I'm not even going to fully read this thread.. all I can say is that Stern isn't the one facing a dark night. Their games are still getting put on location. Collectors are still lining up to buy them in spite of the QC issues, and I have to believe they're trying to at least improve the playfield issues. Nobody expects the software situation to change, and they've always charted their own course as far as that goes....

Meanwhile...

JJP announces a rehash of a theme that's already been done, and done REALLY WELL at that, which has some really interesting features (I love the triple spinning disk! I haven't had a chance to look at video yet though!) as well as some very concerning ones (6+ multiballs? 105 modes where you 'randomly' get 25 of those per game? Did we not learn from Hobbit *and* Star Wars that too much multiball isn't a good thing? Is scoring 100% consistent across these 125 modes for tournament use, or does Tournament Mode lock everyone into the same modes?) ....it's like they're repeating every mistake they made with Hobbit that we'd thought they learned from with Dialed In. Apparently....not so much. And even barring that, it's STILL A NINE THOUSAND DOLLAR PIN AFTER SHIPPING...FOR THE BASE MODEL. Hm...let me think here... I can get 2 Stern Pros, 4 decent 'B' Bally/Williams, or POTC. I'm not going to pick POTC. Period. They're going to HAVE to figure out how to get their prices down to a reachable level for more people if they want to grow. They've had their own reliability issues as well over the years, and Dialed In wasn't much different in that regard. Playfield's been holding up just fine for the one I have access to, but there's a lot of question marks about flipper strengths, and how the Theatre magnet is supposed to ACTUALLY work from our locals....even us tournament guys have had some issues with those two points, and adjusting the flippers in software doesn't seem to actually permanently fix how weak they feel at times. These games are too much damn money for little issues like these.

Totally agree with what's been said from what I skimmed that JJP is aiming for the home market....but I have to question if that's even viable, much less with their apparent target being the niche of "rich privileged males" not "middle class." I can't even afford their games used....consequently the market that Stern enjoys (operators and NIB-owned-for-three-months-oh-well-time-to-get-the-new-hotness!) will remain firmly in Stern's court, because nobody's going to lose 4k on a game just to buy another game.

Love these threads, for no other reason than you can always count on the JJP Fanbois to bring their army of thumbs...as if it even matters to someone like me that's used to being told I'm full of it anyways.. LOL...thanks for the laugh, guys. You never, ever, fail to deliver.

Yeah, remember when everyone told me to STFU when I said that JJP prices were high after the first WOZ price bump, and people made it try to seem like competition would lower prices, then Stern raised theirs, then JJP did, then Stern did, then JJP did..

I've never been unclear about this, but let me reiterate:

I want JJP, the company to succeed. I definitely want them to make better games than I felt that WOZ and Hobbit were, and it looks like there's a chance for that to happen. I want Jack, as a person, to fail in this industry, because his logic and 'business acumen' (lol) have IMO paved the way for us to all bleed cash out of our asses until the hobby dies. WOZ should've NEVER been sold below what they needed to sell it for to continue as a business, and Stern never should've followed JJP's lead in ratcheting up prices.

The differences between the companies? Stern has never ever purported to give a rat's arse, nor delivered in any way that should have led anyone to expect that they DID, about anything other than the bottom line. You get what you get, and that's that. If you bought, or buy a Stern game expecting anything more than what you bought in the box, you've only lied to yourself. If Stern is helping you, it's only because there's a legal obligation or because they think it will help them sell more games.

JJP.....well...they decided to go after the "rich elite guy" market, and they did. Problem is they didn't mind their own business and just do their thing. Jack put his neck out there and decided to make it personal, Stern has egged it on, and many were happy to help both to create this environment, which was STUPID.....but human. If people would have just opened their eyes, realized that it was "too good to be true" and continues to be so for anyone but the 3% of the population that can both afford and want to pay 9k+ for a pinball machine...

