Ultracade and Visual Pinball licencing

[ValamirCleaver]

Well it looks like that though he didn't get the MAME(TM) he was supposedly able to licence VP. Here's the relevant thread at VPF: VP has been sold? Let's hope for the best. I would suggest that anyone that David Foley attempted to shake down for kickbacks or had e-bay auction wrongly pulled post your personal firsthand experiences at VPF.

Tom

[quarterback]

Foley's a tool and none of those VP table creator guys will see more than $10 in the next ten years.

Royalties.

[psik0tik]

uggghhh the man is a straight piece of crap..i wanna see what other emulation he tries to copyright

[Q*Bert_OP]

Rofl

[Stingray]

Forget pinball, check out Foley's latest offering!

-S

[Q*Bert_OP]

Anone seen that ticket spitting game called mallet madnes by capcom? To bad it wasn't made by ultracade, I'd enjoy pounding it

[NIVO]

saw one down south, but it was called Mullet Madness 

[Stingray]

-S

[romperwomb]

Anyone besides Tiger-Heli and CrazyCooter still watching that thread?  Very interesting developments.  If you don't want to read all 20+ pages of posts.  Looks like there will be VPball updates released for the first time since the XPsp2 bug fix...because of Foley.  Some table authors are pulling their tables off the net.  For the most part, they don't seem to get what the whole MAME tm issue has to do with them.

Foley also posted this about the plunger interface board they're working on:

Our prototype board was based on the lightgun board that we have developed for MAME and our own cabinets, so that is why you see the VGA passthru. We are working on an LCD interface to work with VPM.

__________________
David R. Foley
UltraCade Technologies

Is it me, or does the StingerReport seem to be on Ultracades payroll? 

[lokki]

Hi,
I'm not sure what the whole MAME tm issue has to do this either. Other than speaking of Foley's character. I completly disagree with the way he handled the whole situation, but I can understand his motives. He spends thousands of dollars getting licenses to legally sell and distribute games, and there are people out there making money illegally (I won't say that all the auctions that where pulled where illegal, but some where).

The good thing that came out of it is that it forced mamedev to take a stand, which I think is a good thing.

But back to the VP thing, as far as I can tell it looks like did everything right this time. He bought the licensing from the VP authors, and this whole thing came out because he was asking for permission to use the tables and offering to pay royalties.
I can't find anything wrong with this, it is up to the authors to agree to distribute their tables (and hopefully get a few bucks) or simply not give permission to distribute their tables.

[Popcorrin]

Our prototype board was based on the lightgun board that we have developed for MAME and our own cabinets, so that is why you see the VGA passthru. We are working on an LCD interface to work with VPM.

__________________
David R. Foley
UltraCade Technologies

What lightgun board did they develop for MAME?

[Stingray]

Our prototype board was based on the lightgun board that we have developed for MAME and our own cabinets, so that is why you see the VGA passthru. We are working on an LCD interface to work with VPM.

__________________
David R. Foley
UltraCade Technologies

What lightgun board did they develop for MAME?

If they have one (I've not heard about it if they do) it's probably proprietary and only installed in their products. Foley would never, ever do anything that actually benefits the arcade/ MAME community.

-S

[romperwomb]

A few more quotes from Foley on that thread. 

All Your Parodies Are Belong to Us:

I did chuckle, on many levels, especially since I own the rights to the Zero Wing! Nonetheless, I don't want to subject myself to graffiti if I keep posting.

I'll bet he bought the rights to this thinking he could go after people who use the phrase "All Your Base".

All Your Mr. Do Are Belong to Us:

IP rights are always a big issue. Character rights and trademarks are very tough to protect. The biggest issue is if someone is reselling them. To give you a real world example: I own the Mr. DO! character rights. We go to great lengths to protect this character. There are tons of fan sites, and people that do things with this character. If someone is not selling the character, or defacing it, then we don't bother them. If, on the other hand, they are selling a T-Shirt, or using the character in a decal they are selling, we immediately put a stop to that. This is how almost all companies handle this type of issue. Clearly Williams has not put a stop to this forum as they see no immeadiate threat or loss of revenue from it. Had people been charging for the tables without paying Williams pre-negotiated royalty, you would have seen it shut down. Another example is Namco and Pac-Man. We know the Namco folks very closely, and this is one of their biggest properties. You see all kinds of Pac-Man web sites, fan sites, and all kinds of use of the name and characters. They are allowed to exist because they are not commercial exploits. However, Namco comes down with a legal hammer whenever someone is selling unlicensed copies of the character. They hauled a guy in Florida off to jail for selling illegal Pac-Man machines.

