What is Scorbit? Official Thread

General
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Hello fellow pinball enthusiast! We hope you’re having a great summer, playing lots of pinball and keeping cool.

We’d like to THANK YOU for your interest in Scorbit and for believing in us so much that reserved your order so that you’ll be one of the first people to get a Scorbitron to install in your pinball machines. We’re still hard at work on refining the Scorbitron and testing it so that when we move to manufacturing, we can ensure your Scorbitron will work flawlessly.

We wanted to thank you for your patience by providing an update to our progress here at Scorbit HQ. We put together a short video with some updates from two of our co-founders, Jay Adelson and Brian O’Neill that will give you a first hand look at what we’ve been working on:

SCORBITRON UPDATE

Since our last update, our main focus for the Scorbitron has been on field testing the hardware. After having Scorbitrons installed at the San Francisco City Champ and INDISC tournaments, we demoed units at Texas Pinball Festival and the Golden State Pinball Festival. Since those events, we’ve installed several Scorbitrons into pinball machines at FREE GOLD WATCH in San Francisco. It’s been immensely beneficial for us to see real players using Scorbit on real pinball machines on location. We’re working out the bugs as people play solid state games like Eight Ball Deluxe or DMD games like Fish Tales and even modern games like Batman ‘66… It’s so amazing to see the results as scores seamlessly get saved from the machine to users’ accounts in the Scorbit app!

We also recently demoed how Scorbit and the scoreboard worked on Mystery Pinball Theater 3000, livestreamed from our favorite local arcade, FREE GOLD WATCH in San Francisco. In this livestream you can see an Indiana Jones pinball machine with a Scorbitron installed and working like a charm.

(and watch more of Manu’s streams - he’s the best!)

SO...WHEN WILL THIS BE AVAILABLE?

We’re sure after reading this, you’re probably thinking “This all sounds great…when will I be able to order my Scorbitron?!” We’re as excited as you and many others in the pinball community are. Our next immediate steps are:

  • Finalize the Scorbitron hardware design and begin manufacturing.
  • Move the Scorbit app from Alpha development to Beta release.

As for when, we’re still on schedule. While we’d love to give you a firm date for both, as of today the answer is still “soon!” As we’ve stated in previous updates, we want to get this right and make sure that everything works smoothly so that when pinballers get their hands on it, everything works as it’s supposed to. We’ve had such great feedback from all sides; from pinball players who are excited to use the app to pinball machine manufacturers who want to work with us to make sure Scorbit works with their machines. In fact, a lot of the responses we’ve gotten have led to some awesome collaborations that we’re working on now and will be able to share with you soon! Stay tuned and by placing a reservation to order a Scorbitron, you’re already on the inside track!

If you’re interested in what else is going on with Scorbit, here’s some other notable news:

SCORBIT APP UPDATE

In addition to our hardware team working on the Scorbitron, our software team has been making great progress on the Scorbit app and software platform. While it’s still in alpha development, we’re happy to report that users will be able to save their scores automatically when playing on a pinball machine with a Scorbitron installed. It’s really magical when you see it. We’ve also added the ability for players to save their scores manually, for when you’re playing pinball on a machine without a Scorbitron. Finally, we’ve also begun building out the Operator functions within the app, so that pinball machine operators will be able to manage their machines on location.

If you were at Texas Pinball Festival or the Golden State Pinball Festival, you may have seen Scorbit in action. We’ve been evolving our scoreboard view software, so that live pinball scores can be displayed externally, a perfect solution for livestreams. This software is intended just for these types of demonstrations, so we’re changing it constantly.

SCORBIT IN FAST COMPANY

We wanted to share with you a great article that ran recently in FastCompany that talked about the future of connected pinball and we were honored to be featured alongside the great team at Stern Pinball. Give it a read:

SCORBIT x IFPA

We’re thrilled to announce that we’re joining the IFPA as a Platinum Level sponsor! Even before we launched Scorbit, we were pinball players who loved playing in IFPA tournaments. As we set out to build the Scorbit platform, we knew first hand that so much of the growth of pinball recently was due to the efforts of the IFPA and promoting competitive pinball and anything we did would need to also benefit tournaments and tournament players. A great first step is helping to sponsor the IFPA, working with them to help tournaments become more efficient and explore potential new ways of supporting competitive pinball.

