Pinball Industry News: February 2020 Re-cap
Spooky Pinball, Ben Heck and Chicago Gaming join forces, three pinball companies on the move, interview with Jim Patla on management changes at American Pinball, new game for Multimorphic coming...
Highlights
- Spooky Pinball and Ben Heck are designing a licensed game for Chicago Gaming to manufacture
- Jersey Jersey Jack Pinball is moving from Lakewood, Jersey Jack Pinball to Elk Grove Village, Illinois, approximately one mile from Stern Pinball
- Homepin relocated from China to Taiwan due to Chinese government regulations and coronavirus concerns
- American Pinball 3 is a licensed title that will be revealed at Texas Pinball Festival
- Jim Patla joined American Pinball approximately six months prior (from September 2019) as part-time COO
- Spooky Pinball is tied up for 18 months building Rick and Morty games at 500-750 units per year
- Rick and Morty received code update v2020.02.22 with bug fixes and approximately 50% speech implementation remaining
Notable quotes
“It's almost a unique, well, probably a unique circumstance where one company is designing a game for another company to actually build. It would be like if Jersey Jack was designing a game for Stern Pinball.”
“They don't want to expand their own facilities there, but one way to explain it, they can expand, is by working with another manufacturer, effectively building a second line.”
“It didn't say, you know, it will. It was like, we hope it will. And that's a bit of a telltale, I thought.”
“Building a 52,000 square feet foot factory, which is less than two miles from my house... The new facility is fantastic, and I can't wait to start there.”
“The reason that I started with American Pinball was to help them with the operational aspects of their business, not only the operations, manufacturing, supply chain, but also design elements within their existing design.”
“We share the four walls and the roof, but there's no common area or anything that we'll be sharing. So it's like two companies within one structure, but they're separated.”
Entities
- American Pinball· company
- Ametron· company
- Chicago Gaming· company
- Homepin· company
- Jersey Jack Pinball· company
- Spooky Pinball· company
- Stern Pinball· company
- Weche· company
- Texas Pinball Festival· event
- Alice Cooper's Nightmare Castle· game
- Rick and Morty (SE)· game
- Ben Heck· person
- Eric Priebke· person
- Gary Flower· person
- Jack Danger· person
- Jack Guarnieri· person
- Jen Guarnieri· person
- Jim Patla· person
- Jonathan Euston· person
- Martin Ayobe· person
- Mike Kalinowski· person
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