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True

Man stay away from this idiotic thread, its just crap. Yeah Stern has issues but we have SW and GOTG and a new title will be announced probably shipping before POTC sees a home enviornment, forget the other boutique guys they are even worse, ok I understand it would great for pinball machines to be released without any trouble or QC issues but WTF? what a bunch of whiny Dbags.

My SW pro has had about 400 plays. Not any issues and dimples yes but same as my woz has after same plays. The balls glides over the surface like its on air. My AS.... same not one pf imperfection.

At a local site of the 8 games there the Dialed in is always the one broken down. JJ still have some serious qc issues to sort out before I buy another one.

Well at least Iron Maiden has long songs.

That can't be JJP games don't break down and if there is an issue don't worry so and so will straighten u out its only Sterns that split open and fail ever other game with no sign of any support what so ever. Heavy heavy

All good so far with my 3 stern games( all 3 were NIB and less than 2 months old)

You make a great point. No one wants to devalue their games, especially as we reach a critical mass of sorts with all the new companies and all the expected new releases. If Spike’s are money pits, these games will go down appreciably in value.

Tournament pinball is thriving.not sure where i saw it but the there are more tournaments and more peole participating then ever.Does that mean they are all buying games?And if they are are they buying Sterns.My guess would be probably, as Stern is the easiest path to NIB.

Another aspect is practice.My op friends buy new sterns and happily watch as the leaugue, tournament types practice and learn rule sets,GOT was an awesome earner early on as a result.Now its being removed from line ups as somewhat of a dud.

The Stern model is the most predominate pinball machine in the world,which is bad news for me cause I dont care for the feel of their games.Throw in the lack of finished software and all the quality issues stated here and thats what you have as a pinball machine in 2018.Love it or leave it.Your mileage may vary.

Happy New Year my fellow flippers......enjoy your games,no matter what manufacturer.Higher scores all around!!!!

Whatever.
You want to see what quality issues look like? Go read the AFM thread, the DialedIn thread, or the Aliens thread.

Please find me Pinsiders having actual unresolved problems with their recently purchased Stern pins. I don't believe it's any worse than any other manufacturer.

You have to factor in how big Sterns share of the market is, which would lead to more complaints.
Believe me, I'm pretty neutral on it and it goes both ways. Ghosting inserts is annoying on my GOT, but so is clear coat chipping off after 20 plays on DI. GB had a blown board but my DI had a shit board that needed swapping too.

Yep. I took a 2 year break from new pinball purchases since my KISS Premium purchase in 2015.

I recently purchased DILE, AFMrLE, SWLE, and AS Pro. The Stern games had the least problems, by a significant margin. SWLE has been flawless and AS Pro needed some minor flipper adjustments and was missing the rubber inserts on the BB (no big deal).

Despite having issues with my DILE, it is a stunning pinball machine and my favorite of the four (with SWLE a very close second). Here is a post that details most of my issues (https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/dialing-in-dialed-in-le-96). From my perspective, this is a reminder that quality is ultimately about how much pleasure you get from something, not simply a measure of build quality. Of course, for folks that don't like to take the glass off, build quality is much more critical. The tweaks I made to DILE could not have been done by a newbie or unmotivated owner...

snaroff

Exactly

Exactly what? The B/W lovers hating on stern is so old and played out. The lack of finished software is probably the most BS statement in this entire thread. Stern games have more code, more depth, and more polish then almost all of the B/W games. Even the ones that people bitch and moan about have tons of code that blow most of the classics away. If you don't like stern games that is fine, buy whatever you do like. The made up complaints about code and blown out of proportion qc issues are complete bs though.

My Aerosmith arrived with a split cabinet, separating veneers & gouged backbox from bolts being over-torqued. The PF has some issues too.

It has a software bug that carried over from a 2015 game, it can reset at times, it's lacking several very simple programming features (sounds, etc), it's been out for almost a year already & it cost a shit ton of money.

I'm not a Bally/WMS loyalist. 100% of my lineup is Stern. They're my favorite manufacturer. They made good on my cabinet eventually too.

So what does it mean when their target customer, a repeat customer & enthusiast, "complains"?

I don't think that anyone on here would begrudge you for complaining/being upset at the pin you got, and what you went through.
None of us want to deal with quality control issues.
That said, there are so few of these complaints from Stern buyers AND Stern seems to making good on fixing the issues that do occur.
So are we now arguing that "Stern isn't perfect"? Nobody's saying they are. But stating that there are "ongoing quality control issues" is ignorant.