Josh Sharpe, IFPA President had this to say about our sponsorship, “Time and time again people are putting their real-world technical expertise on display to help advance competitive pinball forward. The team at Scorbit is doing exactly this! The IFPA is super excited to partner with Scorbit on using their technology to help provide a valuable tool for organizers to add to the quality of their events.” Thanks Josh! We’re pretty excited too and we’ve got so many great ideas and can’t wait to share more with everyone in the upcoming months!

STAY IN TOUCH

As you can see, we’ve been very busy and working super hard to keep Scorbit moving forward so that when you get access, it’ll make playing pinball even more fun. Or, if you’re an operator, even easier to manage your pinball machines. In the meantime, there’s a few things you can do to stay on the inside track with Scorbit by following us on social media on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Medium, and now YouTube!

We’re gearing up for the biggest pinball tournament in the world, Pinburgh! All three of the Scorbit founders: Brian O’Neill, Jay Adelson and Ron Richards will be there and playing in the tournament. If you see us, come say hi!

Thanks to everyone who’s been interested in Scorbit and for all the kind words. If you have any questions, you can always email us at info@scorbit.io. Until our next update, have fun playing pinball!

  • The Scorbit Team
    Ron Richards, Brian O’Neill and Jay Adelson
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Hey everyone - relive the magic of Pinball Expo with this awesome video Marco put together. Was great to see everyone in Chicago and all days of awesome pinball!

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Hey everyone we sent an update to our mailing list and wanted to share it here!

Happy New Year fellow pinball enthusiasts! We hope your holiday season included lots of pinball! Ours was delightful. As we look back on 2019, we’re even more excited for what’s to come in 2020 as we continue to get closer to sharing Scorbit with the pinball community!

Since our last update in July 2019, Scorbit has been growing fast as we’ve been very hard at work building the platform. When we deliver Scorbitrons and players start using the Scorbit app, the experience should be nothing short of magical . To do that, we’ve been working and testing with pinball machines from the solid states of the 1970s all the way up to the latest and greatest releases. We’ve also been having some fantastic conversations with our friends at the various pinball manufacturers, with more to share soon. You can scroll below for a full update on the Scorbit platform, but first we wanted to share our excitement for the first pinball event of 2020 for Scorbit and the next place you can see it in action…

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INDISC PINBALL FESTIVAL 2020

We are beyond excited to announce that we are returning to the INDISC Pinball Festival at the Museum of Pinball in Banning, California as a proud sponsor. INDISC holds a special place in our hearts as it was one of the earliest tournaments to have Scorbitrons running in machines. This will mark our third year at INDISC and it has become a real moment in time for us to mark our progress. In 2018, we were installed in one machine; in 2019, we grew to 10 machines; and now in 2020 we will have Scorbitrons in the largest number of machines and recording scores at a tournament in history. The Scorbit team has been working overtime to ensure that Scorbit will be up and running on all the great games in all of the tournaments and in open play at INDISC.

If you’re attending INDISC, be sure to check out Scorbit as your scorekeeper registers your scores and be sure to say hi to Brian O’Neill, Jay Adelson and the rest of the team who will be in attendance and happy to chat about Scorbit. If you’re not at INDISC, don’t miss a minute of the action, tune into the livestream and keep a lookout for Scorbit providing real time scores! You can find the full schedule for livestreams at the INDISC site.

SCORBIT UPDATE

As mentioned above, we’ve been hard at work to get Scorbit fully launched and Scorbitrons shipping. Many of you reading this have either placed a reservation for the first batch of pilot units or signed up to participate in our beta program. First of all, we want to say THANK YOU. It says so much to us that you put your hard earned money down to show interest in what we’re doing and we love how excited and enthusiastic so many of you are when we talk at tournaments, pinball shows and online. Second, we’re delighted to report that we are a bit ahead of schedule, and that we expect to announce shipping this Spring.

You’ve all heard the story: Hardware is hard. However, Scorbit isn’t just hardware, it’s an entire Internet platform, applications, integrations, and more. We like to say launching Scorbit is like painting a jet while it’s flying!

