Kaneda, sometimes I just shake my head at your ignorance. Go look at prices from the 90's:
http://www.inthe90s.com/prices.shtml

Gas was 1/3 the cost, cars were about 2/3rd the cost of a car today.. Oh but milk is about the same price so why can't Stern build pins for $4k like they used to right?

Now had you said (like Ben said) why are prices double since 2009, then you would make some sense. I think Stern selling LOTR for $4k probably had very thin margins, but they were trying to keep prices low to keep people buying them. If you look at how much money Stern has invested in staff, and the new building, clearly they are QUITE profitable and could probably lower prices based on volume alone, but they have no reason to so long as people keep shelling out money.

I hate car/pinball comparisons, but this one is dead on

People shell out money until they don't. I haven't bought a Stern for a long time. Came very close a few times, and they've made some machines I really really want, but still I haven't. Now if prices were a little more in line with what they are delivering, you can be damn sure I'd have a few of the new Sterns in my basement right now.

Frankly I think the new game money is drying up fast. I hope I'm wrong, but what if I'm right...

B/W cranked out a lot of arcade equipment in one year. Stern not so much. I have no idea but production costs might be more today with more complicated games and regulations. Plus, people seem to be more than willing to pay high dollar for premium machines. Inflation is another big thing. I remember when you could buy a decent car for less than $10000.

My first car didn't cost $4000. Now I have a pin in my basement worth more than my first car. Mind you, that first car was a piece of shit, but it got the job done and I am pretty sure I got $4000 worth of entertainment out of it.

Inflation for sure has played a part, but I believe there is a lot of gouging going on. We seem to live in a world now where everyone is trying to sell everything for as much as they can. Who can blame people really? Maybe I'm just imagining this, but it seems like material items seem to hold their value for much longer the past few years. Does anyone else feel this way?

Incandescent bulbs cost .02 to build back then, LED bulbs cost .02 to make now. I blame investors and the "people on the board" that decide on final costs.

Don't fool yourseves. Pins are cheaper to make now. R&D all computer based.
3Dprinters to design new mechs/toys for prototype.
No more silk screened cabinets.
Less material in cabinets. No B/W playfield hinge mechs. No service rails
No chromed legs or parts. Or stainless rails or lockdown bars.
Nuts bolts etc. (China)

Spike system with modular circuit boards and less wire.
Led displays. Blocks of leds(Made in china)
Led lamp boards (made in china)
Speakers (made in china)

And if you think any of the metal parts. Or bolts are made in the U.S. you are fooling yourself.

What U.S. company is stamping out coil mechs.
Or winding pinball coils? Or making coindoors, or coinmechs.

All themes are licenced.
Pretty much the only parts made in the U.S. are the cabinet and playfields.

Stern pinball. Made in the U.S.A?
More like assembled in the U.S.A. using parts that can be made cheaper in other countries.
( Mainly China)

B/W games were made and built in the U.S.
Stern was. But outsourcing parts to China makes making pins cheaper for Stern. Not for us.

I'm sure labour costs have also more than doubled.

The cost of raw materials has risen dramatically now that China is buying a good chunk of our recyclables and raw material. People are stealing copper from the walls of buildings. A penny now costs more to make than it is worth. Since the cost of oil has risen, so has the cost of tires, carpets, plastics and everything else made from it.
I remember when a pack of cigarettes hit $2 back in the early 90s. Now they are about $6. What the hell is going on? Answer, a lot of things. Not just inflation.

Since the 90's yes.

Since 2009 Stern NIB prices. No.

And oil was actually higher priced in 2009 and a bit prior than it is now. According to reference charts through google.

Now they are $12-$16 in NYC

Did you know if you had invested $4K in Apple back in 2002 (just 13 years ago) it would be worth $50K today?

There is no such thing as gouging unless a gun is involved.

And if you won't buy into that premise entirely, let's try this:

There is no such thing as gouging unless a gun is involved on a product (like pinball) that isn't required for survival.

A person or a company offers something for sale at a given price, then another person decides to pay it or not. It's called a market.

I wonder if the strong USD will impact sterns international market that they lower the cost on a NiB pin coming to Canada. I'm hoping yes. But realistically expecting no

I got one for sale for $11k so that makes is a STEAL!

Reality check.. That's not far off. Pin prices are nutZ. I say 4.5 k, ok 6K for a JJP.

DMDs happened
with sys 11, programming a game was rules and sound
with DMDs, suddenly you needed animation, somebody needs to produce it, this requires more development money
going to LCDs will require more money to develop better quality animations

How so? LCD doesn't mean it has to be HD video like WOZ.

