Make your point without insults & assumptions, or I’ll just play your game and call you Dr. Fuckleberry...I’ve been to plenty of trade shows, CES, E3, etc. I understand technology. If you want to discuss this with me, drop the “you must be old and out of touch” bit.

OK, your focus is location games. Cool. Let’s talk about that. Features that the player enjoys are great. Internet features aren’t anything anyone cares about when dropping coin in an arcade game. 3-5 minutes of entertainment is. Dialed In is a game about cell phones and can even link & be played with one. The game doesn’t make more than regular Sterns. No one cares about the “innovative” technology aspect. I’ve never seen one location with a P3. No one cares. So - please, your turn to educate me. What SPECIFIC tech advancement does pinball need to sell more to FECs & attract more players?

Honestly its pointless to debate with someone who doesn't understand the coin op industry. Secondly I haven't insulted you or made any assumptions. Nor have I said you're 'old and out of touch'. What I said was you're a narrow minded thinker who thinks pinball should not evolve, change, or even attempt to think outside the box. I also said you clearly do not understand the business side of this industry outside of pinball shows because apparently that is true.

I asked you have you been to IAAPA, Bowl Expo, or any major amusement tradeshows in Asia, Europe, Middle East, India anywhere outside of some pinball show? I have been to some pinball shows as a fan of pinball, however I never saw Gary Stern there, when I went to IAAPA he was there every day.

Pinball needs and can change, improve, and strive to find new players, buyers, and they get that feedback from people who buy hundreds of games a year, not so much from you thankfully.

Despite all your negative comments, all pinball companies will start to add more features including WIFI, Camera's, Mics, and probably video modes.

If it increasing sales they will do it... if it doesn't they won't. This industry isn't for your amusement its to make money sell machines or go out of business. It's simply math if locations are saying we need this or that guess what that is what you'll start to see.

100% might have been exaggeration, but they have acknowledged the shift to the home market.

Coast 2 Coast live interview with gorge Gomez several years ago.

Then stop. But you won’t. And I do understand the coin op industry. So you can drop your “You know nothing” bit. It’s just another insult in your arsenal at this point to diminish my valid points. Not working.

Again, not negative. Realist. Ok, let’s do this one by one:

-I’ve already said I think WiFi has benefits for ops & some player applications like being able to find a game and to know about tournament settings on specific machines. I’m not against WiFi. I’ve merely stated that the concept of Head-to-Head internet play is ridiculous & those who think it sounds cool haven’t thought it out. That being said, does WiFi sell more games to locations? Doubtful...but if it’s in the machine, cool.

-Cameras: I think JJP’s camera use on Dialed In for the selfie mode is clever and funny. Wonkvision is also clever. Has a Dialed In earned more for ops due to its camera? No.

Mics: Whats the practical application of a mic in a loud arcade?

Video Modes: They’ve existed since T2. Some like, some hate, some are neutral...they don’t move the needle, location players don’t know they’re even there when they put in quarters, and when they happen, they’re mostly confused. Video modes are a non-issue...mostly they detract. If players want a video game, they’ll go play a video game. It’s not impressive when a pinball machine stops for a bad video game.

I think the person with the problem at stopping is yourself. No one has posted more on this thread than you... take your own advice.

Okay c'mon here... you know there is another feature all pinball games can have but should have is a mic plug. But getting back to WIFI pinball games should also be BLUETOOTH ... then it doesn't matter does it? Your point is pointless. You can walk up with your headphones and either plug in or bluetooth.

Video modes do move the needle it adds more fun to the game. Why do you think it was added in the first place because pinballs where fading, so video modes tried to bring pinball to the 21st century. Video modes didn't get added for no reason, and when video modes come back in a big way it will be to add more elements of interaction with the game.

Man its easy to debate with you because you made points that are easy to refute. 1) You tell me to stop yet you've made more posts on the thread than anyone. 2) You say something really dumb because the whole thread is about tech, so if you can add wifi you can add bluetooth, so then finally you can for example enjoy the music of the next generation of music pins. I think when you made that comment you forgot about the point behind the thread. 3) Video modes got added to improve interaction and draw in more buyers. Your point is pointless.

Just so you can take your own advice you're up to nearly 30 posts on this thread. I think I've had 10. So when you tell someone to stop maybe you should look in the mirror long and hard.

So now we’re post stalking? You’ve been on a tear with non stop ten mile long posts all over. But guess what - good news - you’ve proven yourself to be an irrational, hypocritical, insulting and obnoxious member of this community - so I’ll be tossing you on my block list, and you’ll never hear from me again. Don’t bother responding to anything I write, as it won’t be read. Byeeeeeee!!!

I feel like dad and mom are fighting again

It’s always the children who get hurt.

Can’t wait to play pinball online

LOL @ both sides arguing over something that doesn't even exist yet.

Holy crap, man. Personal insults? Defend your career? I couldn't care less what career you or anybody else chooses, and I'd never ask you to defend it. That's exactly the point I was making. You repeatedly misuse the phrase "false equivalence" because you consider your opinions to be facts. They're not. You can dish out strong opinions about pinball/gaming but not take a single and clearly minority opinion about a tv show you work on without getting offended and claiming personal insult. How about addressing the actual point and not trying to play the victim.

I know you directed this at somebody else, but seriously, who's the one making personal insults? This is a discussion forum. Somebody makes a post you disagree with and you attack them? I guess we're done with the actual topic. Rarehero has spoken, everybody. If any of you disagree with him, you're wrong, and if you push your point the way he pushes his, look out!

