I'll consider myself lucky for the time being, with great NC breweries and LEs on location 3 plays/$2, 1 play/$1.

nope (resized).jpg

Not to mention Next Level has everything on free play with a $20 door charge. 100+ pins in fantastic condition. Good luck charging anything over a dollar.

Even if you believe pins cost the same as they did 30 years ago (which they don’t), we’d be talking how operators are making a decent living, not hanging on. Let’s not be oblivious.

Take your logic of inflation and apply it to today’s market vs 1990s, games would be over $2-3 per play.

Two quarters has been standard price at least since I started playing in the early 90s. Pins were 1/4-1/3 the cost of today’s similarly equipped modern pin. In the early 90s there were literally lines and multiples of the same title in the same location in some instances. It took a few months for a pin to pay for itself. Now it takes 1.5-2 years and sometimes more to pay for itself. Yet, here we are with and average super buy at 66 cents a play. With all that said, you are correct, inflation is not 10%, it’s several 100%.

Now start to add in the exponential increase of operating as a legitimate OP. Insurance because everyone is lawsuit crazy. Add in a $400 dollar bill acceptor because coins aren’t convenient. Don’t like a DBA, buy a change machine (add a quality changer to each location and you’ll cry). Don’t like those options, buy pay range or some other form of a card swiper for each pin, buy the equipment and pay the monthly fees. How about a service truck with a lift gate or powered dolly? Now there’s that vehicle maintenance and insurance. Depending on where an operator is there might be an annual permit required per machine. You are going to need a quarter counter too. Don’t forget about the overhead in parts such as extra boards, quality rubbers, flipper rebuilds or parts, opto sensors, glass cleaners/waxes and microfibers, playfield glass etc. Don’t like drinks on your machine, build or buy drink holders.

I can go on and on, most people don’t have a clue to what it takes to be a good operator. I state all this to show that .50 cents a game is a loosing proposition for an operator, honestly, $1 a game is a loosing proposition.

Operators aren’t being greedy, they are trying to stay above water.

Makes total sense for you guys to up to $1.50 and $1,25 for the higher end games, except for----

If you go over $1.00:
Tons of casual players, and not as skilled players, will avoid the game in favor of a game that costs only $1.
Same with parents who are paying for their kid to play, and kids are often terrible at pinball.
This is the market you want playing your games, so pushing them to another game may be unwise.

I wonder if Stern will plan long term to offer operators a payment option through the connected platform.
Would make sense to me -> player prepays on the app e.g. in $25 increments, the operator still sets the price per game and Stern takes a small cut, e.g. 10c per $ spent playing or something like that.
I bet people would play more when they don't see how much they have to feed the machine directly, therefore sustaining increased prices. I think I have read if the money is abstracted in some form, people tend to spend more like with credit cards.
Obviously that doesn't cover older machines and you still need to maintain coin drops for casual players.

I'm going to put Godzilla on location and charge $9,500 per play. It makes the math much easier.

Portland isn’t a good business model either, I’ve played a lot of locations there and pins were garbage wagons. In some instances I had to make an appointment for a time slot to play and it had to be for a specific title. Not to mention the human poo and tents on the sidewalks I had to walk around. I’m sure there are some quality locations there, I just didn’t get to visit them.

If I were somewhere with Godzilla for 1.50 I’d play 3 games instead of 5 at 50 cents. I play less and you make more. Makes sense to me if I were an operator.

Next Level is the best location by far…but it is in a suburb outside the city. As far as homeless goes they’ll be in your big cities soon enough too.

The whole resale argument non-operators are making is irrelevant. Current value of anything doesn’t matter unless one is selling that item may it be a stock or a house. Here’s the shocker, when that item is sold, it’s going to cost more to replace it. Current market value goes up and down, it wasn’t to long ago people were literally throwing away pinball machines. How was an operator to make money back then, where’s the resale argument for that time in pinball.

