It can’t be easy as an operator. I think bar locations are the best because people will drink while they play and pay less attention to the cost per game while they are drinking with friends. The games keep people around and they have to buy drinks. Win-win for the operator and bar owner provided the split is equitable. I think the op deserves more than 50% in a bar. My 2c.

A wise man once told me, that the profits at a bar are in Johnny Black, not Black Knight!

Very valid point.

Not very many places in my region (VA/MD) have their games on $1 / play. Some do. But they are the minority.

All also valid points.

I'm just putting the real world into the conversation.

A lot of places are also going to just a $10-15-20 cover charge and play as much as you want. Maintenance is higher in those places tho I think.

as an operator I can assure you enthusiasts are not my target audience... I would much rather have the guy that puts in $1 and just hits the button on the lap bar watching the ball drain for a minute or two vs a pinball enthusiast that is going to complain about paying $1/$1.50 and then is playing/tying up the machine for 20 minutes

Can't say that makes me give a shit if your biz succeeds or fails. Kind of curious who buys the most pins nowadays ops or homeowners, and how that plays into future Stern pricing.

Really? why would you even say that? He's hoping a rando chucks money in and plays a few balls, instead of a pinhead busting the game up smacking it around? that's capitalism

The answer is ops.

What a terrible thing to say.

Lloyd

Because I wish to believe pinball is more than just making a dollar and a cent. Some rando should not control pinball.
If ops don't care about us, why should we care about them.

Ops here crying they don't make 20 bucks a week. Oh no, some player actually uses the machine and potentially turns on other people watching them play. You're talking as if we are some detriment to your business.

?

Not every person has access to owning a pinball machine. Location play is one chance for many such players.

I've spent 60+ years in coin op including pinball machines.

At my arcade for slightly over 49 years I've had pinball machines. Maintained them. And have an assortment of pricing for every budget. I have always tried to have great games here for my players. In my regular line up and brought in for events.

For 20+ years I would have done way better running redemption equipment here.

It would seem myself, and many ops do care. And want to continue to do so.

LTG my comments are not directed at you. I've seen you helping many many people here.

I'm saying other ops may need to tone the capitalism thing down a bit and realize home enthusiasts are keeping pinball alive at this point. You can still make money and not insult the community.

A large part of those enthusiasts started as casual location players, and lots of location players can't drop $6k on a new pin that'll drop $1.50 a play to try the new hotness Prem/LE/CE. Also, on the route I helped with players that owned Pros would come and play the Prem/LEs to check them out.

If you were out there with a charity route featuring a broad variety of new $8,000-$11,000 well-maintained pins set to 25 cents a play you'd have a stronger platform for your assertions. But you're not. Although, it's not too late to put your money where your mouth is...

I’d say you are the only one doing the insulting in this conversation.

It's possible you are correct, and if so that's not my intention. In my job I work with large and small customers. I don't make statements that would make the smaller customer feel as if they are less important. I don't know if that translates here? I don't let on they are not my target audience.

So no, I won't generally support a business that I feel insults me as a customer.

I don't know who's talking about 25 cents but it's not me. I'm square with a buck a play.

Sorry, in a thread full of crazy comments, you’ve taken the cake with your last few posts.

Don’t you realise that most “home pin owners” get into buying games because they played pins on location? Whether it was 30 years ago or 1 year ago.

Location pinball is the gateway drug to home ownership.

When location pinball dies - then so will the hobby and industry. Young people won’t see pinball. Hipsters won’t see pinball. It’ll be gone within 10 years. Gary Stern has been saying this for years.

It’s apparent that a lot of people who have posted in this thread have no interest in keeping location pinball alive. “I won’t pay $2 to play your $8000 game!” So selfish and self centred.

Pay $2 - only two f**king dollars! - and help keep the hobby alive. Or don’t. And watch it shrivel up and die.

rd

I don't know what you're complaining about then. $1/play for pros is pretty much status quo - that's how Sterns come stock now, but it's still LESS money per game than 1975 pins with 5 balls.

We're only talking about $1.50 and up for Prem/LE/CE machines, and even that's too cheap on an inflation adjusted basis.

All he said was pinheads aren’t his target audience. (For making money, no matter what… that still the name of the game). Don’t think that in his sentence that he doesn’t appreciate pinheads, guaranteed he does. But he’s just implying casuals help out the best.

- I watched a guy beat up a pin on location playing it hard last weekend. If it was mine, I would have been a bit cheezed off. He was a regular pinhead.

Exactly. You did not see me once in this thread complain about a dollar per play. Someone else perhaps.

