes with IC is a micro. Thus, it can't be a replacement if that is correct.

Well, they need space to download and verify an upgrade image before updating the image on the motherboard SD card.