You heard it, this year the first wave of Scorbitrons will go out into the world ready to connect your pinball machines to the Scorbit platform! They work on Ballys, Sterns, Gottliebs, Williams, everything under the sun… and machines you just received, new in box. Whether you have a solid state pinball machine from the 70’s (like one of our personal favorites, Meteor) or even a Gottlieb from the 80’s (like Class of 1812, a classic!) or a mid-90s DMD like Theater of Magic (the first game we got working with Scorbit) or even a modern machine (like the recently released, and amazing, Jurassic Park), Scorbit will be able to connect your machine to the Internet and enable all sorts of additional fun to your pinball experience.

Be sure to check out our video from our last update to see a Scorbitron installed in a pinball machine and see how our custom designed hardware enables to real-time scores to be recorded and connected to the Scorbit app, tournament software and livestreams.

After the “when” question, next comes the “how much.” First, let’s explain how we will charge for using Scorbit:

  • For players using the Scorbit application or other integrations, the Scorbit app will always be free.

  • For operators who will install Scorbitrons and require the operator-oriented features, we’re developing a tiered subscription model that includes devices, with lower costs for larger numbers of installations.

  • For collectors or home use, we’ll be offering single unit sales, also with discounted packages for multiple units.

  • Pricing will always be related to the number of Scorbitrons you have installed in pinball machines! When you sell a machine with a Scorbitron installed, don’t remove it, we will replace it free of charge, so spread that Scorbit love!

So, back to the question of the final pricing! Please understand that every day we make progress in reducing our manufacturing costs so that the initial price of the hardware is affordable to everyone. Therefore, the cost per unit of the device keeps changing (going down), that is why we’re hesitating to publicize a price, because it’s getting better. The road is littered with the remains of companies who priced too early. We’ve also been talking to many of you in the pinball community - operators, collectors, players - to get a sense of what would work for each of you.

The main thing is that we’re making progress and we can’t wait to share it with you all. Stay tuned for upcoming events for more details to be revealed.

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UPCOMING EVENTS

In addition to INDISC this weekend, we’re excited to announce that we’ll be at some upcoming events over the next few months:

  • IFPA North American Pinball Championship, the IFPA Women’s World Pinball Championship and Pin-Masters - Denver, CO - March 5 - 8, 2020

  • Texas Pinball Festival - Dallas, TX - March 27 - 29, 2020

Stay tuned for more info about Scorbit at these events and we hope to see you there!

As always, there’s a few ways for you to stay up to date on everything coming from Scorbit:

Looking forward to a great 2020 of fun pinball!

  • The Scorbit Team: Jay Adelson, Brian O’Neill and Ron Richards
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Scorbit has arrived!
Sep 3, 2020

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Starting a business is a bit like herding cats. You have to decide it’s ok for one to jump out, as long as two more are in, knowing you’ll get there eventually. At times, it’s like painting a jet while it’s in the air. No one would fault you for saying “forget it, this isn’t going to work.”

For the three of us who founded Scorbit, we’ve started a number of businesses in the past and we’ve certainly seen our share of crazy ideas at crazy times. If you had told us we would be launching a business in a global pandemic, maybe not so much, but we’ve launched hard companies and we probably tell our children “it builds character.” It better, anyway.

Here’s the thing: You’ve gotta want it. Really bad. There is no logic that is going to win the day for why you would do something like this at first. Five years ago, Ron, Brian and Jay were walking through California Extreme, talking about this problem. The fundamental question to us was: Why hadn’t someone tried to connect these machines to the Internet (We always love connecting things to the Internet)… and using that to make the whole thing more fun and engaging…?

Brian and Ron, who have played about ten zillion times more pinball than Jay has, both made that really clear: You have no idea the diversity of equipment involved and how hard it is. They were right, we didn’t. However, who doesn’t enjoy a challenge?

Today, five years later, we’re excited to announce we’re launching Scorbit.

It’s a lot. We invented new ways of talking to old machines. We built a modern platform and infrastructure. We built a (beta) app that not only pinball enthusiasts could use, but also our family and friends could use. Now we get to see what we can do with it.