Unless one is in the business of making aged spirits, the ROI needs to happen sooner than later.

Operators are there to OPERATE, not to be a distributor or reseller. The business model is to operate.

Salaries roll back to $40 a week too ?

Seem and what is really happening can be two different things.

LTG : )

I love exaggerated BS when it's easy to call out.

"Some instances" of time slots = Wedgehead's covid-specific model, something that a lot of people liked (also not in place anymore). I personally enjoyed sessioning titles on freeplay, but even if you didn't, that was one location trying something new to make people comfortable during a global pandemic.

You must've had some bad luck to only find broken pins here. You've played a lot of locations in town but missed Next Level, Ground Kontrol, C Bar, Quarterworld? You can find dives with better lineups than dedicated arcades in a lot of cities, if it was as bad as you're making it out to be why would we have the most pinball per capita? Guess we just love putting quarters into our garbage wagons.

Bringing up the (irrelevant) homeless issue shows your bias against the city. We look forward to you not visiting again

For anyone interested in my perspective from my experience.

1979 Started buying my own games. Having an operator wasn't working anymore.

1981 first 50¢ pin ( Black Knight ) new pins were 50¢ after that. Around 1986 I was going back to a quarter a game, suffering the video game bubble burst. Looking back the video games were subsidizing the pinball.

By about 1991 games were back to 50¢, for too many years. Check the US Government cost of living index and in 1991 that 50¢ would have to be 75¢ to have the same buying power. I was losing ground ( as was the whole pinball and coin op industry ) and at the time I didn't know why. Hindsight is 20-20

By 2000 pinball was rolling again. I added more pins. Things were looking up. But in reality it was dying a slow death. Players weren't coming in like they used to. And mid 2000's the economy took a down turn. I started selling pins to stay open. I started seeing posts on RGP when I sold SC and IJ. People would post if he sold them I'm not going there anymore. Guess what. You weren't coming in when they were here.

I've found that people who say they aren't coming in for any reason, aren't your target market anyway.

Not sure exactly when, but I raised prices around 2007. I have one quarter pin for parents who can't park their child in front of a dollar game. Around 6 50¢ pins, 6 75¢ pins. a couple pins at $1 and 3 games for $2 pins, 6 games $1 and 6 games for $5, and one dollar pin.

Up until covid hit, things were good. Then covid hit. It took about 4 years to come back from the video fad death, and we aren't through covid yet.

So once again I'm faced with the reality that things are different and may stay that way. Many players have their own games and don't go out like they used too. So many places have at least some pins now. Maybe covid ? Maybe the economy isn't what it used to be. And costs keep going up.

I need a new DMD, $400, I haven't got it. My Addams ate another thing motor gear box on Sunday, $299, I haven't got it.

I'm not crying. Just trying to give some insight as to what I have going on. There obviously are going to need some changes again.

I'm not looking for suggestions or ideas either. My business is my livelihood. I can't afford to gamble or take risks. After 49 years I've got an idea of what is doable and what isn't.

LTG : )

just put up a note next to the price card
"$1.50 per game because I paid $9000 for the machine you are slam tilting"
People will understand
....or just make fun of you for spending that much

I’m not just starting out and it’s very relevant. It’s all operators that aren’t hobby operators. Nobody ties up money in equipment banking on a high resale (that would be gambling) High resale has not always been the case and it is market driven, in fact high resale of route games is a recent phenomenon.

What happens to a business that operates with the expectation of high resale and market tanks on resale when the primary objective is to earn money now? They would have failed. That is a piss poor business plan and one would be laughed out the door if that idea was proposed to a bank or group of investors.

With that said, a high resale also means a high replacement cost to replenish inventory. Machines are tools of the trade for operators. Nobody sells their tools just to spend more to buy a like tool. It doesn’t make sense to sell a tool to replace it unless it has no use. It makes sense to do that only if ones need the capitol to buy a new tool. If that’s the case, the business is not doing very well and is struggling to stay afloat. Operating out side of a hobby requires constant growth, a serious operator that depends on operating for a living wants more machines to make more money at more locations. A high resale is a bonus not a guarantee.

