I thought this post from Jersey Jack was worth re-posting here. I lifted it from Pinside but it was apparently originally posted on the private JJP forum last Saturday. It seems that they are attempting to ramp up production significantly next month and that there is still a lot more planned for WOZ that hasn't been seen yet. Also a link to a patent for some kind of integrated pinball redemption machine (a little difficult to decipher) and some claims of sabotage thrown in.
From JJP forum (unedited):
On Saturday, July 27, 2013 10:24:12 AM UTC-4, Jersey Jack wrote:
Every day I'm amazed at the creativity and ideas of our customer base.......
I also posted this on another thread here but in case you missed it:
I'm living more in reality now that months ago. That means that I can see what is happening daily and weekly and what's going in boxes and leaving.
The stack of 250 new pallets only has 38 pallets on it now....so we shipped all those games since April 29th and 30 more in Final Test at the moment as I write this. Alex was here yesterday and he took some pictures. His head was spinning.
We have 200 games on the matrix for August with 182 being ECLEWOZ and 18 being WOZ
We built and shipped WOZ as I said we would. You see them more than the LE's because the people getting LE games are quietly putting them in their homes not looking for drama.
Our parts suppliers are keeping up for the most part, harnesses, power supplies, mother boards, board sets, etc....the OTD parts, still we have over $3.3 million here in parts as we ordered thousands of parts to do the first 1,500 games. We have made some minor changes to enable us to make the game easier to assemble.
We did not announce the hiring of an iconic industry production expert who joined us in June. That made a huge difference. He ran production at several pinball factories and most recently Namco. I moved him and his family from Illinois to beautiful New Jersey. He has an employment contract for five years with an option. After we hired him, another pinball maker called him (twice) offering him a job. Not because they wanted him there really but because they knew if he was here we would increase our production momentum......I need to write a book one day.
Action still speaks volumes, keep our heads down and build and ship games.....that shuts everyone up...let the games do the talking, not me. I'm tired of hearing me. Things go easier as we train, learn and improve and as the people on the line go from being individuals to being part of a Team. You don't go to the gym and bench press 300 pounds on the first day. You train and work up to it over time.
I remember a day a year ago or so that it took us two months to assemble one game and it looked like we were building Frankenstein. It took us ten days of all of us working to build 8 games for IAAPA. That's funny now.
Now I go a few feet from here and all of these people are hopping and clopping and making games, I wish you could all be here to see it because your heads would spin. Pictures do not do it justice. We had visitors this week here from two major amusement manufacturers. They were amazed and they are in the business 40+ years each.
All I can say is that when people get the game, they love it. The game is earning money off the charts for pinball. I heard that Gary Stern threatened locations if they install WOZ next to his game - he will take out what he lent them - in Chicago - this told to me by several area operators there. When you have a game making more than all the other pinball machines combined, Including Metallica, you have a hit game - and by the way - it's not finished yet.
In the last month we have added more than 140 unpaid orders for WOZ which we need to filter into the line starting in Mid- September - when operators want games for their routes again. At that point we will be up to 15 games a day. 10 a day ECLEWOZ and 5 a day WOZ in September. The shifts get two hours longer and we will work every Saturday. We have one theater operator who says he is placing an order for 60 WOZ that he needs by 10/15
There are almost 60 people working here. We have two huge parking lots and our neighbors complained that we took all the spots (they are our spots, not theirs) as we have a 42,000 sq ft building and all of theirs are smaller.
A year ago the haters wrote we would never build a game, it would never ship, that our parking lot is empty, we would be out of business, etc...etc....I guess not. Now that we are building and shipping, it's not fast enough...I agree....but we are getting there.
We still want to under-promise and over-deliver and we will. You all ain't seen this game do anything yet....none of you found it so here is what was Published in May much of it we are already making reality now:
http://www.google.com/patents/US20130113161 People asking about The Hobbit - like Gabe- OK - I'll release more of the playfield layout in a week or so. We are almost sold out of the game with distributors asking to up their allocations which I have resisted. There will be a MAP price increase announced shortly as of a certain date and that's to reward those who are in early and paid money on their Hobbit.
The mind set in creating WOZ was the "Best Game Ever" The mindset of the Team in creating The Hobbit is that we want Wizard of Oz to be the worst game we ever build....we always want to be better and reward our loyal JJP customers who helped build the company.
Remember, this has taken a "long time" but we are just getting started in doing what we set out to do when we had less than nothing on 1/1/11
Thanks again to all of you for your trust and belief and for defending JJP in the face of the haters and doubters. I always thought that more pinball would be a good thing, apparently there are those who post on "Wrongside" otherwise. They too will be playing JJP games. We have seen some past haters even buy and operate WOZ so I guess that's amazing by itself.
A good game comes around once in a while....a great game is even more rare. We have an amazing opportunity to have a great game, followed by a great game, followed by a great game.....It took longer to get here, yes....shipping this game a year ago would have given you a crappy game. You can already buy one if you wanted that. The extra time and money spent was well worth it.
I can see building thousands of WOZ games. The whole Earth is our marketplace.
You all had faith, those who already got games see the result of what we promised. Those who are still waiting, be a bit more patient with us....nobody wants to ship your game more than I do!
