Stern Pinball Announces Partnership with FarSight Studios

[mwong168]

Stern Pinball Announces New Expanded Partnership with Digital Game Developer FarSight Studios
World’s Leading Maker of Arcade Quality Pinball Games Teams Up With Digital Pinball Wizards to Connect the Real and Virtual Worlds

ELK GROVE VILLAGE, IL – September 22, 2015 – Stern Pinball, Inc., the world's oldest and largest producer of arcade-quality pinball games, announced a new expanded partnership with FarSight Studios, a developer and publisher of multi-platform digital games including The Pinball Arcade. FarSight will develop a new digital platform called the Stern Pinball Arcade that will feature exact virtual replicas of Stern Pinball’s hottest terrestrial pinball machines.

FarSight Studios has been developing top videogame products across platforms for more than two decades. From movie licensed strategy games and hardcore sports titles to edutainment games for kids and mass-market software. Over the years, FarSight has developed many best-selling franchises, such as Game Party, Sega Sports’ NFL games for the Genesis, NCAA college football games for EA, Backyard Sports for Atari, PlayTV for Radica/Mattel and the Pinball Hall of Fame for Crave.

“At Stern, we’re always looking for new ways to excite our existing fans and gain new ones,” said Gary Stern, CEO of Stern Pinball. “Expanding our partnership with FarSight Studios is helping us do just that. Both gamers and pinball enthusiasts of all stripes and abilities will love the new products we create together.”

“Anyone in the gaming world knows Stern Pinball, which is why we are so pleased about the renewal and expansion of this partnership,” said Jay Obernolte, CEO of FarSight Studios. “We always want to be offering our customers more and we think our fans will love the pinball titles that Stern has to offer.”

Pricing and Availability

Availability of the new products and pricing will be announced later this fall. To learn more about the partnership please visit http://www.SternPinball.com.

About Stern Pinball, Inc.

Stern Pinball, Inc., headquartered just outside Chicago, Illinois, is the oldest and largest producer of arcade-quality pinball games in the world. Stern’s highly talented creative and technical teams design, engineer and manufacture a full line of popular pinball games, merchandise and accessories. Recent Stern titles include KISS, WWE WrestleMania, The Walking Dead, Mustang, Star Trek, Metallica, The Avengers, X-Men, AC/DC, Tron, Transformers, Avatar, Iron Man, Batman, spiderman and many more! All of Stern’s pinball games are crafted by hand and assembled by Stern’s expert team. A broad range of players enjoy Stern’s games from professional pinball players that compete in high-stakes international competitions around the globe to novice players who are discovering the allure of the silver ball for the first time. To join the fun and learn more, please visit http://www.SternPinball.com.

About FarSight Studios

FarSight Studios started developing pinball video games in 2004 with the critically acclaimed Pinball Hall of Fame games. G4TV awarded Best Mobile Game of 2012 to FarSight’s Pinball Arcade. Pinball Arcade features exact recreations of the all-time greatest pinball tables from Williams®, Bally®, Stern Pinball®, and Gottlieb® together in one game with a new table added each month. Pinball Arcade has been downloaded over 12 million times across mobile, console and PC platforms, and has over one million active players each month. Check out FarSight Studios and The Pinball Arcade for more details.

 

[Chris Bardon]

So they won't put more stern games into the regular pinball arcade frontend, but create a whole separate package? So much for having a complete platform? Still, it'll be god to see more games in there-Farsight does good work, and it's a great way to get games to people who don't have access to the real thing. Wonder what games they'll release, and whether the physics will be any better than the original TPA games?

 

[Luckydogg420]

I wonder if stern is thinking about building a virtual machine. They build the cabinets already.

 

[dnewman]

I have to agree with Chris... it really seems that Stern is afraid of competition. Why can't they just put the Stern games into the regular app? Is it so that Stern can have their branding in the app title? Are they going to have to charge more for the Stern app and for the Stern games?Farsight made a great app in the Pinball Arcade, and it's a bit of a shame that Stern has to segregate themselves.

 

[mwong168]

There are already Stern games in Pinball Arcade like Harley Davidson and High Roller Casino. They will probably be using the same engine and ball physics as there is no point in reinventing what has worked for Farsight Studios in the past. Unless Stern wants them to add things like playfield dimpling after x number of game plays, flipper buttons popping out randomly, transistors blowing after cradling a ball for too long and other things breaking like the real Sterns

 

[REVOLUTION]

I wonder if stern is thinking about building a virtual machine. They build the cabinets already.

This is what I was thinking as well. In fact, I'd put money on it.

 

[mwong168]

 

[luch]

really Stern asking for handouts.

 

[Menace]

Holy crap.... They need over 100K? Gary must want to upgrade his Merc to something nicer.

D

 

[mwong168]

 

[Chris Bardon]

really Stern asking for handouts.

To be fair, it's farsight asking for money, and they've done this before with licensed games that would have been expensive otherwise.

I thought the comment about VR was interesting though-it'd be a cool way to play virtual pinball, that's for sure, and the 3d effect could really help immersion. I haven't tried pinballFX in VR yet, but from what I've read it sounds pretty cool.