Settle down hero, there was no bias, simple truth in my experience there, please don’t politicize the issue. I didn’t say all pins were broke, I didn't say any were.

Sorry, don't like guys hating indiscriminately on an entire city of operators (who do a genuinely kickass job of running a massive amount of games here).

I might play 2/3 games for $1 = $2/3. I'd probably play once for $1.50, or not at all (esp not at $2) = $0/1.50. Multiply that up a bit.

I feel a fair price is $0.50 for EMs (mostly), $1.00 for DMD/SSs (again, mostly), and $1.50 for LCDs (except you LZ and WD). I could see myself paying $2 for an LE game, but it likely wouldnt be more than a game or two. What is important is that the games arent set to tilt when you breathe on them, the ball save isnt super short (looking at you WD) and the game is clean and flipper rubbers dont look like mice chew on them. Everything goes up in price (except my salary) and it is expected. I will say for what its worth, if you have and credit card reader only, I will never play there. Especially places that have dynamic pricing based on how popular the game is. Huge pass.

Can anyone give some approximate years when the general pricing changed? I can think of these scenarios:
5 Ball EM $0.10
5 Ball EM $0.25
3 Ball SS $0.25
3 Ball DMD $0.50
3 Ball DMD $0.75
3 Ball DMD $1.00

Am I missing any others?

Come on man, I have some flipperless that cost $0.05 that are feeling left out

Had to cut it off at some point or we would be talking about 10 balls for a penny!

According to the inflation calculator $0.05 in 1935 is worth $1.00 in 2021. You can do the math and see that $0.10 would be worth $2.00.

Thus $2.00 for 5 balls would be a historically accurate price.

Of course business and social conditions have changed drastically over almost 100 years so the coin-drop model just isn't as effective as it used to be.

FYI cash is becoming scarce. Installing a credit card reader that allows the player to tap/dip/swipe their card will become second nature versus having someone insert two $1 bills. Stop resisting people. Embrace it and move forward because the rest of the world is.

5¢ play until about late 1950's. 10¢ play until about 1970 - then 3 games for a quarter. 3 ball SS 25¢ about 1978. 3 ball SS 50¢ 1981 ( Black Knight was the first pin shipped that way ) 3 ball DMD 75¢ about 2000. 3 ball DMD ( LCD ) $1 about 2013.

LTG : )

We are indeed trending toward cashless...and this kind of system on a pin makes it much easier to incrementally change pinball prices. The big stumbling block in pinball has always been the jump in quarters. When you can adjust prices by 5 cents at a time it could save a lot of trouble and stop a lot of resistance as pinball tries to keep up with inflation.

The "going price" of pinball at 50 cents seemed to last about 15-20 years, which was absolutely nuts. Pinball was dragged kicking and screaming to $1 a play which everybody just accepted a few years ago. I remember all these arguments from last time around.

I don't envy ops, it's a thankless job. And a dying breed; it really seems like most "ops" now are enthusiasts who run their own bars or pinball palaces. I can't think of a single NYC pinball operator who does this as a full-time job, it's always a hobby or a bar owner.

Ill stay at $1.00 for pins for a while still but i am currently converting my route pool tables to $1.50. They’ve been at $1.00 for a long time.

Is there a thing where like, you can take a touchless CC payment at one machine, request a hold for a reasonable dollar amount, accumulate transactions from all machines on your local network, run one CC purchase per user at (b)arcade closing time, and save on otherwise brutal fees for a ton of small transactions? If not that should totally exist. Basically a bar tab, except for games. Device should be cheaper than a DBA, no moving parts.

There’s an app called Payrange that does close to that. Out here Quarter world arcade has it in place.

