Message #160164

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Where are we now?

TPF reinforced something we all know... that while it's great to talk about the machine, show some videos, and discuss the rules and features of our first game (Dennis Nordman's Lexy Lightspeed - Galaxy Girl), nothing beats letting people play it for themselves.  At TPF, the LL-GG playfield was mechanically complete (but still a whitewood - no upper p/f artwork yet), and the rules were about 50% complete.  This was the first chance people had to play a real game on the P3 and experience some of the features we've been promising.  The responses were amazing.


"Umm - what is this thing?"
"What do all these buttons do?"
"I love those popup boxes"
"The flippers feel great"
"Holy crap - an 8 ball ball lock?"
"Wow - it's so much more fun than I expected it to be"   (hah)
"Whoa - the cabinet artwork is magnetic?"
"Check that out - the ball creates a wake in the water!"
"When will it ship?"
"When will it go to production?"
"When can I have one?"
"Bah - it sucks"   (3 guesses who said this)
"THIS is the demo you should have showed 2 years ago!"   ( )
"Hey <person's name> - You HAVE to play this!"
"Can I play again"?



The feedback was fantastic, and it made it clear that we've reached a major development milestone.  We have successfully implemented our vision and re-engineered the pinball platform.  The P3  addresses all of the issues we set out to address, and it provides the infrastructure for all of the features we've been discussing.  To the average consumer, we haven't accomplished anything until we've successfully shipped a fun-playing product, but we all know better.  Getting to this point is nothing short of astounding!  The amount of time and work dedicated to this project by employees and volunteers has been staggering, and I'd to thank and congratulate them all.  At the same time, I'd like to thank all of you for supporting us on this journey and continuing to provide useful feedback to help us continuously course-correct. 


What's next?  Onward to production!  Sorry, we're not ready to start manufacturing and shipping a final product quite yet, but we are ready to start building more machines and getting them out there for more people to play.


Preparing for production:



If we want the P3 to be successful in the field, we have to make it easy-to-manufacture and long-term reliable.  Now that we've reached a point where the feature set is firm and the mechanics are functionally complete, we're beginning the effort to ready everything for the manufacturing process.  In the next few months, leading up to Expo in Chicago, we'll be finalizing our CAD models for fabrication, and we'll be building 2 manufacturing prototypes with professionally fabricated components.  Once we have 3 working machines, we can ship one or two out to shows without fear of having our only working prototype destroyed in a shipping accident.  We can also loan machines out to local (and maybe remote) locations for more people to play.  At the same time, we'll be cycle testing each of the major assemblies in fully automated test rigs to ensure the assemblies are long-term reliable.


After the manufacturing prototype run and reliability testing process, we'll initiate a pre-production run to work out the kinks in the manufacturing process with our fabrication and assembly partners.


I still can't give an expected ship date, but I can tell you this.  If each of the aforementioned milestones are achieved relatively smoothly, we'll have mfg protos ready for Chicago Expo in October and pre-production units in early Q1 2015, and we'll be ready for production soon thereafter.  We're doing our best to manage these milestones so they have a good chance of being met smoothly, but there are still a number of unknowns we have to work through.


Be aware that this next stage of our operations will be fairly light on game and artwork updates.  It's clear that people need to see and play the P3 in person to be able to judge it fairly; so our efforts are focused on getting machines built.   Intermediate updates are nice to show progress, but we simply have to focus on getting the machines into your hands and letting you enjoy them in person.  That said, we will put out some gameplay videos when major software milestones are hit, and my virtual door has always been and will remain open.  If you want insight into current activities and progress at any time, feel free to email me.


Distribution:


While we continue to work through development and production planning, we're also starting to build out our distribution channels.  If you or somebody you know wants to discuss the possibility of becoming an official P3 distributor, please email me directly.


Important note about pricing: 


At some point in the next few months, we'll be switching our pricing to a one machine / one game model from the current one machine / two games model.  The pinball community by and large seems to be evaluating the current $9995 as a single game price and unfairly comparing it to other NIB game prices.  Therefore, by switching to a one machine / one game model, people can compare our price directly against competitor pricing.   The new price is TBD, but we expect it to be less than the current price, whereas the cumulative price of one machine / one game plus another game purchased later will likely exceed the current $9995 price.  If you're interested in a P3 and want to lock in one machine / two games for $9995, you'll want to do so soon. 


Everybody who ordered (or orders) the one machine / two games model can rest assured.  We sincerely appreciate the support our early customers have shown, and we will make sure the pricing changes work out in their favor.  When the pricing changes, you'll each have an opportunity to switch to the new model or stay with the one you ordered.  In both cases, we'll adjust (via refunds, if necessary) your price so you maintain the discounts you received by ordering early.


That's it for now.  Thank you for being a part of this journey!


- Gerry Stellenberg
Multimorphic, Inc.