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Ep 155: Is American Being Sued? with David Fix
PodcastAnalysis updated 3d ago57 min listen
David Fix comes on the show to give us a status update about American Pinball which includes: lawsuit, lay offs, new game, and more.
Highlights
- Paul Reno is suing American Pinball over discrepancies in contracts/payments related to Galactic Tank Force co-design work
- American Pinball's next game is licensed IP and will be ready for production with code polished before release
- June-July 2024 saw worst pinball industry sales since 2009
- American Pinball shipped over 1,200 Polycade arcade units in three months (Sept-Dec 2024)
- Multiple American Pinball staff layoffs including Dennis Nordman, Jack Guarnieri, and Steve Bowden; some being brought back on contract or freelance basis
- American Pinball has only 2 standard Barbecue editions and 3 Limited Editions remaining in inventory as of podcast date
- The next game designer has provided a schedule to personally test first 100 units before production boxinglike Williams historically did
- Ametron (parent company) handles all finance, HR, legal, and contract matters for American Pinball; David Fix oversees only R&D and production
Notable quotes
“There were some discrepancies that need to be cleaned up. And I didn't even know about it until it was on the thing last night.”
“I would love to have five or six games sitting in the lab just waiting to be released whenever I felt like it. I don't have the luxury of that. So I have a very small team.”
“I'm too small of a company to afford a failure, right? Or something that doesn't hit all the screws, right? It has to be perfect on this next shot, for sure.”
“We saw just recently, and I'm going to give kudos and good jobs, and I want to say to Jack Danger I love his Uncanny X-Men... within three weeks they brought out Metallica.”
“They never brought out a new pinball in June, July, and August because the sales were always, you know, right in the bottom because nobody's looking at games at that time of the year.”
“So if you're the game designer, you gotta go live on the line while your game comes off and make sure every game is 100 percent the way it was and train the line.”
“I'm a fan first. I have a ton of games... I don't even have an American game down there yet.”
“If you've got a question about American Pinball, call me. I will set the record straight.”
Entities
- American Pinball· company
- Ametron· company
- Polycade· company
- Spooky Pinball· company
- Stern Pinball· company
- Bharat· person
- Christopher Franchi· person
- David Fix· person
- Dennis Nordman· person
- Don· person
- George Gomez· person
- Jack Danger· person
- Jack Guarnieri· person
- Josh Roop· person
- Kerry Hardy· person
- Mukesh Vasani· person
- Naps Arcade / Jason· person
- Nirmal Vasani· person
- Paul Reno· person
- Ryan McQuaid· person
- Scott Larson· person
- Sophia Ryan· person
- Steve Bowden· person
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