Pinside is apparently a very small demographic of pinball owners, but it seems to be large enough to give us all a good idea of what's happening.
When I find multiple Stern buyers, complaining about physical quality control issues that remain unresolved, I'll reconsider buying from Stern.
Software bugs do and will occur, and in my opinion are no different from incomplete code. If you buy a pin in the early stages, be prepared to put up with that stuff. It's not the end of the world but if it bugs you, you should probably wait until code is complete and bug-free. Buying before then is a risk we all know is part of the game.

I'd love to see a poll of buyers currently suffering from quality issues and who the manufacturer was. Based on the numerous posts for AFM, Alien, Dialed In, I'd say Stern is producing FAR FEWER pins with issues than any of the other makers.

At the end of the day, the best thing about buying new is that the manufacturers all appear to be backing their products, supporting buyers and fixing issues. The chipping playfields and ghosting inserts appear to be the only serious issues that are not being resolved as they're too expense to fix.

I agree with most of what you're saying (not that my opinion is more qualified or valuable in any way)

QC issues happen, it's a large company with lots of moving parts. I get it.

Cost cutting, price increases & incomplete/buggy software is very deliberate & worth discussing, bitching, etc (IMO).

I hate to hate on Stern. I know there's real people working on this stuff that love pinball. I don't blame those folks (designers, artists, programmers) for the issues BTW

"Cost cutting, price increases & incomplete/buggy software is very deliberate & worth discussing, bitching, etc (IMO)." Exactly what Stern is and has been doing!!!!!!!!!!

Problems are inconsistent though so its difficult to pinpoint the major problems.

My SW I cant fault. Great code, gorgeous pf, no issues. Same with my AS. So its not just Dwight or a Ropp game as far as code.

But then we get a complete mess with Gotg. The code on that machine to me is a no brainer as far as staying away from it regardless of the cool theme. It seems also the buyers aside from encouraging Stern to throw out messy games are turning a blind eye. On the owners thread they are all a bit precious about what is said about the game. No negatives at all which to me proves the games is a joke.
Sift through a few pages on that thread and you'll see some brilliant examples of pinball denial.

Every successful company in the world is continuously trying to find ways to cut cost and raise prices in order to be profitable, it’s not just Stern.......it’s all companies. You as a consumer decides if and when they go too far and you vote with your wallet by not buying their product anymore and they have two choices, make a better product or fail as a company. Stern isn’t perfect for sure and there are areas where they need to up their game, but they are still pretty damn good overall.

There is a difference between cutting cost and levelling down quality.

That´s why for example MIELE has such success. Their products are the best you can get. Sure, they cutted costs the last decades, but you get excellent products since all the time. Same you find when you buy HILTI or Pioneer TV´s or ......

STERN goes another way and when you don´t see it, OK. But it is the wrong way in long term.

I would like to buy a new STERN but i read the posts with node board issues. And these posts don´t stop....

Well like i said, if you feel that the value is no longer there then you shouldn’t buy their product anymore. If enough people feel the way that you do they will either have to produce a better product or they will fail. There are products that i wont buy anymore because of poor quality.

And people do that...and yet you still keep pounding like they are somehow wrong in their observations that lead to it.

I've seen it stated several times here (doesnt make it accurate) that sales are in a slump for Stern.

Maybe people are done with Stern for a bit?

Or maybe its just a rumor & Stern is selling games like hotcakes?

Makes ya wonder.... if hotcakes are so easy to sell maybe I should open a pancake resturant.

I’ll disagre somewhat when you say Pinside is a very small demographic of pinball owners.

If you look at the pins where you can know how many were produced such as Tron LE (400) XMLE (550) and so on you will see around half of these pins are owned by Pinsiders and far more for the Spooky titles.

I’d guess Pinside is leaning more towards the newer titles like GB, Tron, TWD etc. and the LEs more than the pinball owners at large which may consist of person who owns one game in their game room and never is too active in the hobby to be on Pinside. So likely Pinside as a whole could be small overall, I think it buys a lot of the newer pins and the boutique pins etc..

You also should appreciate that not all Pinsiders list the games they own. I know several people on Pinside who never list any games in their collection

So maybe you are correct overall Pinside may be very small but if you look at the new and the high end new pins probably Pinside is probably inordinately large.

I don't really agree with the Miele comparison. Their engineering and manufacturing is contracted out for most of their products these days, and many of their products are lower spec, lower build quality respins of Liebherr's own stuff with a huge price mark up. They do have a very good reputation for customer service though.

