Stern in 2000 tried the concept of linking games to other machines once before with their prototype 'Golden Cue'. Never eventuated.
Since then the only piece of innovation that is worthy of the title 'innovation'; Stewies Playfield from Family Guy.
It was novel, it was perfect for the theme, worked very well and well constructed. But again it is not a progression for others to follow, I thought it was different and innovative for that title alone.
maybe they should revisit it,, theirs wifi and plenty of other good networking systems now. and they need to put it in to production to see if its going to be successful or not, but certainly joining games together is going to be a great feature. i remember pre xbox thinking why do i need a console joined to the internet and versing people world wide, games are fun any ways. then when i bought one i relised how much more fun the experience is when its more socially interactive. i think this is a concept that is coming to the party late for pinball
but i do recon we are paying allot of money for one game, and if the game is networked and online, you could purchase new sets of rules for more than one game on your pinball, have different rules using the same theme and playfield of course, but the rules are different and you can select what rules you wish to play, and also means stern make money after the date of sale also, plus you can pay for network sub******ions to use their server for online gaming on your pinball.
there is more room for revenue for stern and then people will have more than one use for their pinball machine they spent good money on.
one way they could make an old dmd look old and outdated is by moving in that direction, it would be like comparing an xbox360 to a nintendo entertainment system.
P.S - that LCD digitised playfield idea/design etc, I think is an absolute shocker, an abomination...u might as well just buy a computer game and be done with it, its like a blow up doll, far from the real thing...so far infact, could u even call that pinball, more like simulated pinball....yuk yuk yuk..its like having a robot for a wife..its just not the same or even close...cyborg pinball versus the game we love..that will be the end of pinball if
i tend to agree with that cavey.
as for the large lcd whilest the debate about seeing it whilest playing is absolutely correct, i think it does need to be big, it would make it attractive to sites if you can put up adverts on it when the game isnt playing. you could advertise things from your business on it, i hope they have room for that on woz. i also think it would be usefull in attract mode, but it seems JJP is using the screen as a diagnostic tool as well so the space would be handy for that, and it looks like it has menu's and other things for pinball, rather then using the small dmd to go through your setting one option at a time which every one knows is a pain, it does take a while to go through settings using the small dmd, it would be handy with the big lcd to have allot more displayed in an actual menu. there was vid in the woz thread that showed the lcd being used with the diagnostics which looked usefull.
