Did you guys see Multimorphic's public update (May 2014)?
Thing that stood out to me is a possible ship date in 2015 with manufacturing protos available for Chicago Expo in Oct.
I'll copy it here for your reading pleasure:
Now that we're almost 2 months removed from the Texas Pinball Festival, I think it's a good idea to once again summarize our current activities and plans moving forward with the P3. First though...
Mostly due to TPF and the amazing reception the P3 received there, we have a lot more people on the email list. So let me start with a description of our corporate direction and goals and a summary of our history.
As most of you know, we started the company as PinballControllers.com and designed the P-ROC board and serialized driver boards so people could breathe new life into their existing machines and/or control their new/custom machines. Associated with this, we helped develop the pyprocgame pinball development framework to make it easier for people to program games. Our control system products are now used by hundreds of hobbyists, and the number of pinball manufacturers building their games around the P-ROC (or newer P3-ROC) continues to increase. The availability of the P-ROC, and the advanced features it introduced into pinball control systems, have created an active community of both DIYers and new MFGs, and we continue to release new boards to make it easier for people to turn their pinball ideas into products. The pinball industry is growing again, and we're proud to be playing a significant role in the resurgence.
It's great that there are now a bunch of companies selling (or planning to sell) new pinball machines. It's great for pinball consumers, and it's nice to see hobbyists-turned-manufacturers living out some of their dreams. However, over the last few years, we've become increasingly more frustrated with the lack of innovation in the market and the unwillingness of pinball manufacturers to address the needs of their customers. So we changed the company name to Multimorphic, Inc, and we set out to build a modern type of pinball machine that keeps what's great about traditional pinball machines and adds new design elements and innovations to address the needs of the modern pinball player/owner. Specifically, we wanted to address the following issues:
- Price-per-game (games are too expensive)
- Floorspace (they take up too much space)
- Serviceability (they're too hard to service)
- Consumer choice (what customization choices do customers get?)
So, we essentially designed a new pinball machine from scratch, innovating where it made sense to innovate and re-using traditional components where it made sense to do that. The result is the P3. The P3 is a multi-game physical pinball platform. It's still "mechanical action" pinball (real ball, flippers, ramps, loops, targets, VUKs, etc) and can deliver nearly identical gameplay as traditional machines. In fact, it's possible to almost exactly recreate traditional games on the P3 (certain games are on our wishlist). However, it can do so much more.
The two most impactful features in the P3 are:
- Modular upper playfields. The upper third of the playfield, where most of the physical shots reside, is a swappable module. In 60 seconds or less, you can completely change the physical layout of the machine and therefore play entirely different games.
- Dynamic and Interactive lower playfield artwork. The lower part of the playfield is essentially a touchscreen LCD. Where traditional machines have a painted piece of wood with inserts lamps, the P3 has dynamic artwork, and the ball can interact with that artwork just like your finger does on a touchscreen phone or tablet computer. Traditional machines have a dozen or two switches and inserts lamps in the lower playfield. The P3 effectively has 2 million of each (insert lamps and rollover targets).
The economics of a multi-game platform blow away traditional machines. While it's still expensive to buy the full machine, you can add new games to it for significantly less. Therefore, price-per-game is drastically improved. The floorspace issue is too. You can build up your P3 game library and have a bunch of games to play without sacrificing large blocks of floorspace.
In order to accommodate the swappable upper playfield and dynamic lower playfield, we designed the entire machine to be modular. *Every* part of the machine (the flippers, the ball trough, the LCD, the side target modules, the upper playfields, etc) is a module than can be very easily removed/replaced. In other words, servicing the machine is MUCH easier than on a traditional game. With traditional machines, you take your workbench to the machine. With the P3, you take assemblies to your workbench (or ship them to us or your distributor for replacements). We've therefore significantly improved serviceability. Whether the machine is in a home or on location, replacing parts and assemblies is quick and easy.
The last thing to address was giving consumers choice. One of the biggest topics of discussion in the pinball community is cabinet artwork. Everybody has an opinion about what looks good and what doesn't, and the opinions vary dramatically. With traditional pinball machines, you're essentially stuck with the artwork that comes installed on your machine. Many people even make purchasing decisions based on that artwork. With the P3, the artwork is magnetic and easily swappable. Customers can leave on game-themed artwork, or they can fully customize their machines. Cabinet artwork that costs $150 to replace (at your local print shop) should never be a reason not to buy an expensive pinball machine. Perhaps we'll offer multiple art packages for each machines, or maybe members of the community will design custom art packages. Failing that, anybody can work with an artist to put their own artistic ideas onto their machines.
Further, the P3 will be an open-platform machine. By that I mean that we'll document and release the physical specs so anybody can develop a game for the platform (both upper playfield modules and software). We'll even work with both individuals and companies to turn their playfields (or just playfield ideas) in products so they can make their games available to others.
Lastly, all unlicensed games we release will be open sourced. It pains me to see certain games largely ignored because some aspect of the rules is missing, or is too simple, or doesn't fit the theme well, and we don't want that to happen with P3 games. So if there's something about the rules that you don't like, you (or your programming friend) can change them.
As we were developing our latest prototype for TPF, we made videos to illustrate many of these points. Initially we decided not to release them because the prototype is a little rough, and because the machine doesn't have the upper playfield guide system installed (which will make the playfield removal/replacement a snap), but a lot of people have been asking to see them. So, we're linking them here with one caveat: If you choose to share these videos with others (in email, on forums, wherever), please also clearly state the caveat that "The machine shown in the video is a prototype. In addition to having cleaner wiring and workmanship, the final machine will have a fully guided playfield installation and removal mechanism."
Playfield swap: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YS_RZdCZJ4 (Don't freak out - there's a solid handle under the mini-LCD!)
Flipper assembly replacement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmWNtwArj90
Artwork swap: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIAqPteRVf8
Note - the underlying mechanics that enable all of this modularity are patent pending.