Again, don’t put words in txt that weren’t there to begin with. There was not hate in any of my posts. A statement was made in the context that anything beyond 50 cents wouldn’t work in Portland, implying it wouldn’t work anywhere else or would be hard to justify. The point of my post was Portland was not the be all end all.

I like Portland, they have a massive pinball scene. I know not all pins there are unkept. I stated I haven’t been to all the locations. Point is Portland is not the ideal business model from what I’ve seen to support more expensive pinball. Nothing less, nothing more, nothing negative. I was agreeing with the statement given my experience.

I’m not bashing Portland. Keep up the good works for those making it happen there.

If IC and Scorbit were smart, they would let you play games via the app. Then OPs could get paid directly & same day

People in this thread don’t seem to grasp that resale value is meaningless when you’re talking profitability.

Game costs 8k
I am now -8k
Game earns let’s say 50 a week.
After 2 years of 50 a week, my earnings are 5.2k
I’m still -2.8k after 2 years.
I haven’t profited.

Meanwhile that dumbass Crank It cost me 8k and has earned me nearly 15k in that same time period.

Why bother buying pins that take forever to pay for themselves when I can buy redemption garbage that pays for itself in half the time? Crank It is $1.50 a play and nobody has problems dumping money into it.

Um, isn't Next Level, in addition to being in a relatively cheap spot in terms of real estate, made possible by someone's rich dad?

People play Crank It in bars???

We’ve been installing CC readers on the changers and it’s boosted business, extra few grand now. CC readers on each machine would be dumb. The card system is cool but the fees would crush any profitability.

FEC operator here. Bars are a different story I’m sure.

If you can spend $8 on a shitty beer than you can pay $2 for pinball.
The freaking jukebox right next to the machine costs $1.50 a song.

TO THE HARDCORE PLAYERS:
You are not the bread and butter. Pin veterans make me so little money it’s sad. The causal people who think Star Wars (LCD) was made 30 years ago are the ones who pay the bills.

You guys play 8 games of pinball off a buck. The causal player spends $40 on all different games and doesn’t care. That’s the difference.

I swear dude... you are the most stoic motherf...on this entire board, to be dealing with things for as long as you have and to NOT have bailed on it.

I admit it. It's true. We used to have a place here that was (no kidding) 20 cents per game with a 5 buck entry fee. They reset the replay scores DAILY. Our league guys would roll up in there every week and not only get so many replays that probably only 50% of games were paid (if that), but we'd leave games *all the time* for the next schmoe to walk up and have a go. I'd feel worse, but the entire rest of the place was a kiddy casino, and I know from my own kids' activities in there, they were making bank on a lot of really old redemption games and a few new ones sprinkled about.

WTF is Crank it? Is this like a new game for jerk offs?

Is this a real number for ops? 50 bucks a week per game? I'd be surprised if the games at my location did not pull in at least 50 per day, the place is always bumping. Perhaps this is the problem, you need to put your games in a more popular spot.

Exactly!!

Exactly again!

When I play location pins (rare as there ain’t many around here) I put in my $2 (that’s the normal price here for a new game) and generally that’ll keep me going until I get bored. Then I give my free credits to some random person who’s looking keen to play.

rd

If someone is desperate enough to pay 8 bucks for crap beer they are likely enough to pay 2 bucks for a game of pinball. We can get killer beers for 5 bucks. Just because some are happy enough to get f'd in the a doesn't make it right for everyone.

All I can say reading through the comments is there are a lot of very spoiled pinball players in here.

There will come a time (and I feel it’s coming soon) where ops will be priced out of new pins (for some I know it’s already happened). Just not that long ago pinball was on its death bed and people where begging for anywhere to be able to go play, now they want the latest and greatest but refuse to pay anything more then a $1.

I’ve been talking to a lot of local businesses in my area and everyone is raising prices to keep up with costs of goods going up. Why should operators be any different? Operators should do the same as they see fit/needed.