Whatever you think of adding WiFi tech or not for multi-player games, my main concern would be actual competitors online at any given time to play against one another. I equate it to two recent flights I took. One was several hours from Texas to Maui and then back again, while the other was a quick 3 hour flight from Texas to Las Vegas. All of my flights had individual entertainment systems for each passenger that were free to use. I was excited thinking that I would be able to pass time by playing some competitive games with other passengers (e.g. poker, trivia, etc.) Between all of the flights, I literally started dozens of games throughout the flights and waited several minutes most times, but not a single time did I see a single other passenger in any of the game rooms. In these instances, there was a captive audience of hundreds of people with limited entertainment available, yet I was never able to coordinate a game with a single one of them.

I don't know what the install base is of a given pinball title these days, but I don't imaging it is more that in the low 1000's. I can't imagine the coincidence it would take for just two random home owners of a particular pin title who were in the subset of owners who even cared about online play to be online looking for a game at the same time. There may very well be other applications for a connected pinball machine, but if you look at things from a business' perspective, there is little to no reason why they would/should implement such technology for the purpose of live online competition as the userbase is just not there to financially support such a "feature". Looking at it from the opposite perspective, I don't think manufacturers lose a single sell because a pin does not have head-to-head game play capability.

Just because you can doesn't always mean you should (suddenly a Dr. Ian Malcolm quote I have on my PinSound Jurassic Park orchestration comes to mind). My thought would be that if such a demand was there, then why doesn't a third party invent/implement such a capability? Without oversimplifying the tech required, I'm sure that if a profit was to be made some pinhead entrepreneur would already be in the process of developing the technology.

Sorry, but what is the point of connecting them? Its been done. RFM had it. Doesn't really work because its too easy to tweak the games and since every game plays differently even when setup the same a score on one does not necessarily translate to the other.

This works incredibly well for videogames because aside from worn out controls a player who plays/scores one way on one machine will do the same on another.

Wait, what? I thought all pins tilt bobs and level of them are calibrated exactly the same?!

Put me on ignore.

I am with Rarehero on this one.

Online connectivity for checking machine errors, status logs, patching, auditing info, etc. but for head to head gaming probably not.

Also, poll is a bit misleading. I think they will be online in a few years - but for the above (not part of the gaming experience)

Enough of the fighting, guys! If you can't keep the discussion civil, you will be removed from the thread.

If you put him on ignore he will not see your post

I don't think that's true. This isn't Facebook.

This is incorrect. If you put someone on ignore, you will no longer be able to see their posts, but they can still see yours.

I think the best option would be if Stern could include an optional daughter board attachment that would contain the hardware and software to get a game online. That way it's there for the people who want it, and operators can move it into the machines they think it would be best on (and use their experience to determine if they should buy more modules)

Lots of potentially helpful features for operators.

It's also a hobby with deep pockets. I can see peer pressure amongst home owners to get their fellow owners to install them on games to play online.

I don't know about the head-to-head stuff, but I will say that I'm shocked that the SPIKE 2 system doesn't have wi-fi built in. It would certainly make firmware updates so much easier, plus it would be really handy if you could change settings via an app. How much can a wireless chip possibly cost these days?

I liked the idea in a post awhile back about tech support being able to get into your game to help diagnose stuff.

And for one thousand dollars deposited into my bitcoin account within 48 hours, I'll turn that game back on for you.

LTG : )

If the Spike CPU is powerful enough to manage it, then an off the shelf USB 802.11 wireless receiver is a few bucks. They'd spend more money on writing the software, providing security, and maintaining servers than the actual cost of hardware going into the game.

For what it's worth JJP is probably further along and likely have future proofed - as much as they could be I guess - their games as they are all PC based hardware and using a desktop UNIX based operating systems.

Hi this is Microsoft support. Your pinball machine has notified us of an issue.

Spike is UNIX too

Didn't know that. Good info, they may be good to go then as I was considering a USB based wifi hardware option.

My guess is JJP, DeepRoot, or any other mfg will figure it out and do it before Stern
I love Stern, but they don't seem to innovate unless pushed to.

Scorbit already does that. https://scorbit.io/scorbitron

Putting someone on ignore is the main first feature being built into Stern’s new online games I hear...

Which Unix (flavour)? I’m intrigued (as a former DEC Unix, AIX & Solaris Sys Admin).

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/spike-linux-details

In a head to head match both players will start the game and play until completion.

If Player A has finished their game and Player B is still playing and Player A has less score than Player B then Player B will win the game and Player A will be free to leave the head to head game (also Player B will be notified he has won and can purposely drain if he likes).

If Player A has finished their game and Player B is still playing but Player A is ahead at this point then Player A will need to wait until Player B has completed his game (although this is an unlikely scenario because if Player A has already finished it's unlikely he will be ahead).

There is then online tournaments that Stern/JJP etc. could set up where you have for example 7 days to play x amount of games on the machine and it will take your top score and the top 16 will go through to the finals. Then in the quarter final for example the game will show you that you have drawn "Fred Smith" and you will get 3 days to play your match. If 3 days has passed and you haven't entered a score then you will lose your match but if both have played then the winner obv advances through and so on until the final.

This could be something they could hold once a month.

Then you could allow players to host tournaments. So for example a player could create a tournament and tell everyone on pinside it will be held on this date at this time, everyone is welcome to join with similar rules to the above.

Then as others have said there would be leaderboards of the highest scores, players could also earn "badges/trophies" which would be on your "profile" for things like playing so many games, winning so many games, winning a tournament, going 100 games undefeated, getting x score etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.

The compelling thing about going online is that it is human nature to want to compete with other people when it comes to games/sports. Pinball is no different hence why people post highscores on pinside/pindigo etc.