There's idiots on Stern's side, and idiots on JJP's side...in that way, they're completely identical, but that's about it. I think it's a damn shame that Stern didn't choose the long view and try to maintain their pricing structure, but instead decided that they could chase the same dollars as a company that is STILL effectively a boutique manufacturer by comparison. You can't do that and not bring the quality level way up and not innovate, and all that either of these two companies have done is to hurt the hobby by even making the appearance that they're actually competitive with each other, when they're clearly not.

I will say this. I've never had a Stern fanboi tear me a new a-hole for criticizing bad Stern games, but JJP fanbois? On that like white on rice.. Hobbit was (is) terrible, and not even a Keith can save that game from it's physical design. Dialed In is a good playing game, but with a TERRIBLE theme. Ghostbusters scoring is F'ed, GoT has some really damn cheap drains, Star Wars code is fun but HORRIBLY buggy and a very unimaginative layout, Aerosmith is garbage all around...at least the pro is, and KISS and WWE are the two most misunderstood and under-appreciated games since Transformers....maybe a little less WWE than KISS. There, I think I've covered recent history, and probably pissed off everyone about their favorite game? LOL.

If Stern folds or goes into slots and gives up pinball... the hobby as we currently know it is dead, and that's sad, but maybe ultimately it'll be a good thing for new guys like Spooky and American to sustain the hobby for a while. Growth on their end might encourage a more cost-effective production volume for them, and fill the void. JJP will have nothing that even RESEMBLES competition for their model at that point. Houdini is very reasonably priced, as is TNA... leaving JJP all alone to chase that top tier....but at some point they're going to HAVE to find a way to make a more reasonable product to reach into other segments if they want to grow their business. It's not a choice, it's imperative, otherwise they'll stagnate and not grow. Maybe Jack's okay with that...but I doubt his investors are, and he doesn't strike me as the dude that's just going to sit on a string of moderately improved successes and not shake things up.

JJP could just as easily at some point have two games in production simultaneously, with two completely different themes and layouts, one for the "Rich elite guy" market, and one for the "home player" market, at different price points. You don't have to give up the "we don't make different playfields to cut costs"....just design some simpler, fun games. Not everyone enjoys an hour-long slog through a game, either....but this is 4 out of 4 that's exactly that....

That's your choice. I was told before I played the last code revision that there's still an endless single-ball-multiball glitch. That's "horribly buggy" as something like that is a tournament use killer, IMO, and 95% of the time I'm playing Star Wars, it's in league. Even if the latest code doesn't have the issue as it was described to me, there's no denying that the prior code revisions DID, and multiple forms of this, along with some really dumb things like not lowering the forks for the ball search, which in a company as old as Stern....that's just sloppy.

Except for when you're stuck in Hyperspace Multiball hell that won't end, as happened to me on the last code revision. It was thinking there were two balls on the playfield, stuck in Hyperspace, never once ball searched, and it took me a good solid 3 minutes of looking around the machine to find the damn ball. I thought they had all drained! Turned out, it was sitting up there on the forks and never came down. I had to start a new game and knock it out.

I do like the new code, just to be clear.. I'm just hoping the rumor that these type of glitches persist in different activation manners turn out to be false. The Hyperspace one was very rare from my experience, and not at all easy to replicate. What was described to me could be easily replicated. If I ever confirm it, you can be sure I'll post about it. I was able to play like 5 games before I had to leave, and got to Lightsaber Duel 4 times, and finished it one of those. I can't say I'm a big fan of the new video mode....but Lightsaber Duel is fun.

Yep, and even worse in my case. One of our local venues is 20 cents a game, and has WOZ, Hobbit, and Dialed in (not kidding...4 bucks to get in the door...20 cents a game) so I'd need to play like 45000 games....on games that already take a long time to play anyways. That's like 156 days nonstop of playing one game, assuming 5 minute game time, which is *horrifically* low estimation. The only thing that I've come that close or past playing that much was Asheron's Call, which I played more or less all day every day for about 6 years, and then on and off for 4 years..pretty sure when they shut it down I had 3 or 4 months of ingame logged time on my main.