Sorry, but the bar has been set
woz level (or better) of animations for LCDs
both my TDK and Spiderman would benefit from full video clips rather than the renderings Stern used

One thing no one mentions here is that B/W went out of the pinball business. There can be many reasons for that fact ,but, most likely the department was not making enough profit ( maybe operating at a loss). If the business was profitable they would not have just shut it down they would have sold it to someone. That did not happen. Companies are not in business to break even. They are in business to give a return on investment to the shareholders or owners that corresponds with the risk of investment. Yes Capcom made a great product. Why are they still not making machines? I bet it is because they did not make a profit.

At this point Stern seems to be doing well financially. That is a good thing for pinball. No one knows what is happening with JJP, but , WOZ sure looks expensive to build to me. I hope they are successful as well. Neither company is doing this out of the goodness of their hearts, they are doing it to make a profit. If they lose money they will shut down. I hope the WOZ's continue to sell at the new price , it is good for all of us in the hobby. IF there were no more people making pinball machines what would happen to the prices then? I bet they would rise or if enough people got out of the hobby then they would crash. How would that feel?

Not every one is going to spend the money for a new LE and that is fine. Look at the prices on Avatar, Avengers and Transformers. People can get those pins at significant discounts from the original price. Not the case with STLE, ACDC or Tron but we control that market as consumers.

I guess my point after this ramble is just this . We can buy a pinball machine from a few hundred bucks to 20K. We can have fun with all of them. Buy what your own budget and conscience allow ( maybe your significant other gets a say as well) and enjoy.

This is out of date information. Last week copper futures made a new six year low. Oil is collapsing (again) after a deadcat bounce the last coupla months. China is slowly collapsing, perhaps only back to a place where things began to get nutty anyway, but a very real world-impacting decline in raw demand. This is a serious problem as we all got used to "cheap outta China" and they all got used to having steady jobs in factories instead of working to the bone in a field and then still (nearly) starving to death. Baltic Dry Index is falling into oblivion, this index measures bulk shipping rates...too many ships and not enough cargo demand = "operating at a loss" pricing. Some/any of this can stall or even reverse, I have no crystal ball, but the global trend is very much deflation not inflation. That NIB pinball keeps going up is an anomaly to the trend.

Did you ever see "Tilt: The battle to sve pinball"? It is a pretty interesting documentary. Apparently Williams had already decided to close the pinball side (WMS gaming was making huge profits on the slots) and they gave the designers one last shot to make something more profitable. They did JUST THAT with Pinball 2000, but they closed them down anyway.

The suits only looked at the numbers. They didn't care about collectors. When the team made something that DID make money, they didn't even give it a chance. Say what you want about Stern or Gary personally, but he does seem to listen to what people want. Even if it is at a price that many can't afford. If it were not for Stern, I don't think we'd have ANYBODY making pins now.

Chris

That's definitely debatable. I'm just not sure if pinball continuing to sell at higher and higher prices is "good for all of us in the hobby" at all. Tons of people can't or won't pay those ridiculous prices. It also can make it more likely for a bigger crash to hit the market.

IF there were no more people making pinball machines what would happen to the prices then? I bet they would rise

Many thought that having all these new pinball companies would make prices come down because of the additional competition. How'd that work out for ya?

Stern did not significantly raise their prices until after JJP came on the scene.

s

I agree. Airlines dont raise prices until another one does. They all watch and monitor reaction. If it's accepted, they all raise the prices. They're not dumb enough to officially collude but the effect is the same.

Anyone who collected baseball cards in the late 80's knows what happened after Upper Deck came into the hobby with their "upscale product". Ruined the industry.

I would hardly call them viable competition. If we got to the point where it was in the 90s with all those different companies pumping out games, prices would most definitely decrease. That's just how it works.

I agree, but that certainly doesn't counter the point that I was making regarding it being a good thing for all of us in the hobby that these pins continue to sell at higher and higher prices.

Oh yeah for sure. I didn't get that point either.

So far besides Stern (also counting WNJM as Stern) besides Stern we have WoZ (one single game in the last 3 years by JJP), MMR which is taking forever to deliver a remake at a super high price point, AMH (less than 200 pins) and Full Throttle which has just barely started production and Nemo (less than 30 pins).

So with all the ballyhoo for new competition to Stern in the last 3 years, it seem like we have WoZ (maybe 3000 pins) and a group of other pins (less than 1000 pins total). So the competition to Stern is just not there when Stern can produce 12 different pins in those same 3 years and maybe 24K pins over than same 3 years.

