Continued from page 19
wide -body market has been extremely successful. I
now feel that the wide-body pinball game has a
significant niche in the marketplace. I don't believe
they will ever make up 100 percent of the pin balls
on location (or at least for the next five years). But I
do believe our competitors, Bally and Gottlieb , will
do a wide-body game this year. And whether they
stay with it or treat it as a novelty piece, I haven't
the slightest idea., But the intention here at
Williams is that we will continue to build both the
wide-body and the conventional machines. And as
the market goes, we'll blend our production
schedules to meet whatever the demands are.
PLAY METER: Wa the wide -body game some-
thing that could have only happened with olid
tate?
STROLL: There i nothing that can't be done in
lectro-mechanical that i being done in solid state.
The rea on you never aw memory features on an
electro-mechanical machine, for instance, wa
imply b cau e the peed of electro-mechanical i
much lower than olid tate. And in order to get
tho e memory function in the machine, the
backbox would have had to be about 2112 time the
ize it i . And, of course, the cost would have been
ignificantly higher.
PLA Y METER: Another recent change in pinball
cabinetry i with the cocktail table . Do you think
William will eventually get into that market?
STROLL: I've looked at it. The cocktail market i
definitely a real market. Exactly what that market
i till i n't clear to me . I'm not sure, for one thing,
that the approach that' being u ed right now for
the cocktail market i the right one. Now that
doesn't mean I'm slamming the competition because
I'm not. My hat i off to anyone who tries something
new and meet with ucce . And there has been
orne ucce in that area . However, to answer your
que tion, we are toying with orne ideas in that area
that would attack the cocktail table marketplace .
But our approach would b radically different from
what ha been done today.
PLAY METER: Are you expecting new comp ti -
tor to pring up from among the cocktail pingame
manufacturer ?
STROLL: Two years ago I would have aid ye . If
the big manufacturer had not made th'e conversion
to olid tate when the rtr tone tarted to appear,
then many mall garage operations could have
flowered into Atari . But now that Williams, Bally,
and Gottlieb have made the conversion to solid
tate, tho e three have ba ically 85 percent of the
market of pin that are manufactured in the United
tate . Becau e of the di tribution and becau e of
the quantitie of the machine they are building, I
think there' very littl room for mall manu -
facturer to become succe sful. However, .J do feel
that th re will alway be people who will come
along with good idea . But if their idea are better,
then the larger manufacturers will al 0 move in that
direction. There will be orne small guy, I believe,
who will meet with moderate ucce s, but I don't
think we'll ee another guy to come along that will
64
challe nge the big t hree .
PLAY METER: Wit h regard to the di tribution of
pinball ,it ee m that protected territorie have
gone the way of t he hor and carriage. Wa this
due to co ncern about federal anti -tru t law or
do
it ju t re fl ect a change in manufacturer'
attitud e toward di tribution.
TROLL: We haven't changed our di tribution
plan that much. Manufacturer cannot ay to a
di tributor "You have thi territory, and you're not
allowed to go out of it or I e I'll yank your
di tributorship." The government says that's
ill gal. 0 what we have are factory -authorized
di tributor . Their ge neral locations are defined by
them. And it' defin d by them a to how well they
can upport the operator in their area. Under no
ircum tance are we going to re trict di tribution,
and that' beca u e of the law .
PLAY METER: Now that olid tate pinball have
be n with u for awhile, can we expect to ee a drop
in the number of machine that will be produced?
TROLL: There ar two ide to that-the number
of differ nt model t hat are being produced and the
quantiti of ea h of tho e model . In Augu t of this
pa t year, the pinball indu try in the United tate
reduced the output 25 perc nt. Now that wa more
a parity than anything el e. Bally had the major and
lion ' hare of th marketplace Gottlieb had come on
tronger than anyone el e right behind Bally. And
William wa a di tant third. When Augu t hit,
Bally wa till numb r one, and they reduced their
production by about 37 percent. Then Gottlieb
red uced it production by about 24 percent. But we
increa ed our production becau e we were prying.
We didn't meet with th ucce in the early part of
the year that we had hoped to, but w did meet
with it in the la t ix month of the year. We had an
incr dibl ix month . And that wa mainly becau e
we tarted coming out with orne excellent game .
o the way the industry it right now, in
compari on with June of thi pa t year, the pinball
manufacturer a a whole are building about 250
game a day Ie than they did back in J un . The
numb r of machine that are being produced ha
r ach d parity and i not ignificantly higher than
what it wa during the electro-mechanical day .
However, the major differe nce i that th re are no
longer any one - or two-player machine. Our
comp titor will probabl y build ix, even, and (in
on ca e) e ig ht new model during 1979. But in my
opinion we have got to be in a po ition to limit the
number of gam an operator ha to buy. There are
a coupl e of rea on for that. One, it help ke p the
re ale value of th e machine up. And, two, a g uy
do n't have to turn around every week or 0 and
. e a new machin coming out. William i planning
to kee p a hard lin on thi matter. We will not build
more than 4 or 4112 conventional machines a year.
That do n't includ th wid -body, though. I think
if all manufacturer continued on that ba i , then
th market would r main healthy for year to come.
onver ely, if a manufacturer i building more than
four or fiv e conventional mod I in a year, then
that's too many .
PLAY METER, February, 1979