My first impression was that this was some dopey app based achievement system. Looking through the video more slowly I am not even sure what this is, some of the images gave the impression of different rule sets, I would assume there is onscreen dmd popups, not something that you have to keep glancing at your phone for.

I guess I need to see a proper feature reveal to understand what the heck this actually is.

Is there an actual release date for the add-ons?

Has anyone seen these things at their local distributers yet?

I'd like to try it out, as someone with only one machine, and it will probably be awhile before I buy my second, I am open to it.

They've made a "fun" game of signing up. Thought I had gotten to the last step, after selecting your avatar and whatever, then it said my username and email were taken. Now I can't login or get past entering my email if I try to sign up again, no matter what I enter.

Not like I can use this for anything right now so not sure why I am bothering, but here I am trying to fit a square peg into a, apparently, round hole nonetheless.

Well I seemed to have solved this complex puzzle Stern has created. Not sure why but I was able to, finally, sign up and login.

And... now I get to sit here proud of myself being able to login to a currently useless website.

My local distributer, Player One, biggest distributer in Canada didn't have a specific answer, just said "Pricing and availability will be later this year".

And to give them a call in a few weeks for an update.

Talked to my local distributer today, biggest distributer in Canada, and they currently don't know when the non-Godzilla ones will be released, and don't have pricing. He said "November or December". Also mentioned they were having supply chain issues.

Gomez said, eventually, people at home won't have to keep scanning their phones.

Well probably because you need the reader to scan your qr codes at least once, plus the versatility to make changes if you change your mind and want to add users, or whatever else.

I don't know why you are talking to me like I developed this thing. That's how this works, complain to Stern if you want it to work differently.

Gomez mentioned there will be continual "content drops" and "features" for the supported games and connected, but remained vague about specifics.

I feel like my want for this to be much more than a achievement system is making me think this will eventually do much more than it will actually do.

But it sounds like, based on what Gomez said, that adding specific achievements, or challenges(like say beat a specific mode within a set time), is the extent of the changes to the gameplay of the machines.

I feel like only bar setups have pinballs anymore, most things that are more the family arcade type have almost no pins, usually no pins. I know it's because these things aren't making them the money all the other stuff does, namely the ticket redemption games. This thing would have to do some kind of unbelievable job bringing in customers to change that.

Really, I think people want this to be something more unbelievable than it is. Most people aren't going to take out their phone, or sign up, they'll just play the game. So some people think this setup leaves people in the cold? No kidding, of course it does. Most people probably never scanned a qr code before the pandemic, when suddenly the loss of physical menus at restaurants made qr codes more common place.

The question you ask yourself as a user is really simple, do you actually care about achievements? As an operator, it's will you be able to cover the up front cost? As a home pin user, it's really just, do I think this is worth $200. If the answer is no, then you simply don't buy it.

Expecting this to drastically change pinball as we know it is expecting too much. It's a gimmick, a gimmick that could add to replayability of your home pin, or attract more customers as a operator, and have a few hardcore types actually try to get good at the pin, rather than just randomly flipping for a bit and moving on.

I think overall it's positive, but whatever route they took this would have adoption problems. Though honestly, so far, the way they are promoting this I don't think is particularly effective, but maybe that has something to do with the fact they aren't actively selling these things yet.

No doubt, people will start whipping out their vaccine passports and scanning them on these things.

Well nice that Jurassic Park owners can play Goat mode now without the Topper. Still not sure if I'll buy the add-on kit yet as it's really just an uninspired achievement system. You'd think they'd do a little more to convince people to buy these things. Don't see challenges or anything else on the insider website.

Finally tried Insider Connected for the first time on a Godzilla Pro.

Pretty underwhelming experience, doesn't add anything to playing the game. Just some achievements pop up between balls. And going through the app after the play session was a meh experience.

They really need whatever other features they have planned to come out as soon as possible. In it's current state it's DOA.

Perhaps one day, but you are easily pleased if you are satisfied with the current offering.

So far they think we should be excited by achievements. I'd guess whatever they may have planned for head-to-head connectivity might not be much more than a leaderboard.

Realistically, there aren't enough people actively playing these games to support online multiplayer. Maybe you could compete against someone's "ghost", where you are just playing against a previous game someone played.

Yeah, I think they alluded to challenges also, which so far isn't a thing.

From a operator side, there's nothing I'm seeing in the app that would make me want to run around to play pinball in the wild.

I mean I can think of various ways that they could make Connected good, but I guess my faith in them to do that isn't really there.

Funnily enough Cineplex, the biggest distributor of pinball through their company player one in Canada, hasn't bothered to install insider connected into any of their rec room or movie locations that I've been to.

"Award winning" Wait, they actually got an award at some point for insider connected?

Not sure why they are releasing this feature with just three milestones, but I guess this is par for the course for ic.

So I listened to the insider connected video they linked to in the one of the recent emails. While I did skip around a bit it doesn't seem like they mentioned anything specific about what may be coming, just leaving it in the vague, more things are coming, we are listening camp. It kind of reads to me as this is just a gimmick to them, not something that needs to be something much bigger than it currently is. Maybe in their head it's just some new thing they are sticking in machines and there's no real pressure for them to put a lot of time and energy into this thing. Don't get me wrong, I'd rather their focus be on creating new pinball machines, just my take from watching the video.

