It's a great game, no reason for new games to beat old games just because they're new. Besides, IJ4 and Avengers are among the top earning games according to Play Meter, aren't they? If I was an op, I'd worry about earnings. As a player, who cares.

Most 90's B/W games beat any 21st Century Stern game... anywhere, anytime!

So you're saying the number one best selling game of all time beats out new releases? You dont say!

Not here, not now.
Walking dead, Metallica, game of thrones, Tron, etc.
they out earn ALL the B/W games I have. (TZ, whitewater, Shadow, TAF, etc)
The only one that comes close is Medieval Madness, and it still earns less.
Different locations might have different results, but Sterns do great for me!

curious of these, which consistently does best to worst? and your ideas on why?

That's one location. In my area there is an operator who says TAF never made him money. GetAway was his best earner for years. Didn't matter the location. It alwasy out performed others until recently. Starting with IM and continuing since, he finds the latest Stern pinball generally does very well. Plus he says the newer Sterns are easier to maintain and don't break down as much, so he spends less time maintaining the game. Makes sense given the Williams games are getting old.

I'm not saying they earn more money on location, I'm saying that B/W pins are by far much better games! PERIOD.

Depends on the location. One location I have Addams, AFM, IndyWMS, MET, Funhouse, TMNT and a few others. TMNT is top earner. Sometimes double play that AFM and Addams gets.

As much as I love B/W, Sterns do have new electronics and look easier to track down problems on.

But the difference in price will buy a lot of B/W parts

Khat

My Arcade will open in march, the line up for the season is.
MMR Gold
Got Le
Kiss Le
IM Ve
AC DC BIB
Taf
Wh2o
T2
Sw de
And was told Hobbit should arrive in april.
Last years best earner was, Wwe le and then twd le.
Will be nice to see if Hobbit puls it of.

Recently, Playmeter had Whoa Nellie at the top, so I'm going to question their sample size and spread. My location has 4 System 11's and a sprinkling of other C/D titles. WW does pretty well normally, but Mario Bros earns the best quite often.

I'd love to have a ranking order (and maybe even a % breakdown) from DNO. I like data. The info from the Coinbox Podcast in the Twin Cities is a lot of fun.

No, they're not. PERIOD.

So what's the pricing for pinballs around the world? A Stern pin costs $2 a game here, a 90's B/W game is $1 a game or $2 for 3 games, a B/W pin has to do 2/3x the plays to earn the same.
I have an old earning report card from a NF pin, it was doing 1k a month at $1 a game, $2 for 3, coin counter had $85k earnings before coming off site
I bought a WD that had been on location for 4 weeks and had 160 games $320 for the month

$85k earnings from a NF?! That's incredible. Must have been a fantastic location. It seems to me we're often hung up on discussing which title will earn best when in reality the location is far more important. The same pin in one location may earn 10x more than another. So, what type of location earns best in this day and age?

I've got 7 reasons against you that help me prove you wrong!

PS: Do you really prefer Stern's Star Trek over STTNG?

Yeah, I agree, you may be full of it!

Yes - Stern ST over B/W STTNG

TMNT is a great looking game, popular theme, easy to play and had energetic sounds. Also short ball times. Great location game IMHO.

depends on your town. Reality is the best earning locations are barcades in hip and high density areas.

I can tell you that in Madison, a town with a reasonable affluent population and decent amount of expendable income, along with ~250k residents >>> nobody will ever make a living at routing pinball.

We have 4 games at one location and they tell us all the time how 1 of their MANY video gambling machines make more than all 4 pins combined each month.

Location matters, population matters, game matters, but what really matters is the RIGHT combination. There will never be 1 right answer but if I had my choice of locations I would want:

1. High population density of 25-45 year olds with good paying jobs
2. Downtown location with ample parking in safe neighborhood and easy public transport
3. Ability to have at minimum 8 games
4. Ability to have kids at location during daytime hours and no kids during adult hours
5. Something else that brings in a captive aduience >>> bowling, sports location, etc... A place that have regular people but also comfortable to pinball people

People said South Park was a good earner, if I had my choice it's the last game I'd play, anyway I've sold 7 B/W games most in the top 10-20 and now have all Stern.

I couldn't be happier with my pins.

