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— What Else is Happening in Pinball —
Josh Sharpe Joins Pinball Profile
Josh Sharpe was on Pinball Profile with Jeff Teolis last week, and shared some insight into how manufacturing and timing of releases work at Raw Thrills. This could also explain why we see some Stern pinball machines ship with code further along than other games:
PP: When they launched Iron Maiden with the teaser at the PAPA Circuit event, I said that’s the way its going to go from now on. You’re going to come out with a teaser, you’re going to come out immediately with Jack Danger and the Dead Flip stream, and you’re going to see the game and it is going to ship that week and it is almost full of code – I bet that is the new norm now for games.
Josh: Maybe. Remember, pinball is a manufacturing business, so everything is all great and on schedule – and we see this at Raw Thrills too – a game has to be on the line. Full stop. That is the business. If you can do reruns, awesome. If you can sell the current game, awesome. If there is no demand for anything in the catalog, guess what? Next game is up. It doesn’t matter where it is at in development. The good news is that Stern’s catalog right now is awesome. So they should hopefully be giving themselves enough runway for the upcoming games to be pretty fleshed out.
PP: I wonder what the fine line is as far as momentum – I know you can’t speak on behalf of Stern, but even for Raw Thrills. If you’ve got a hot hot game,