Very well said, it's as if no one involved in Insider has ever played anything other than pinball games before. I have heard from my local distributor that they are waiting for a critical mass to own these things to really crank out the features, though that sounds a bit like bs than necessarily facts. Like even though they are selling insider connected to home users that they aren't treating this as something that needs to be a full featured product(though they talked about leaderboards on that podcast like they were the greatest thing for the community... ). I am sure Stern is loving tracking how people play their games, I am assuming even if people don't log into Insider they are getting valuable information that will make them more money in the future.

I am not trying to say if you like Insider as it currently is you are wrong, I just have a different opinion. It's not "terrible", just, completely lacking a "killer app" type of feature, something that would make this a must have.

While I get that Stern doesn't have the resources of a Sony or Microsoft they are still charging what they are charging for Connected so that does put them to a higher standard.

The top features I can think of are:
Daily changing challenges for each table. Challenges akin to rule changes seem less likely but that would be nice.

And some sort of online, the ideal would be a tournament type online mode. As I've mentioned before I don't think they can do online without ghosts(rather than actually playing people live) there is a lot of benefits to ghosts including weeding out the cheaters. But it's important that people are matched by skill level, and that people aren't waiting endlessly in a queue.

Maybe they want the kids to create the account with the pinball machine? Sounds fun with just the flipper buttons and middle button.

They are releasing an app at some point, in theory they could create easier interfaces that open up a world of possibilities. In... theory... if you still have faith that it won't just be the same setup, just, slightly easier to get to.

That's pretty sad, since leaderboards aren't even a big deal. Just further enforces that they are out to lunch and tone deaf on this whole thing. Imagine if an actual GOOD home feature was considered, if they are willing to nix features that are sub par to appease operators then forget it, this will never be good.

My point isn't that leaderboards are a good feature, in fact I stated otherwise. (Though there's more to leaderboards than just local high scores)

It's the general idea that operators are worried that someone might play the $10,000 machine they bought at home rather than at their establishment so let's let that fear drive the home features of Insider Connected. There's no sense to that logic.

Occasionally not being able to connect is a fun feature that we all get to experience every once and awhile.

You basically do the same basic steps you would do if your computer lost connection. Rebooting modems, throwing a fit.

I'm pretty sure they've already heard every good idea regarding IC, yet here we still are.

That's an interesting question, in that they haven't really added anything of any real value yet. Even what they've come out with, seems like they could've easily done much more with. If the purpose of Insider Connected is to draw in the younger crowd, they've done what can only be described as the bare minimum, I think maybe the problem is they view Scorbit as their competition, which is a low bar for competition. Monthly rotating challenges for every Insider Connected game seems like something they already have the framework for, but refuse to do. Why they released 4 milestone badges, and never added more is a head scratcher. If you just view some of what they've done, they seem completely focused on driving traffic to locations, but the only way any of that would really work is if they had a progression system, with levels, cosmetic awards, quite frankly the rewards don't have to be meaningful, but it should be this on going thing, something that makes people feel like they are accomplishing things, but they are so far from being anywhere close to any of that. I never scan my IC on location, why would I? They've given me zero incentive to.

I'm not even sure they care about the home market, some type of online play against ghosts would a ton of value to people, but I think they think leaderboards is online play, even though it isn't. Static Leaderboards are a very niche thing, very few people would ever care about being competitive on them.

Look, I could go on forever about what I'd like to see, but I don't think Stern sees Insider Connected as something truly important. Look, I get that they can't put a lot of effort into this thing because they don't have the userbase regular videogames/mobile games have so they can't really ever get to the same profit level. And turning this into a subscription service comes with it's own set of problems both with the home market but especially with the people playing on location. I'm not even sure what they would have to charge to make it worth it. Now they don't need to be subscription service necessarily to justify costs, but again, the limited userbase means some of the ways other games do it might not work with pinball.

It kind of feels like Insider Connected is doomed. And if they are waiting for some critical mass of people having Insider Connected to start putting in the effort that seems misguided.

They will just keep updating every machine, like they have been doing, to replace the ads. The only plus you can get from this is they might be too embarrassed to simply release an update with the only change being "new ads!". Yes push messages should be possible and are likely coming, but there's no reason right now to think it's a thing.

Don't be surprised if in the future the ads get forced(with no off position) to try to get people to buy a IC sub. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the only benefit of a IC sub is to remove annoying things they added that currently don't exist.

Pretty funny, rather than releasing the app with some quests, to give people a reason to login, and maybe not be distracted by the fact it's just the browser version. We instead just get the vague promise of future quests, that could just be a single quest to play Venom on a specific day, and hey, maybe some equally lame elvira quest...

Rumor is that Spike 2 can only do so much with Insider Connected, so some of the better features, if they are ever made, might be Spike 3 exclusive. Which is fun to hear if you wasted your money putting Insider Connected into a Spike 2 machine.