They certainly aren't selling well in EU.

BM 66 sales have clearly been very low, SW looked like it started very badly but has picked up, GB did very well initially, but who's still buying (market is flooded with used examples)? GotG looks like it's going to be an unmitigated disaster.

I think the concerns over Spike's obvious reliability and longevity issues are a bigger turn off for a lot of people than code or even play field issues now.

For operators, or collectors who don't play for a while and then flip, they can potentially turn into a money pit.

Saving grace has been sell through of SAM games with better code, no board issues and fewer layout issues.

Yep. A few years ago, I had a problem with an older Miele vacuum. I asked the repair person if it was worth fixing and he said "hell yeah", they don't make them like this anymore (and he actually sold new models). Really honest guy that fixed my vacuum for almost nothing. Could have told me it was junk and sold me a new one!

One of the biggest purchases any of us makes is homes, and craftsmanship in most parts of the country suck. Same for most furniture. All things considered, pinball isn't in such a bad place.

snaroff

How's this for cost cutting?

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Thats why I said "exactly" to you're "whatever."

Probably right.The question is what the level of tech support after the issue arises?Are the parts available?What is the cost?Whats the turnaround time?

The brief Gomez and Kaneda exchange was my favorite part.

What did they say?

I didn't.

You got that right. I normally back Stern as you know (I work for them according to some people here ) but they really embarrassed themselves and pissed off a bunch of people tonight. If i was in charge of Stern there would be some serious changes made and im afraid that there would be some people job hunting as well. There is no excuse for what happened last night and they flat out embarrassed themselves. I can only imagine how much other pinball companies are laughing right now, what a dumbass move on their part. Im just going to stop writing right now because if i dont, im really going to say some bad things. I would love to talk to someone in charge though and just ask them what the hell were they thinking? I mean you go to the trouble of even hiring a couple of people to do this big “reveal” that should have been done last week at TPA and then you dont even show one picture of the damn game. Jesus, How dumb can you be for real?

Geez......tough crowd.

I’m guessing rumors of Stern Pinball’s imminent demise are a bit pre-mature.

The IM fans that were planning on buying it are still going to buy it. If it turns out to be a great all-around pin then others that aren’t really fans may want to buy.

I highly doubt initial marketing hype - or lack therof - will make or break this pin’s sales numbers.

Totally, like what product or company bothers with stupid thing like marketing these days. Oh wait... all of them and it’s proven to have a massive impact on sales. Stern continues to enjoy kicking themselves in the balls.

What happened, other than the video reveal thing?

Nothing other than it's ASSumed they will use legacy of the Beast style art

Nothing at all other than they wasted about 6 or 8 hours of peoples time waiting and wanting to see this game.

Stern never said there were revealing the game it was just an announcement, I think the dickhead from the joker show fucked it all up, or they acheived what they wanted to get a lot more people watching pinball gameplay than normally would have tuned in. I mean at least have the option to listen to to game and not have to listen to pinball commentary cause I gotta tell ya it sucks. I'll watch a tutorial if i want to learn the rules and listen to pinball video blogs if I want to enduce a coma otherwise let me hear the game and enjoy the action.

They never said they were revealing the game but people expected to see some pics and i can understand why because after all, they did kind of make a big deal out of the announcement. I just don’t understand why they do the things that they do to the people that support them. I mean would it have really been that hard to show a few pics of the damn game to generate some excitement instead of having a bunch of pissed off people?

Heres what bothers me about Stern. They could so easily bury their competition with just a few simple changes with the way that they do business that its not even funny. Listening to their customers and having good communication with the pinball community would do wonders for their business. Its as if they dont even care or something, i just dont get it.

The guy from the joker show definitely was a Jackass. Why the hell would they hire a guy to do what he did? Lol.....unbelievable!

Nepotism?

Do they give these relatively important jobs to incompetent family members?

Anything is possible Mike. You just never know i guess right?

The new IM pin has been revealed. The artwork looks amazing, it has a kick-ass song list, the playfield looks awesome, and the Pro model looks like it will come with a bunch of great features included.

So what are we seeing on the Stern Iron Maiden thread? Is it multiple pages of eager buyers? Or is it page after page of people vowing not to buy the pin because of the teaser video the other day?

It’s not IM! That’s Ironman!

Reminds me of the let down of Jeraldo Riviera opening of Al Capone’s “Vault” special.