Right so any of us bunch who doesn't cough up 2 bucks a play and the death of pinball is all on us. Got it.

You didn't SAY it, but you RESPONDED to an OP talking about $1 and $1.50/play as the new reality here:

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/any-ops-going-to-150-with-godzilla-prem/page/6#post-6562695

Same diff.

Never mind.

Was that at my place? I should tighten up those tilts

Ha! Wasn’t me, I didn’t even tilt. Last time they were tight.
Lol, the one dude there could definitely giver a bit

I can understand that. Sorry for my misinterpretation and jackass post. It was uncalled for.

This thread makes me feel guilty,I was playing pinball for .25 a game last week at Jilly's in Ocean City Nj.

I envy you guys in the States with the flourishing barcades. Sadly that doesn’t work in Germany. You have a very small number of bars here with typically one Stern pro. These are always priced at 50 euro cents per game. Mostly pinheads play these games meaning long games and little earnings for the op. I sure wouldn’t do it.

In bowling alleys and arcades you may find multiple games and occasionally a JJP or BW game. Here the pricing is often 1 euro per game, 3 for 2. Again, at the locations I frequent games are either standing idle or it’s those darn pinheads again.

Take a game like TAF. A newbie will generally play it in an uncontrolled manner and lose all balls in under a minute. A good controlled player can really drag out playing time. So no money to be earned there.

I personally would be happy to pay 1.50 for a game on a well-maintained premium.

Actually they are... he’s an operator

All of America isn't the same. I live in Atlanta and there was almost no public pinball until about 5 years ago. It took the sweat of a few pinheads to start building a community. We built leagues, created an annual gaming convention, and then started opening big locations.

They aren't going to magically appear, so if you want to play in the wild, go build it with a few other diehards.

Why did you just make up a quote tweet from me? Was my username just still leftover in your reply box from your previous asinine response?

I see rarely an em set for 25 cents but they are out there. See more em for 50 cents. Solid state games 50 to 75 cents 90's and back games. Dollar to $1.75 for one game but $2.00 for 3 plays on 2000 era games. Did see a Rick & Morty blood sucker in the wild $2.00 a game so it got $4 out of me. It's in a craft brew place and it sat there untouched other when i played it. Was there about 2 hours mainly played video games and a few pinball machines.

This past Saturday i hit my usual pin place paid the 20$ at the door and played til they close the door. Played 8 games on ultra man and 8 on a pro Godzilla then worked the rooms to the other games.

In Sydney, Australia all games were $2 for one game and $5 for three games for all Sterns. Some places would charge less for older 80’s/90’s games.

That was pre-Covid. Don’t know what it is now. I’d be shocked if it didn’t go up to $3 a game soon. New Stern Pro’s here go for 10k now!

Last night I got to play Godzilla LE for the first time at 25 cents per play. Our local operator just got the game on Tuesday and set it up, and then the very next day at the bar it was the weekly "Quarterball Wednesday", so I lucked out and got to take advantage of that. Wasn't all that many players when I was there, so got to play it as many times as I wanted at 25 cents a pop. He also had Batman 66 and Led Zeppelin pro there. It was an awesome deal. Not sure what the regular price is going to be the rest of the week on Godzilla. I'm guessing $1 or 3/$2. The bar owner also owns the pins, so he can afford to run that promo each week. But honestly I don't mind operators increasing prices to keep up with inflation as needed. I don't mind paying extra for premium and LE games.

Does the cost increase cover the price increase
1000$ is 10% more cost
50.cent increase is 50% price jump

Extra 1000$ over the 10,000 plays is 0.10$ Per play ,

Coin op Business will make extra profit and play the victim.

This is business

But how long has it been at $1 and how much have prices risen since it became that?

These types of threads are weird to me because I don't know of a single pinball operator that is raking it in as it's implied.

Its really a struggle and I do have sympathy for the operators, but at the end of the day the price comes down to what the market will bare. It doesn't matter what the games cost, the repair bills, inflation, ect. If the players aren't willing to pony up that extra cash, then its not going to matter. 30 games of pinball or nearly unlimited fun on a ps5 game, thats what you have to sell at $2 a game. I hope it works out. I know some guys won't care and will still play but we'll see how it works out for the rest. Hopefully this isn't the beginning of the end for location play

As an operator, I often hear that the increased price doesn't matter, since you can sell it for more. Across the board costs are going for parts, maintenance, supplies, labor, goods, and overhead. Unfortunately, pins don't earn as well as other games (skeeball, pac man, air hockey, Buck Hunter, etc.) and have significantly more maintenance cost and subject to more complaints when things go wrong. But with the price increases to purchase games and Stern looking to take a cut with their new QR system, I could see location pinball go on the decline. I'm going to give Godzilla LE a try at $1.50 and a Pro version beside it at $1.00.