You’ll hear us talking a lot about “the platform.” What kind of marketing B.S. is that? The whole idea of a platform is that you don’t know yet what amazing things you can build on it. We’ll start with some amazingly cool stuff: Live scoreboards. Machine-specific leaderboards. Streaming. Game state and mechanics. What would you do with all this great information? What cool things does it unlock? A “platform” implies that we, along with you, will find that out by rolling out fun things on it. Some will work, some won’t, and that’s fine. We’ll do it together.

Look, we know many people say, “I have no use of anyone seeing what I’m doing on my machine.” That’s cool, we get that. No one is trying to convince you of that. However, I’m willing to bet that if someone you cared about said, “I can get to multiball faster than you can on that game”, you’ll try it once, right?

So here we go. We’re in it for the long haul. This is a five ball game behind a tournament player who ruined Black Knight 2000 for you because he can just keep hitting the loop over and over while you sit there wondering if you’ll get the ball.

We hope the Scorbit mobile app is the first step in bringing the community together around pinball. It might be finding places to play pinball in public (remember that) or playing on your machines at home, no matter where you’re flipping, you can now use Scorbit to save your scores and even challenge your friends to try and beat those scores. Nothing better than some friendly competition. Sure, we know not every pinball machine is set up the same way but come on, if you got a crazy good score on your Jurassic Park at home, you know you’re friends can try and beat your score on their machines at home or the machine at the local arcade that’s putting out pinball machines on the sidewalk so we can get a little taste of normal in this crazy world. We’ve been apart for so long, let’s connect again and have some fun.

For streamers and tournament operators, this is table stakes. We have to be able to show you that this works in a reliable fashion. It’s not a question, we’re ready for you, and we know your needs are different than others and we’ve developed ScorbitVision with you in mind.

For operators, COVID. It’s been the worst. What we want to do is spend the time we’re all hunkered down together listening to what operator features matter to you. We will roll out with those features as the year continues. The main thing is: We heard you, anything we can do to help increase your revenue for what machines you have, we’ll prioritize. We also are here to support you as pinball players start going out to arcades and bars and your locations. And if you’ve been directly affected by COVID, we’ve got your back. Get in touch and see if you qualify for our Operator Support Program and we’ll discuss how we can help build up your location business.

For collectors, home users, and everyone else: Our metric is straight forward: Can we get people playing more. What can we do to encourage everyone to play this game that is in your basement? How do we make that investment in a fairly expensive machine (both in dollars and square feet) pay off? How do I get my wife to play pinball? These are life’s eternal questions.

We know what you’re thinking, “What does this cost?” The Scorbitron is $299 to $199 depending on the total number you’re using, and Subscription Plans from $3.99 / month and up. (different pricing for home users versus operators).

Let us explain something up front: The way this works, we have to pay for infrastructure, a service, servers, bandwidth, people, app developers, hardware and electrical engineering, contract manufacturers, and babysitters. That’s why this is a subscription. The hardware, we made it as cheap and high quality as humanly possible while processing display, CPU, or other data in real time and securely sending it to our cloud infrastructure. We have to pay for that infrastructure though. We don’t see ourselves as a hardware business. We see ourselves as a service, one that is here for the pinball community first and hopefully for a long time, as we have even bigger plans for the future of pinball.

Take a look at our website at https://scorbit.io and ask questions. We built some devices, we’ll sell them to you. We’ll build more. We made an app. It’s not perfect, but it’s a start. We want to hear what you think. Have patience, because this is new, and we’ll have fun doing this together.

Last but not least, we need to send a major THANK YOU to all the people who helped us with our journey. It’s been a long one and the list is long. Huge thanks to tournament directors who have worked with us on field testing in a real tournament environment like Karl DeAngelo, Jim Belsito, Snow Galvin and Josh Sharpe and Zach Sharpe of the IFPA for partnering with us. Charlie Emery, Jimmy Lipham and Scott Danesi from Spooky Pinball. Jack Guarnieri, JT Harkey and Ken Cromwell from Jersey Jack Pinball, with a nod to Sal Brucculeri.