Also, pinball is such a small hobby take for example snow mobiles, I don't know a single person who owns one but worldwide there were over 144K sold last year. In the US and Canada alone people spend over $34B/year on Snow mobiles.

Gun sales in the US alone (2012) was $32B

year 2012....... 163,000 new boats were sold in the US alone. (more than 15x the number of new pins sold in the whole world). there are 13M recreational boats in the US probably less than 1M pins in the US.

If I figure every (new pin) sold worldwide last year (2014) let me estimate 10K sales at a figure of $6500-$7K (mix of pro/LE/premium) that's only $65M-$70M 500x less than was spent on guns or snow mobiles. I know I am not figuring in the sales of used pins but I'd say overall the pinball market is very small and so, IMO no competition and the prices are what they are, no one is competing with Stern yet and so they can charge what they want.

Yes JJP set the price point and Stern followed.But I think the ops point was that their is less bang for your buck.Stern has taken things out of pinball machines.
No backglass GI
No subways(until recently)
Habitrails left for awhile,glad they're back
No original themes.
No wide bodies
No play field supports.
Inferior sound.Sorry but the B/W stuff sounds better.
Inferior art.I realize this is subjective,but the pixelated stuff screams cheap.
And the biggest problem of all,NEVER ships with completed software.

It really sunk in for me when I was at my buddys place helping him maintain some games for the shop.We had TZ and TRON right next to each other with the play fields up.Their was so little in Tron and so much in TZ,it was like triple the amount of stuff.We were like "WOW" what a difference in materials!!!!

One more thing to consider:Sterns parts prices are higher as well.So they are more expensive to maintain.

I saw the movie and it looked like what killed it was Williams didn't have a backup game ready to go in case SWEP1 failed like it did. Why pay employees on the line to sit around and do nothing for a pinball that makes marginal profits when you could close the whole thing down and focus on a huge profit maker in their gaming division?

If this is indeed the case, why aren't we being flooded with new companies making pinball machines? If they are truly making huge profits at the $9000 price point then I'd have expected lots more companies to enter the fray making them no?

What? Who said SWEP1 was a failure? Check the production numbers. They sold more SWEP1's than a lot of the "big" name games from late 90's (e.g. Attack from Mars, Cirqus Voltaire, Junk Yard, Monster Bash, No Good Gophers, Tales of the Arabian Nights....).

Because the widespread demand is not there.

I wouldn't say WOZ is the bar. BOP 2.0 kit sold pretty well (until PPS shut them down), and it was essentially a $1200 mod to an existing game. The big lebowski is essentially a color double height DMD (still dots displayed on an LCD), and it sold well.

Just because you have more dots, doesn't mean you have to use them all right away. Also there seems to be a misconception that more dots = more work. I think you have much more creative freedom with higher resolution, you aren't forced into making something look good with minimal dots (ask someone that creates fonts if they'd rather have more or less dots). Low-res means using trickery like anti-aliasing and dithering. Go read up on early video game makers how much of a challenge it was to create good looking characters with minimal dots and animation frames.
mario[1].jpg

We've been having this debate for a while...these prices are not sustainable, pinball is not mainstream enough yet to keep absorbing the ever escalating costs. I mean no disrespect but some of these companies will go under in 3-4 years because there won't be enough buyers lining up to pay 9K or 10K for their machines.

Hey Kaneda -

While I agree that as manufacturing tech advances - prices drop. That said, innovation costs $$. The JJP Machines have changed from a static backglass to an LCD panel with full motion video, real time interaction with the game.

These advances to the tech also create additional production costs such as video creation / editing etc.

I think it is fair to say that prices have risen significantly as the price of gasoline has increased.

It is what it is. Personally, I don't believe that the price of NIB machines is too much higher when cost adjusted for inflation. As someone else mentioned in this thread - one still has the choice to go for a pro model in the $4-5k range or a Premium model in the $6-7k range. A LE model will run $8-9k+ but you can choose other options if that price point is too high.

That said I do believe that JJP has priced their machines higher than I am comfortable paying for a game - but according to Jack - all of the machines on his line are pre-sold. I wouldn't build a reduced price model either if my factory was operating at capacity.

So many armchair quarterbacks!

If you think the prices are too high then join the portion of the market that won't tolerate it and don't buy them. That is how capitalism works — you can vote with your wallet. Particularly now that Stern will be enjoying less and less of a market monopoly on new games.

