Thursday, November 26, 2009

The Pros & Cons of Small Ball

There's lots of heat and lots of opinions but not a lot of clarity on the subject of the 50 caliber paintball--depending on who you're inclined to give credence to anyway--but that poses a separate problem. Who to believe. Who to take at face value, if anyone, and how to judge what they tell you about the 50 cal small ball.

So who is on which side? Let's start a list.

The pro small ball crowd includes the obvious suspects in GI Milsim, Smart Parts (such as it is), the Millennium Series (and certainly Laurent Hamet--can a Facefull editorial be far behind?), Kingman and, I'm told, PBL--a big Canadian retailer and Dark Sports in the UK. One might also include the P8ntballer website as supportive but not biased in content.

The con crew, last I heard, includes Tippmann, Dye, Badlands--the other Canadian retail dynamo, and the PSP. There's at least one or two other possibles I'm not yet prepared to list. But the territory here is ripe for speculation. For example, is Procaps con? How to explain the fact KEE, not Procaps is producing GI's paint? And after the long and close association of the PSP with Smart Parts and the brothers Gardner isn't it something of a surprise to find them at odds over this?

Of course not everyone is choosing sides. The kids at Planet Eclipse for example appear to be hedging their bets just waiting to see how this all shakes out. If small ball is a go they're ready, if not, no real harm done.

Clearly this isn't a comprehensive list but it's a start. Who else belongs on the list?

14 comments:

Missy Q said...

I am interested in fields like Hollywood Sports and SC Village, Skirmish USA and CPX, the mega-fields that, theoretically, would have the most to gain from a cost-saving on paint. Are those guys Pro 50cal?

Anonymous said...

Maybe Procaps isn't making GI Milsim paint because they're waiting for him to actually distribute it before suing his pants off for violating their non-compete. They would undermine their case if they were making the stuff.

Missy Q said...

I think the Non-compete was only 3 years, in which case he's out of the woods.

Don Saavedra said...

I know that HSP/SC is definitely going to make 50 cal available.

Anonymous said...

PSP is not for or against 50 cal. At this point there has been no info provided for PSP to be either for or against. Once adequate info is provided, PSP will make a decision. So far there is nothing to make a decision about.

Baca Loco said...

Well, Anon, I'd like to amend the list then but you'd have to decloak in order for to take your word for it. :)

Reiner Schafer said...

Sounds like the PSP is in the same boat as just about everyone else in the industry. Not enough information from which to draw a conclusion. Yet decisions are being made (ie Millenium). Someone must have some infromation (or maybe it's just a big incentive of some sort).

Anonymous said...

How CAN PSP (or anyone) make a decision? Nobody knows what the paintball even weighs. If you don't know what it weighs, or what it's made of, you lack the information to know whether it can be safely used. And so far, GI milsim has insisted that all the paintballs that people have that test incredibly poorly are not the 'real' .50 cal paintballs.

Missy Q said...

yeah, not knowing what the paint is made of is a problem. many fields have to provide an MSDS sheet to their local township/council for approval, and "it's a secret' just won't fly with their local authorities...
Based on what I've seen so far, if there was a 50cal MSDS provided sheet I would probably still ask for a 2nd opinion.

Harb said...

We know exactly what the paint weighs, what it is made of, and most importantly, it still sucks just like it did 10-15 years ago.

Anonymous said...

Well, we know that for all the .50 cal paint GI Milsim has released so far, but their reps still insist it's not the 'real' paint.

Anonymous said...

If it is not the real paint why did they realised it? To look crapy? Certainly not.

They are just buying time with excuses like: "thats not the real paint" and trying to create a better one. They'll probably fail tho.

Harb said...

To anon and all the other superfans. If they actually did have real working paint, they would be shoving the proof down our collective throats. This whole mythical final fill/paint is just more lies.

with all the hype like Italia spending 4-5 years developing the 50cal paint. Don't you think they would have been able to actually make it workable by now? So to think they are going to be able to change it in 3 months as opposed to the last 4-5 years...It is not going to happen.

So all they are going to do is to continue to parade around paid shills.

Vijil said...

The only way to improve the paint is with a weight increase. By increasing the weight they would invalidate their own marketing in regards to the joules. If they haven't got the weight up by now (after however long developing the stuff) then I can't see it happening.