SCIENCE! I love it!

On the Prem/LE if you have a bill acceptor that can handle $5s definitely have a 4/$5 option, too. You'll be surprised how many $5 bills you start getting if it's a good game like Godzilla LE.

These days, homeowners are a huge pinball buying market. And so are hobbyist operators. Home buyers and hobbyists aren't suddenly gonna disappear in 10 years, that doesn't make sense. I'm 35, and I foresee still being into pinball when I'm 45. As location/route buying declines, homeowner/hobbyist buying increases. Just look at the pandemic sales. It certainly wasn't locations that were buying the majority of pins in 2020 and 2021.

Yes, it's sadly true that the traditional routers/locations may not make it doing pinball anymore. But bar arcades, pinball collectives, and unique places like Ayce Gogi will still be there to fill the public's pinball playing needs. In Sioux Falls, our local bar arcade is doing gangbusters and has consistently added to it's pinball lineup the last 3 years, and our local pinball collective (The Pinball Room) is doing great too. But in all of these cases, pinball is either not the primary money earner, or not the primary source of the owner's income.

Thats great that you’re young and into it.

The vast amount of pinball owners are a lot older. A large amount of people on Pinside are 60 plus.

The point I was trying to make is that the current homeowners (likely you as well) were introduced to pinball by seeing/playing location games.

If these games disappear from public view - then how do 12 year old kids get to play it like we did? Randomly show up at your house? They won’t even know it’s “a thing”.

OF COURSE there will be people with pins in their house who continue to buy new ones. But looking 20 years down the track, as the old guys die off and there is no new blood, the hobby will shrink considerably.

rd

Happened to model railroading. As trains and hobby shops started disappearing. Many kids grew up without seeing either.

Hasn't disappeared, but no where near what it once was.

LTG : )

Funny, Lloyd … I had actually typed out Model Trains as an example in my post.

That was the first thing that came to mind. And then slot cars.

Yes - trains are still a thing. But they are the bastion of old men, and will soon become extinct.

rd

Right, and I listed 3 different types of public pinball locations that aren't necessarily in decline.

Also, my dad is/was a route technician, so my introduction to pinball is different than most people's I'd guess. My reintroduction to pinball came from The Pinball Arcade PC software. Playing digital pinball gave me the itch to play the real thing, and a visit to the Seattle Pinball Museum cemented my love. And the Seattle Pinball Museum is, as it happens, a pay-at-the-door type of place, to bring the discussion back around to pricing.

I have no idea of the actual age-demographics of the pinball hobby these days. Most of the guys who play in our leagues and tourneys around here are under 50, if not 40, and when I watch the big tournaments on Twitch, there's a good split of ages. The youtubers and streamers I watch also tend to be in the 25 to 45 age range too. But I fully admit that my pinball bubble may be skewed young, and so maybe I'm not getting the full picture.

Yeah, that's an interesting point. I don't necessarily think pinball and model railroading are comparable hobbies though. Model railroading is a more contemplative hobby, where most of the joy is in the building, painting, modeling, ect., whereas pinball is a more active hobby, where the playing is the main part of it. Although certainly repair and restoration would crossover. I think modern-day miniatures/model-based war games such as Warhammer, fill much of the same role as railroading did. Where painting and modeling go hand-in-hand with actually playing the game. The "play" part is an important distinction, as there's not much longterm play after you finish your railroad setup.

Well, it is for me … but reading Pinside and other things online, it appears to me that a great number of people just like buying the “new shiny thing” every few months, glueing some plastic toys inside it, proclaiming its “bolted to the floor”, then selling it a few months later with only 100 plays on it.

But that’s for another thread.

rd

Ha, very true. I do that with my pins, but that's because I get my fill of most of them pretty quickly, so I need to constantly rotate to keep things fresh. Since my space and budget don't allow me to keep that many pins at once. I don't have the ability to have a complete System 11 collection like some people! (I envy you!)

Helps when you bought most of them for peanuts years ago.

rd

I'd do 4/$5, because you're still knocking $1 off with that if they put a fiver in, which is probably enough incentive. Right now you're knocking off $2.50 with 5/$5 over what those 5 games would cost @$1.50 - essentially giving away money. You can always make it more generous later if you need to change the pricing.

...not to mention, 4 is a very convenient number of credits for a group.

Just curious who you talked to lol. Regardless, I cannot wait to pump some money into it!