If you're willing to fix them when they break, sure
I sprinkle the old with new, and can say that in my area they prefer playing the newer stuff on route. There are quite a few collectors in my area but not a lot of locations, so locals have played the older stuff to death at parties and such.

50% the fact that they need to have someone who can fix them, and preferably have parts on hand, 50% that John Q Public is going to put money in star wars or deadpool before fishtales or johnny mnemonic.

I personally think a mix is the most fun.

In Madison the hobby operating group I am part of (Madison Pinball) is a pretty large operator of pinball in the city/state/region with over 50 games at 5 locations (currently) and we try to create a mix of games at each location.

EMs, Early SS, Classic DMD, Spooky, CGC, JJP, and newer Sterns.

We like to provide a diversity but as collector/operator hobbyists we also do this partly so we can bring in new stuff. That is part of the fun for us. It is neat to be able to get a new game and share it with others on route. By default, that means we tend to slowly add more new stuff over time.

Come on down to Abari in Charlotte. We have a good mix from 80s to today. Sometimes we throw an older solid state out on the floor. 50 cent play on all pins regardless of age, our new Wonka LE is 50 cent. I’m the tech, we keep a large selection of parts, most games fixed daily unless a strange part failure so rarely anything down. Everything 1977-present on the floor is kept up top notch. Location games are a lot of work, but I try to keep each game up as best I can so that if someone was walking up to Twilight Zone or Monster Bash or Indiana Jones for the first time, they’d get the full experience of these wonderful games.

The 3 Boxcar locations only have new LE machines, it would be nice to have a few classics available, but unfortunately they were harder to keep fully operational.

Newer games are more reliable and get played more. It's not exactly rocket science why the majority of barcades would operate this way.

Local barcade near me is pretty much anti-pin because they are "too expensive" and require more maintenance. Only arcade around that sells alcohol in a area with over a half million people to pull from. Appreciate whatever your area may have!

you are 50% right IME.

Newer games with current licenses/modern feel tend to get more play.
However, newer games are often way more issues out of the box than any completely gone over classic.

I dont remember the last Stern that was not a bunch of work (and sometimes continual work) to get running properly out of the box.
Node board and flipper/ coil stop issues on pretty much everything, Shield issues on BK3k, truck and post issues on JP2, Elvira is a complete mess for many out of the box with stuck balls and poorly engineered ball sticks that had to be compensated with code. It is a fallacy that new games are more reliable.

I think more accurately it could be stated that classics that are gone over take substantially more time at the start (a full tear down and shop out takes time), but are far more reliable long term once on route. It could be that many of the NIB bugs were worked out 20+ years ago, but I would take a solid 90s classic for maintenance over and NIB game made in the past few years.

Less issues, less fixing, more themes majority of the public will know and drop coins into. Sold/selling the older ones to replace with NIB for a while.