I sure hope this is affordable for operators. It makes little sense to give away a significant percentage of my earnings for the relatively few hardcore players who will adopt this tech.
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Is the TOPs tournament software still there on Spike games? Would be nice if that was still there for games not connected to internet.
I bought the TOPs Whitestar kit for $400 and it definitely increased my earnings. That could be moved from game to game.
Yes, although it seems like some options and audits available in the past have been removed, and it’s poorly documented. If you have a US-spec machine you only need to buy the Tournament Start button.
Let’s hope they have!
So having their own stuff for Stern events and game options is cool.
But I’ve never been to a tournament that only had spike 2 games. The closest was FlipExpo but that had SAM games at it. Tournaments run games from all eras - Spooky, JJP, CGC (and I think American) are all supporting Scorbit along with Scorbit’s epic work to make legacy games work - having my Meteor, Quicksilver and Nineball another 40 odd games is driving new excitement, new rivalries and new competitions and capturing some epic scores for the world to see is just amazing - a friend got over a million on HGT which in my view is an amazing achievement! Our club was not enthusiastic about Scorbit initially but now we are putting them on lots of games.
I’m battling it out with Manu for top spot on Mando right now and we can do that on just about any game at where in the world.
I don’t really want to make a Scorbit vs Stern sort of post as I strongly believe both can exist and they will get the best out of each other if they work together.
Neil
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LOL, Gomez, jumped up and down “I don’t want this to be a profit center”. riiiiiiight.
$400 for the hardware but at least you get to use of it. If I want to participate in this, I need a bunch of hardware that ultimately could cost me as much as another game. On top of that, I will have a monthly or yearly subscription cost associated with it and I will have to dedicate time to manage it for the players. So will my earnings go up enough to cover my costs for the hardware, the (likely) fu software sub fees and my time? Or should I just buy another game to put out, that won’t depreciate (hopefully).
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Regarding the concerns about price elsewhere in this thread: there’s been rumors/reports of Stern recently upping their prices once again, this time by quite a bit (I’d heard figures along the lines of $600 more for Pros and $1000 more for Premiums and LEs). Since they’ve confirmed that Insider Connected will be built into every game they make starting with the next one, people have naturally wondered if the new technology is the cause of it. I can’t say for sure either way at the moment, since other companies have increased prices with no stated justification, but it seems like it checks out.
Then, of course, there’s the obvious question of what people with no interest in the new technology will do with their new games. Gomez concludes his explanation video by saying that
If you choose not to join Insider Connected, your Stern pinball machines will continue to work the way they always have - but you’ll be missing out on all this cool stuff.
Assuming that the platform is causing the price to go up, though, this doesn’t address the fact that these people will have to pay more for features they have no intent of using. If nothing else, it does line up with hearsay that the company is pushing this technology hard, apparently trying to build up some stock on their next game to ship it out faster and possibly ordering more LEs than usual.
(Speaking of which, that next game will apparently be revealed to Stern Army members via a webinar on the 14th - it was set for today but got pushed back a week, from what I’ve heard. I imagine the public reveal will come that day or the 15th.)
For Mando, the distro meeting and public release came the day before the stern army webinar.
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Assuming the full product is displayed above, there’s no way the BOM was more than $200. Estimating very generously that’s a $20 usb wifi adapter, a $90 bottom arch, and a $50 rs485 barcode scanner. I’d hope the final product isn’t more than $300, given it sounds like there will still be a monthly subscription required to make it useful.
If it’s $300 that’s months of revenue I’m giving back to Stern, per game, while I’m still spending hours maintaining it, so that just makes no business sense at all to me.
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For what it’s worth, Gomez has claimed that the basic system requires no payment beyond either buying the game or the retrofit kit. The source of the subscription claim (the Ausretrogamer interview) ends with this statement from him:
Insider Connected will remain free. Insider Connected All Access will be a subscription based service just like the existing All Access loyalty program has been. Insider Connected All Access will have specific premium features on top of everything that has been described above.
I feel this has been glossed over in general in regards to the system, from Replay Magazine:
Our existing Insider All-Access player loyalty program also joins the system. All-Access Connected is a subscription version of the experience, focused on providing additional player features along with behind-the-scenes development stuff, early access, special events and quests. In the future, we intend to create exclusive game extensions, such as special access to new modes or new rules and features to increase the All-Access Connected value.
DLC for paid subscribers
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Thank you so much for bringing this to my attention! I’ve never seen this article before, but it’s a critical piece of information.
I’ve updated the OP to mention it.
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Yeah, that does seem pretty clear. Not sure if I’ve seen that article yet.
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I’m not following this closely because it won’t affect me for a while, but I did see something about the software distinguishing between home and location games. Could the extra DLC be free to operators and $ for home buyers?
It’s hard enough to get ops to do timely updates. Asking them to pay more to get more updates doesn’t seem like it would fly.
@JamOn wonderful write-up, thank you very much.
I have to look again but I haven’t found a place where the retrofit kit (QR Reader Upgrade Kit) is available. Anyone that finds it could you kindly post it here?
Also, it would be cool if Stern allows you to associate current high scores on a machine with an Insider Connected account, though I can see concerns around authenticity.
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It isn’t released yet. I’d wait for an official announcement but it won’t happen before the next game is released.
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No problem. I’m excited to see what it does for TMNT. I could definitely stand to have my interested in it renewed.
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I’d rather keep $600-1000 in my pocket then have this in my basemen. Maybe for ops, but forcing this into the home market, and a stripped down version at that, seems like a good way to price your way out a sale.
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