Nope. Nope. And nope.

What an awesome theme. I used to love the Batman TV show. It's some campy fun. However, this just feels wrong. I never cared for the crane on TDK. It feels the same as Mick on a Stick to me. But it is the outright gouge of getting rid of the Pro version and replacing it with a Super LE. That just feels wrong to me.

And yes, I get it that Stern wants to cut down volume while increasing profit. And getting rid of the Pro versions is a great way to fix their supply issues. Increased profit per machine means the same money from less work. Good luck with that.

Two. SMVE and this. I call two the start of a trend.

I realize some will say I'm being Chicken Little, but I think the writing is on the wall.

Hobbit Standard

So under 5k defines a Pro? Ok, I'll buy that. I'm sure Stern "Pro" games won't be over that when the LCD hits...

I would really have a hard time believing Stern is going to swap over to LCD and not "Jack" the price up for the privilege. They have been doing a nice bump up each game. Now the do a game without a Pro, so when the Pro returns, a 5500 street price will look cheap, shouldn't it?

I didn't miss that point, I agree with that point. Inclusion of an LCD in the lower model is trivial.

However, I feel it can also be used as a big differentiation point between lower and upper models. They have been using differentiators like that for years. It's why Daft Punk Multiball isn't on my Tron. The cost to add it would have also been trivial (actually slightly cheaper than having two code lines). But it was another thing to make the LE more special. I really think they will do the same with the LCD, even though it would be more expensive for them. It will help push customers to the higher level games.

I knew you were going to say that

Was that before he walked away like a little girl?

It's the "Super LE" that is bothering me about this one. Not having a Pro bugged me a bit on SMVE, but it really is the invitation only, Super Duper Gary's Friends edition that sticks in my craw here. Plus the "We will announce prices after we see how fast the regular LE sells before you see a picture" thing.

And my irritation aside, it sounds like it's working for them. Plenty of people lining up for the LE. So good for them.

I'm guessing the Superfriends LE won't have any ghosting issues. They will just move any ghosted playfields down to the Rabble LE games.

Is this a duplicate post? Or is it a duplicate post? I thought maybe I had already seen this joke in the other 750 posts.

Well they say it's an all new design retaining the crane.

They all get both LCDs according to the flyer. The SLE callgirl will probably already be there because they are friends of Gary.

And the art package is "iconic".

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There is plenty of reason to hate on it before seeing pictures. The biggest reason is that it is for sale right now, without pictures, or even a price.

It's really that there is no reason to be selling them without pictures or price. The bitching without info has as much right as the selling without info... In fact, bitching in that situation has more right. Bitch on Levi.

I am finally going to declare JJP a full fledged manufacturer. People that have said Stern has nothing to worry about are wrong. The last 3 pages of this Stern announcement have turned into much more of a discussion about JJP.

That is what I call Dominating a conversation!

They are stored in a secret brown hole, and they pull them out when needed.

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Hobbit causes people to wake up after their dying breath? Ummm, I thought TWD was the other guys.

So, are the teases from Stern exciting me, or irritating me? Hmmm, to the Batcave. Punch this into the numerical batfabulator.... The card that dropped out of the slot said irritated.

I don't like this kind of release. A game with drawn flyer. Still no info about the game beyond the crane that us fans apparently loved.

Well if you don't know the end result here... That's a major gap.

GAP started the thread... And he knows everything. So the title should be changed to "Batman 66 by Stern, I know everything but can't tell you... Boom, mic drop."

If deposits were not returned, I'd almost think this would end up as a lawsuit. Linking these two items (a pinball machine and a "meet and greet" with Adam) was dumb. The meet and greet is time based. It has an event time, and then it's over.

Anyone that bought the LE under these conditions deserves to get a warmed over TDK.

Best hyperbole EVER!

There were deposits put down. However without pricing, they were really not sold. Now that we know pricing... well that makes it more real.

So now we know the price. However we don't get to see the playfield until EXPO, on basically the same day as the meet and greet that is included in the pricing. I would expect this to go bad. No matter what they show, some people in line won't like it. They won't be able to cancel because of the meet.... OMG Stern is being fucking stoopid. I am just baffled by how they thing this is going to go smoothly. You can't get 10 pinheads in a room to agree on something, and now they will be 10 pinheads spending 10 grand to be there? Expo is going to be a shit show with this one (just my opinion).

And to put a very fine point for everyone that still says it was JJP that made the prices go crazy:

https://store.jerseyjackpinball.com/index.php?route=product/product&path=61&product_id=60

That is a Hobbit LE at 8500 while the B66 Stern is 10k. So $1500 higher now. Same number of LCD screens. It's bonkers.

And your data for Stern prices going down is???