Our only hope is that the new entrants can realise lower their prices to steal share from Stern after they've had enough time to streamline their operations. But if pricing remains the same there will be valid reasons for it. Pinballs are complex and expensive and the market is absolutely tiny. So the forces that normally cause manufacturing pricing to drop are not present. And even if players like Heighway and Homepin that are innovating in ways that may save on production costs (technology, local supply chain) they aren't obliged to drop prices just to be nice.

Wow..thanks for clearing that up for us Captain. I thought Capitalism ran on black magic before you enlightened me.

I'm not implying that people have no right to be frustrated/angry at the high prices. I was trying to make the point that, up until very recently, the normal method of signalling distaste for high prices (buying competing cheaper product) wasn't possible. It looks like the monopoly is breaking and that might change.

I know this will make certain fanboys angry but unfortunately stern has zero competition. Until some manufacturer comes along that can actually ship new machines at frequent intervals Stern will continue to mop up the cash and mediocrity will reign. You guys with hobbits on order count how many stern machines have come out since you ordered. Of course it's not only jjp. Highway took a long time. Multimorphic still hasn't shipped anything. Two "companies" imploded. Dutch pinball nearly imploded. It's really a mess right now.

Not true. Pinball is a collectable for all intents and purposes now, and is being priced as such. Fine art, Real Estate, almost all hard assets are inflating in price. This is mostly because the very rich benefited greatly from the reflationary policies of the world's central banks. Check the recent art auctions to see that there's plenty of money out there being thrown around by very rich people. I bet a lot of the people buying NIBs without blinking are cashing in their 'OMG APPLE STOCK' money and think they are financial geniuses, but in reality they are surfers riding the tide of cheap money. The thing about tides; they go out after they come in.

Oil, copper, etc are priced based strictly on supply and demand. No one is collecting copper in their basement. You're right that the global economic trend is deflationary because unpayable debt was issued. But the central banks are printing money to cover that up, and that money makes its way into assets first. It won't make its way into copper and oil because copper and oil are not stores of value like collectibles or real estate are. People only buy copper and oil in order to sell it to someone else, or use it to build/make things. And since the market for building/making things has been crappy as hell since the last recession (Check CATERPILLAR's worldwide sales, been declining for like 12 straight quarters?) copper and oil are tanking.

Ok, so maybe that's why the few that deem it worthwhile to continue to make new pinball games have to price them high to make the profit margins be worth the r&d risk? I mean if it were possible to make huge profit doing this by selling new tables at $4000, wouldn't plenty of other hardware manufactures have stepped in by now and stolen the market from Stern and Jersey Jack? That's usually what happens when someone sells something that is clearly overpriced, competitors step in, undercut them in price and take over the market say like Visio taking away the TV market from Sony. That hasn't happened in pinball.

Supply did not meet demand.

1. They were made in higher volumes in the 90s
2. Inflation
3. Increased cost of labor

Same answer as before. The widespread demand isn't there to support this. If you're going to charge 4k for a game, your margins will be less than charging 8k for a game.

You would have to sell many more games to break even, and my guess is that quantity of sales doesn't sit well with anyone that has considered making games that are more reasonably priced.

twilight zone, 1993 NIB price = $3200
117317[1].png

Convert 1993 dollars to 2015 dollars = $5,284.72
Twilight zone sold 15,000 units. Stern probably sells 5,000 of a unit.. so factor in some cost increase from lower volume, and a Stern should cost $6k for a premium.
http://www.usinflationcalculator.com

End of argument

90s pins had more and cost 1/2 the price.....

Guess what. They still do and why my collection has gone from mostly new Sterns to older Williams/Ballys. Alot of value for 2 - 2.5k

"End of argument"?? If TZ wasn't the equivalent of an LE, I don't know what is. It is the most full-featured pin of all time.What else could Williams have added to a TZ? OK, a third magnet. TZ is a widebody. It has backbox GI. Compare the art quality to any Stern. And look! A magnet sticks to the apron! Geez, does that sticker say "Install 6 balls"? Do you think Stern could sell a TZ today for $6,000??????

Agreed

Stern can also absorb a flop.I don't think any of the others could survive a poor selling title.

Agree, 3 toys on TZ would be featured OMG type toys on newer Sterns. Gumball machine, mini playfield, and the clock. Then add 4 flippers, magnets, subway, powerball, deep rules, amazing theme etc.

TZ is more of an LE than any recent Stern LE titles that I've seen. Wow, that makes me a little sad.