I still like older B/W pins but I love IM, Tron, Met, Tspp etc.

Some of that is me Chris...because I don't have/or have a close friend with a TMNT in their house. I've personally put way more money into TMNT and BTTF than the others.

You don't say!

image-7_(resized).jpg

Not bad for a pin.. My Daytina U.S.A ( 5 cabs) that I bought off same operater have between 600- 850k on coin counters

At one of the last arcades of the 90s that was around here I played NF more than the other 10 machines they had left. It was always a busy machine. And always worked just fine, unlike some of the others.

A guy I do pin repairs for put a Xenon in a restaurant/brewpub in a very small town with no other games that I'm aware of. The Xenon is on 25c per play and he cleared $80 in 3 weeks! That's 320 plays.

I don't think it's the game...but more the location. If he took that game and put it somewhere else, it might make $1. Who knows.

I think as much as location, the game selection is as important. You need people to want to play again. If you weren't there then you don't know what games were played and what weren't. Many of today's A titles except for a few were gathering dust while lesser rated games were sucking down every quarter that they could.

I always wondered what the sweet spot was in pricing? I will often not touch a game with $1 / play unless it is brand new and I haven't played that title before. At 50 cents I will play it all night. I imagine many more people are the same. So, even though it takes twice as many plays to earn the same amount, if that means they dump more money into it, then you win. But, I am not an op.

Stangbat is a local op. One of his best earners is whichever old SS he has set up there (despite the A listers next to it) and he figures it is because it is 25 cents a play.

I also think kids get confused with the needing more than 1 coin/credit thing so they walk away thinking the game is broken.

The sweet spot is $1 a game, $2 for 3 games on any newish (1990-now) machine. And the game should have a bill acceptor.

Pinball painted itself into a corner for decades by devaluing itself with 25 cent and 50 cent games.

The sweet spot is $1/game I think. I won't play games for $1/game unless it's very new or has 3/$2 pricing, but people don't make money off people who play 10 minute games and earn replays. I play at the locations with sucker ops who still have $0.50 games So long as those locations exist, it won't give me a reason to pay more for pinball.

It is a three way combination of location, game and cost.

You need a location where people are interested in playing the machine and are constantly there and seeing it. I recently saw a machine on route that was more or less in the bathroom - the only way you saw it was when you went to the restroom. It simply can't make much of anything, no matter what it is.

Secondly, the game matters. I have a friend who has a location that does great for him, he has three pins there and they all turn in $300+ per month. He replaced one of them with a brand new game, a darling of the internet, and it earned him less than $100 in the first month. So he pulled it and put it in his basement and put something else there that immediately went back up to $300+.

Finally, pricing. I think that $1 play is absolutely fine and we should have been there a long time ago quite frankly, but if you go much higher people do balk at that. Much lower, and I'm guessing you don't get that many people repeat playing, and raising the machine to $1 would nearly double your earnings. Having said that, I haven't been in control of route machines since everything was 50 / play, so I can't confirm that one.

From EVERY operator I know, the new Sterns hold up a million times better than B/W games did back in the day. I can't speak for recently "bulletproofed" machines.

This also means twice as much wear/tear which means twice as many calls to fix and time investment and also twice as much for broken parts cost. You have to look at the whole equation. I can tell you that we keep a few older games at .50 a play and they by large are not worth it and IME never bring in double the plays no matter how desirable they supposedly are.

Unless you have a barcade with huge crowds or are getting 100% the coin drop I see no feasible way you can or should be charging anything less than 3 for $2. .75 or $1 is actually very fair given inflation and cost of games in current world.

I can let you know that EVERY game will have issues the first month or 2. Then things settle in. By and far a bullet proofed older game ALWAYS holds up better than new Sterns. Be doing this for over 2 years now and that is just my experience.

I can see modern Sterns earning less due to longer ball times.

What type of location and what type of games are there? Just curious.

I was at the cafe in Birmingham a few weeks ago and the AF was in mint condition. I played 2 games of AF and 1 game of Kiss and GOT. Without any doubt, AF is still a winner.

£1 for a 3 ball game is too rich for my blood though. Had they been cheaper to play I would've spent more money and stayed longer.

You must remember, I managed locations myself and know a number of people that operated then and now. You just said basically exactly what I did.

