Well they removed about 40 pounds from games. Putting that in perspective, that is like removing the weight of a 4x8 sheet of half inch plywood. Granted, that's through the whole game. But yes, some stuff is thinner and less durable.

An excellent question! So far the best I can find for the weight of Iron Man VE is 250 as well. But that is from IPDB, so it is suspect (just like the way their MSRP prices change over time). I might actually try to work out a way to weigh some games to figure out exactly the changes. Maybe I'll even pull the playfields and just measure the cabinets.

http://www.sternpinball.com/upload/games/ghostbusters/premium/1967/Ghostbusters_LE_web.pdf

Page 52 says you are wrong.

Weight 210 lbs

I'm not sure where you are getting your numbers, but they don't agree with what Stern says the game weighs.

Every company puts profits in front of everything. Otherwise, the company would cease to exist. Even decisions that seem to put quality first are made for profit. Stern has simply tipped the scale a bit and gone far enough towards the profit side that profits are being impacted (all of that is just my opinion). The whole playfield issue? If they hadn't ghosted they would have increased profit. But I think the blowback from the cost cutting will eventually have a big impact on their bottom line. But I might be wrong. Maybe we prefer games that fall apart. We are certainly paying more for them.

I'm not sick of your opinion, it just differs from mine. You are saying the buyers of pinside are not a large enough group of pinball buyers to have any impact on Stern. I disagree. You can only raise the price so high before people find different things to do with their discretionary income. And I think this group is large enough to be felt by Sterns bottom line.

Pinside owners lists are not accurate. People can list games they don't actually own. Others can (like me) choose to keep their collection list private.

Are you sure they changed the manufacturing process? I kept hearing that about the playfields, and yet there were still ghosted ones coming out of the factory.

I love that time when a new game becomes... just one of your games. You stop babying it and just play the snot out of it. It gets dirty, shop it, and play on. Good times.

Let me know how you interpreted that from what I said.

A world without Tron? Bah.

But don't worry. Stern is moving in the direction of not being around long. They kept new pinball alive for years when others couldn't. And now they are cost cutting that goose until it dies.

We are in a laboratory experiment that is trying to determine how far cost cutting can go. Apparently the lab rats don't like the manufacturers cost savings provided by using less expensive playfield manufacturing, and they also don't like cabinetry that fails to function as a cabinet. So those need to go back up just above the "massive failure" point, and that's not cheap, so expect a price bump.

All crap aside, this is completely true. Cointaker will go to bat for you if there is an issue. They went to bat for me when I had a big issue in my last game. It took a while (Stern dragging their feet), but Cointaker got it done.

I think that was said about Cointaker, not Stern.

While having all the evidence and dates you're asking for would be nice, Stern never has (and likely never will) release this type of information. And they are the only people it could ever come from. There are all kinds of rumors for what went on where. FUN playfields, a second manufacturer of cabinets, in house cabinets (which would NEVER be in the same building because of the dust!). But the will make sure we never know the answer.

The best part? Stern knows the exact answer to where your defective parts came from. Did you have a ghosted playfield? Stern knows exactly where and when it was made. Defective cabinet? They know it's entire lifecycle. They are the only people with the real info to answer the questions.

True, but when it's people like Lloyd, it was based on the information he had. When he says Stern was gearing up to do cabinets themselves, I take that as Stern was gearing up to do them in house. Stern may have changed course at some point, but he is one of the people I'd trust when he speaks.

Relax son. The abbreviations work well. You will learn them in time.

That depends on how you count issues. Does one bad playfield equal one bad hammer board in Metallica? Does a split cabinet count the same as needing an airball protector kit in Transformers? It's probably all the same number of issues as ever. It's just that the current ones are a bit more difficult to fix than install a new board, and a piece of plastic.

(And yes, even saying this I really want to buy AC/DC)

You are just helping make the point that it was massively overpriced. The "Pro" of BM66 was listed at $8,599 MSRP. They can call it a Premium all day long, but it was a Pro.

Have him get the date of manufacture of the back of the game. That's a really important data point now.

I just read that again, looks like this is a replacement Ghostbusters cabinet. That would suck if this is the second one he received with issues.

The people that think it's not an issue are usually shills. People that will defend the wall no matter what Stern does.

That is the oldest game I've seen really showing the issue.

Maybe I'm jaded, but I consider peeling head decals on the head to be fairly minor. Stern will send you out a new set. Most people don't even take the time to put them on (they should). It's nothing compared to a split cab.

Some people are not comfortable doing mechanical work like this. And his point that he shouldn't have to, and that there is no upside is true. Personally I'd have started doing it immediately, because I agree with you, it's a pretty easy task. But not everyone works like that.

Cool, I wasn’t aware you could hire solid junior programmers so cheap. Usually I see the cost to be at least that for just the salary, and then you need to add benefits, and office space, recruiting, and all the other overhead costs.

I realize your just spreading the cost over the number of machines, but once we are doing that, aren’t we looking at the 10 bucks it would cost them to put rails on the playfield and stop people complaining about the pegs?

I made it 5 for it. Stern should have solved this long ago. It isn’t that the sky is falling, it’s that they keep cheapening things to the bare minimum. 2 out of 8 with split cabinets sucks. I guess it’s back to the Stern lottery. But hey, 80% chance your cabinet doesn’t split on the first weekend.

Take a closer look. The prices have been going up faster than that.

In their current incarnation Stern has been building games for 20 years. They have it figured out. They figured out exactly how much of the cost they could remove from the cabinet to be the most cost effective straddle of the line between failure and just enough to function as a cabinet. Even with replacements it costs them less than if they built every cabinet solidly. And how do I know that? Because that is exactly how they continue to build them. It’s no mystery, it’s business.