The amazing advice, guidance and early work done with us by Andy Smith and Michael Levit was key to Scorbit becoming a business. On the tech side, we have so many people who have touched this project from the team at KRTKL, our good friend Andreas Haugstrup Pedersen from MatchPlay and the OPDB, and of course Scott Wainstock from Pinball Map who graciously has been helping us with location data. Building the ecosystem around the Scorbit products couldn’t have been done without the amazing contributions of Adam Wright, Alex Rasmussen, Scott Adelson, Scott Wolfman, Maurico Balvanera and Tio Lavranos.

Scorbit wouldn’t be what it is today without the encouragement and support from friends, operators and pinball enthusiasts like Matt Henri from Free Gold Watch in San Francisco, Darren Ensley, Tom Collins, Greg Poverelli, TJ Beyer, Ryan Wagner, Chris Kuntz, Dave Volansky. And an enormous bit of thanks to Gene X Hwang for the amazing photos and a ton of cheerleading and moral support. Our Detroit crew, Chris Sonjeow, Kevin Zalewski, EJ Osis. And finally, Scorbit wouldn’t be here without the generous support of our investors.

We could really go on and on, as we’ve talked and bounced ideas off many of our friends and colleagues in the pinball community. Thank you to everyone and we hope you like what we’ve put together at Scorbit!

– Jay Adelson, Brian O’Neill, Ron Richards and the rest of the team at Scorbit
San Francisco, New Hampshire, New York City and around the world
September 3, 2020

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Ron, Brian and Jay at San Francisco City Champ 2018

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Woo!

Suggestion: turn on Password AutoFill on the password field on the registration page of your iOS app, so my phone can generate a strong password for me right when registering (I see it is on on the login page).

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Excellent. We’ll implement. Thanks!

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I love your approach, thank you for being open to feedback! Very neat piece of hardware with a lot of potential uses. I sent you an email before seeing this post.

I work with North Star Pinball here in Montreal, we’re now open to the public while following all public health guidelines. I can tell you that operators are having a real hard time right now, and I appreciate your offer to help out! How would you envision scorebit being used in an operator/pinball location context? On all the machines? Just one? What benefits would this bring to players?

Have you considered adding a coin switch output? I know handling payments comes with its own regulatory can of worms, but it could be a way for operators to bring in some revenue while people are using less and less cash.

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How would you envision scorebit being used in an operator/pinball location context? On all the machines? Just one? What benefits would this bring to players?

We think the product has very different uses depending on the operator’s context. For operators in a single location, there are advantages to getting all of your machines all on the platform for ScorbitVision, as well as future features that will encourage players to reengage with a specific machine. The goal is always the same: Get more people playing, there are just different ways to use the product to do that.

Leaderboards in public locations often have a “top ten” problem. You get the ten best, and then no one cares, because it’s not relevant. However, leaderboards between people you care about, or live scores that are easily seen and shared, are a different matter.

Have you considered adding a coin switch output? I know handling payments comes with its own regulatory can of worms, but it could be a way for operators to bring in some revenue while people are using less and less cash.

Yes, we definitely are working in that direction. We think that COVID definitely shut down a lot of public venue traffic, and that it was a bit less of a priority to our customers for 2020 than it had been originally. That being said, digital payments is definitely on our roadmap and we need to hear what operators need most!

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I really want to incorporate this into my tournament streams but it’s pretty cost prohibitive for me.

I typically would have a bank of 3 games in a round with only one being a DMD or LCD game. Would it be best to just have these hooked to those games only as the camera can easily see the scores for the SS and EMs at all times?

Sorry I didn’t read everything. Will this integrate right into the broadcast feature if Matchplay?

Thanks!

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I typically would have a bank of 3 games in a round with only one being a DMD or LCD game. Would it be best to just have these hooked to those games only as the camera can easily see the scores for the SS and EMs at all times?

This depends on what you’re using the devices for.

If you’re using it for streaming and you want the scores integrated into your broadcast (such as in the graphics), then you would want the device activated on the machine that is playing.

The device works on solid states, all DMDs and most LCDs. Right now, it works on early Bally and Sterns, and we will release support for other solid states in the future. What keeps you from moving it from machine to machine easily is that each Scorbitron is bundled with specific power boards and data interface probes for a particular manufacturer.