Out of the box, Stern's of today hold up much better than out of the box B/W titles from the past. Bulletproofed is a different story, and why so many new collectors think that the quality of B/W was better than it actually was.

Just to add a few things,

The Cafe in Leicester has now closed.

There are 7 pins currently at Tilt - Judge Dredd, TAF, GoT, Kiss, AcDc Pro, Avengers, BDK. All are set at £1 per play or 3 for £2.

I've been a few times (including the time the review was written by Martin) and all of the machines were played almost non-stop, with no particular preference seen - with the excveption of JD and BDK rarely being played. Could this be related to being at either end of the row?

We played AV once, played horribly due to not being level.
AcDc once, purely because it was a Pro.
We then alternated between Kiss and GoT numerous times. When we stepped off it meant someone else stepped on and lowered the replay score

TAF is a favourite of the owner, and all of the staff. It is also the only machine with superbands on, and plays a little shallow thus increasing ball times. IMHO that is the reason why it gets so much play.

I'm starting a Monday Night League there from the 25th Jan (and every last Monday of the month) so hopefully will be able to introduce others to all of the machines.

Double Post
Double Post

I'm pretty sure that the Sterns and possibly the TAF there are all set to £1 a game or 3 games for £2. Two quid for three games works out a lot better value if you are happy to play several games straight off on one machine. I'm visiting Birmingham later this week, so will have a look in.

Unfortunately the Cafe in Leicester has now closed as the owner couldn't make the venue pay. This just shows how difficult it is to make money out of a pinball themed cafe, one that is non-licenced for alcohol.

I'm happy to pay £1 a game as long as the game is set up not too hard and is kept in good condition. Some of the pins in the Brewdog bars, and especially in The Pipeline Bar in London are set up far too difficult to justify paying a quid a game for 90 seconds of play!

New games, I charge $1 a game, 6 games for $5.

Old games - 3 games for $2 = .66 cents a game. New games - 6 games for $5 = .83 cents a game.

Older games I charge $1, or 3 games for $2. The newer games make a lot more than the older games.

Much shorter ball times on modern Sterns compared to B/W games that I have seen. No one at my location has half hour long games on my Sterns.

This has been my experience as well. Though the B/W games I have bullet proofed hold up very well (but the labour required to make them bullet proof kind of sours it a bit). Don't get me started on routing a WoZ ECLE. Uggh. So, not all new games hold up as well.

This is huge. It has taken me 4 years to build up a solid and consistent audience at my location. The regulars know games will be in nice shape, play well, and have a decent amount of rotation. The coin box will let you know if you are doing a good job.

it does well for me but sterns always outdo my b/w! metallica le , acdc le , star trek pro . kiss pro are usually battling for the top spot out of my 32 game location

Right. When I got into working for arcades sort of completely at random in the late 90s, I ended up befriending a lot of people, and what I was told was that...

Gottlieb machines held up like tanks, but they don't really earn. SF2 was apparently the big exception to this rule.
B/W machines had a bunch of trouble at the start, but once you would get them going would be consistent earners.
DE machines earned the best right out of the gate but would drop pretty quickly after that. They also were known for having a similar amount of trouble to B/W games out of the box, but they would continually have things breaking on them.
Sega machines had the same earning arc as DE machines, but would generally hold up better than them.

Every operator was amazed by how Stern was the only one left and their games were the best right out of the box, although they wished they would earn more.

Exactly. And it also depends on the location supplying those people. There is a local geek bar that opened near me that I stop out at once in a while. They have two pins, and they are nearly constantly played even when there are few people there. The location is attracting a set of people more likely to play those machines, and then putting them front and center. This location also celebrates nostalgia, so I can all buy guarantee if they put in a Dr. Who pin, it will probably out-earn a Metallica.

I know you are but what am I!!!!

or

Stop teasing me or Im telling my mommy!!!!

For sure. At my new location, they asked for one pin (I'm trying to convince them to put two more in so we can hold league nights there). It's a console video game bar, with a smattering of geek culture. I put Lord of the Rings in, and it's crushing. Making more than it ever did in a month than it did in 6 months at my other location. Tron is going in next, followed by TWD. I'll never put Kiss, Met or AC/DC there.