My question to the people who say they won’t pay $1.50, they will just leave and go to another location, what would you do if all the ops did it together and everyone raised their prices at once? Would you just stop playing location pinball all together?

I guess I just don’t understand, people bitch when there is no pinball to be played and they bitch when there is pinball to be played but the cost per play goes up?

Yes.

You are right in a very concrete sense. But this probably ain't quite how the average consumer thinks about this. Ever hear of pennywise and pound foolish? People CAN pay, of course. But the kernel of this whole issue how people WILL behave. It's NOT always strictly logical, perhaps particularly in terms of how they think about continuing to feed money for more game play. We can probably all think of examples from our own lives. It's all about how you assign value, especially relative to other items. To the point above about the business role of casual players (which varies a lot across venues), they likely think about this differently than almost anyone here on this thread.

You seem to be under the impression people need/want new pins in order to have a good time at a bar. We don’t. The vast majority of places out here don’t have new machines, one of the best places has no machines past 1999. I actually find myself playing the older games vs newer as you don’t see some older machines that often. Most people in general don’t care, it’s fun to play while having a beer. Seems like more people want to play Ice Cold Beer for that matter. Like I said. I’ll stay for hours and buy $100 in beer at a place that charges .25 to $1 for games

I'm not against raising prices on games. I just think it's very questionable if that's the best move. Above is the implicit point that new games often sit next to older ones that are cheaper and/or have been earning for a long time past paying for themselves.

Okay having older machines for cheaper is understandable and I’m all for that, the question at hand was will ops be charging $1.50 per play for Godzilla (the newest machine) so I took the comments in this thread of I’m not paying more then $1 per play to mean they won’t play Godzilla for $1.50.

Which takes us back to, if people aren’t paying to play the new stuff, means ops stop buying it, means stern sells less games (I know right now they are hotter then ever) but it starts a snowball effect of taking location pinball back to the dark times of not long ago which I don’t think anyone wants.

Also when an op comes on hard times (low collection months) and have to sell games to make it by, what machines go first? The ones they can sell for the most the fastest, which means if your op is sitting on a bunch of older pins that are paid off but worth the prices games are going for in today’s market, bye bye pinball. Not saying this is going to happen, but for the seasoned ops out there like LTG these words are all too true. Again a snowball effect can happen fast sometimes and with today’s economy and what’s going on across the US it’s very possible.

I think somebody mentioned a combination. One place out here has the rare and brand new pins priced above $1. But everything else is .25 to a $1. That’s probably the happy medium. Also prevents people from hogging the new stuff.

Just before covid, in 2019 Portland starting seeing $1 a game for new stuff. It’s generally cheaper here to encourage players in the door and make the money on the bar and kitchen. I could be wrong but my guess-is 1.50 or 2.00 a game won’t be successful after a week or two. Not that ops don’t deserve it, just that that’s the reality here.
Better deal for the pro.

I would pay $2 a game for a nicely maintained newer game, but like a previous poster said, right now at 50cents or $1 if there are things not working right I just move on to the next game, but at $2 I’m looking for a refund if the flippers are so weak I can’t make it up a ramp or a major feature like the main bash toy to get to multiball doesn’t work.
At $2 a game I’d also only be interested in playing myself as I know I’m going to get a good amount of time in on a single game so the value is there. Right now if I take my wife and two young girls with me and games are between 50 cents and $1 they are spending $10 in the time it takes me to spend $2. At $2 a game I’m not going to give my 4 year old $20 to play 5 games in 5-10 minutes or give $20 to my 8 year old to last 10-20 minutes.
I think pinball pricing is tough when you have people that their game can be over in a minute and other top notch serious players that can spend 30 minutes on one game and probably win multiple free games in the process.
I’m glad operators are out there putting games on location so we can enjoy them and I hope they figure out a way to keep it financially viable for themselves as prices continue to rise.