All I can offer you is that we have had an agreement with Williams in place for a few months now, and if it was our intention to shut down the use of those tables, we wouldn

[psik0tik]

If I wanted to own the MAME tm, I would. I didn

[Stingray]

He's a real nostril hole.

-S

[Q*Bert_OP]

He's a real nostril hole.

-S

  <correction> A**HOLE!!! [/correction]

[ValamirCleaver]

Here we go again... 

Gottlieb ‘virtually’ returns to pinball through Nanotech Entertainment @ Arcade Heroes
Now classic Gottlieb tables are on their way back in virtual form due to an agreement that newcomer Nanotech Entertainment made with the existing Gottlieb Development LLC (personally I had no idea that they were still around). The pinball tables are being recreated for Nanotech’s Multipin video based pinball machine which states that it uses a special engine to recreate the feel of bumping and nudging a table to move the ball around accurately. According to the company website they have two flavors of the MultiPin machine, with the much more expensive MultiPin Gold table suggesting that it will be the one to support more classic tables (Gottlieb isn’t mentioned specifically but I doubt that they would go to all of this trouble to release these tables on a limited edition unit). Pictured is the standard unit, the Gold one has a different color layout.

Foley finally comes out of the woodwork again @ VPForums
First let me say hello to many of you that I have not talked to in a couple of years. I've taken a couple of years off after my differences with Global VR.

I know a lot about NanoTech and the associated questions and will offer my input and opinions. Since there are really several topics, I'll start separate threads for each of the topics and stick to the information about Gottlieb in this thread.

Seeing how "well" things went over with a Visual Pinball and VPinMAME powered UltraPin I wonder what makes them think a Future Pinball powered MultiPin will do any better? 

 One can read up on what Foley has to say at VPForums. If one chooses to do so I’d also suggest to check the archives to read his posts and the responses concerning UltraPin back from about 2-3 years ago. It should help put one’s opinion regarding the situation in better perspective.

[RayB]

Seeing how "well" things went over with a Visual Pinball and VPinMAME powered UltraPin I wonder what makes them think a Future Pinball powered MultiPin will do any better? 

Do you happen to be privy to Ultrapin sales figures or something?  How can you know it wasn't profitable? In the arcade business, selling just a few thousand machines can be enough to cover your bottom line.

According to David Foley himself, they sold 30,000 Ultrapins. That's more units than Stern Pinball
sells in a year.

It's one thing to dislike a guy, but to let that cloud your judgement ...

* Retracted *

[RayB]

Thanks for the double-post Valamir.
 

[ValamirCleaver]

According to David Foley himself, they sold 30,000 Ultrapins.

30,000? I don't ever recall hearing anything close to that number cited, but why would would one even consider that figure be even close to believable? Especially in light of the average number of sales that Stern Pinball has for all releases for any one year, which I recall previously read to be around 10,000 units? Someone correct me if that figure is incorrect. Let's see what Foley himself personally posted yesterday...

Originally posted by davidrfoley @ VPForums
If they swapped out for your version and didn't license it from you, then I would contact Global VR and demand your royalties. Since the product is dead, there isn't much to gain, but they did ship about 150 to 200 machines, so it would be worth something.

150 to 200 machines is a far cry from 30,000... 

[shardian]

There is no way in hell they sold 30k machines!

[Ken Layton]

30,000? Are they crazy? I don't know ANY western Washington state operators who bought any of those so-called "pinball" machines.

[RayB]

Again, as posted in the Pinball forum, I humbly retract my mis-quote. I misinterpreted "Ultraflop" to mean "Ultrapin".

Source: http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=81666.msg852391#msg852391