That being said, if you’re moving it from machine to machine of the same manufacturer and era, that is less of a problem. The app does accommodate all of this, whatever you want to do. We will consider selling kits for other manufacturers in the future for swapping, it’s just not a priority right now as we are getting orders for one-to-one and we have to figure out the manufacturing costs for that inventory.

Sorry I didn’t read everything. Will this integrate right into the broadcast feature if Matchplay?

When you say “right into the broadcast feature,” what level of integration are you looking for?

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So I’m used to using the broadcast feature that shows the players that are up and what game they are on and their current tournament points. It would be nice to have that window also show their current score of the game. Again, most important for DMD and LcD games that do not always show every player’s score at all times.

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So I’m used to using the broadcast feature that shows the players that are up and what game they are on and their current tournament points. It would be nice to have that window also show their current score of the game. Again, most important for DMD and LcD games that do not always show every player’s score at all times.

Yes, what ScorbitVision Streamboards do is allow you to customize all of that, so you can incorporate a window (or integrate into an existing window) the current scores of games. Yes, the DMD and LCD games will show the score for all players at all times.

For DMD games, if you’re in a mode, and your score is the only score showing on the DMD, our scoreboard shows all the players’ scores and keeps up to date. (This is different with the CPU probe, but that is not available yet.)

For LCD games, it doesn’t matter, we have all the scores, all the time, during the whole game, so the score will update even if you can’t see it.

For clarity: The answer is yes, we show you all the scores all the time, even when the player isn’t currently playing.

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As someone who did scorekeeping at INDISC I thought this was brilliant and wanted it in my arcade at home.

So I ordered some: one for a Stern LCD game and one for a Stern DMD game arrived today, they rock. Ordered a load more.

https://sv.scorbit.io/viewer/leaderboards/20
https://sv.scorbit.io/viewer/scoreboards/40

Which was really quick and easy to do.

Its as easy as installing a colorDMD on Stern games! Absolutely fantastic job to the Scorbit guys they have nailed it !

Have ordered enough for all my spike 2 games, TNA and Meteor, Just need support for CGC and JJP (Dialed in).

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@neilmcrae that was such a kind review! Thank you so much!

One point of clarification: We actually don’t update Stern firmware or game code. We do need to know what version you’re running on the Spike 2s, which is why we ask you in the install process.

We don’t want to get in the business of distributing anyone else’s software without permission.

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Ah yes sorry if that isn’t clear!

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It’s clear…but you know how it is! :slight_smile:

Your review really made everyone here at Scorbit smile.

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Hello Scorbit folks! I got a late-night email asking me to verify my account from no-reply@scorbit.io. I haven’t tried to login for months, so I wanted to make sure this was legit.

It was a plain-text email that simply says “Please verify your account by clicking [here].” with the link going to: [http:// url6056 .scorbit .io /ls /click] (url broken out so that it doesn’t actually hyperlink).

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Yep, that was us, my apologies. We found a number of bounced verification emails and tried to reset it. If you have trouble logging into the app, let us know. Thanks!

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Exciting update!

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Scorbit is excited to announce that we are partnering with Jersey Jack Pinball to fully integrate Scorbit with every Jersey Jack Pinball machine, beginning with the recently released Guns N’ Roses and supporting all previous titles when enabled with Jersey Jack Pinball’s new WIFI capabilities.

Scorbit features will be available to all game owners 100% free of charge and do not require any Scorbit hardware to be installed.

Game owners will be able to add their machine to the Scorbit platform and enable instant score submissions, tracking of game modes and enable display of game data to ScorbitVision, the platform for scoreboards, leaderboards and livestream tools provided by Scorbit.

This release is the first step of this collaboration between Scorbit and Jersey Jack Pinball, one of the most innovative pinball manufacturers in the business. Scorbit plans to release many more features over time with Jersey Jack Pinball and we are very excited for what this means for the future of the pinball community.

If you own a Jersey Jack Pinball Machine, CLICK HERE to learn how to connect your machine to Scorbit, for free!

And learn how to connect your games and save your scores to Scorbit automatically on Jersey Jack Pinball machines HERE.

Don’t have the Scorbit app yet? Download it today from the Apple Appstore or the Google Play Store

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