From what I notice their gains and drops in MSRP didn't effect street price. The street prices just continued to increase. They are not going to give up those gains with newer pins. And I wouldn't be surprised if the SLE and LE street price was exactly what they listed.

He's a shill. That's all he needs to go by. 100% supportive of Stern no matter what the facts show.

It still does!

I agree. That's a lot of cheddar for that game.

More like:

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You put a very fine point on that. Hundreds of people are putting down 10-15k with no idea what they are buying. They needed to either do it before this art was released, or embarrass the hell out of themselves when Stern publishes their begging video.

The next "cornerstone" release is going to be higher priced than GB was. It will probably be less than BM66 (is the 66 in mm or cm for the length of this BM?). But the prices are a climbing.

So it is refundable until after Expo? That's the real question I'm asking. Will you be able to see and evaluate the game before you are locked in. I understand you can't play it first, but an educated guess from playfield pics before it becomes non-refundable?

Because distributors are saying they will be non-refundable? Yep. It seems a few haven't taken that tact, but at some point if you don't have a very strong relationship with your dist, they are planning on doing that before fully revealing the game.

And the rails! I'm tired of playfields resting on anything but pegs. Peg me Jack, Peg me. Now we're talking.

I feel it was pretty obvious that I knew what I was saying by writing it like that. I was laughing manically as I wrote it. Then I twirled my mustache and clicked "Send post". The double meaning of the word just made it more funny to me than "Take off my lockdown bar Jack, take off my lockdown bar". In fact, dare I say none of the ways Stern has cheapened their games would be as funny as getting those pegs

I agree. It feels like when a Ford guy is going to lunch with a friend and his buddy is driving a Chevy. I mean what the hell is that?

And it is stupid of Stern to link them. Not for them, but for their customers. As Jack said, don't be pressured. That is all Stern is doing, pressuring people. F them. I love Stern games, but F them. Bad business model.

The 2016 Stern Batshield.

The thing I don't like about this theory is that it completely tries to take Stern off the hook. "Hey, it wasn't us, the partner made us hose you".

They simply saw more demand for the high end than they thought they would, and changed the number based on that demand. They did a "soft" release with minimal information, and are calculating numbers from the real information they got back. That tactic will still sell more games in the short run, even if it ticks off their core base.

This analogy still doesn't apply. A baseball card is an object you look at and hide away. Its entire value is that someone else might want it.

A pinball machine on the other hand, is a game. Sure, I collect them, but I play them. And Tron is a perfect example. I bought mine NIB, and it lost some value the moment I opened it. Later it was worth more, then less, and then more again. And none of that mattered because I think it's a very fun game. Right now, I could sell it and make a nice profit, but I wouldn't have Tron to play.

In the end, the "value" of my. Tron could drop to $2000, and I wouldn't care. It would still have the value of fun. This is the difference between this and cards. When MMr was announced, I almost jumped on it, but even though it was a big drop in price, I never considered MM to be 8k worth of fun, so I passed.

When that well runs dry Stern has an advantage over every other manufacturer. They have pumped out 10s of thousands of cheap (sub 5k) pins. They know that market segment better than anyone else. They just go back to that and weather the storm while everyone else goes out of business trying to sell 8k pins. And we can all hail them as the hero that saved pinball... again.

Thanks for posting that. It's the first time I've heard someone from Stern say that when the pro returns, it will include a price increase. I've thought for a while that fully crossing the psychological barrier of a 5k street price for a Pro would tumble sales. It's exciting to finally see if that is correct or not.

Postulation 1. Rising above 5k street price for a Pro will cut sales in half.

Postulation 2. Once crossed we will be at 6k Pros within a year (assuming 3 cornerstone games per year).

Postulation 3. Pro games will get a bit more as the get close to premium pricing.

Postulation 4. Once there they will strip back out the additions one at a time.

The cool part of Pinside now is that after 24 hours I won't be able to change my guesses. Could be right, or they could be wrong. Just my opinion.

I just came to the weird conclusion that I'm good with the new pricing. I'm also good with the changing of levels, and the price increase Gomez said was coming to the Pro model when they do the next cornerstone game. I'm not going to be a buyer at those new prices, so they don't matter. Enjoy your upper end clientele Stern.

Swap out the Jack for a nice 2007 Silverado Cabernet and I'm in! Add some onions, taters and some pinball... Yeah.

Darn right I did.

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Are you sure you could handle it? That Stars has been kicking my ass. I played at least 40 games on it last night and it was just stomping all over me. It's an angry game.

I find these prices to be dead in line with my own feelings now. I have a psychological barrier at 5k for a Stern pro game, and I'm not going over it. They can test me, but I'm not going to give in. The game could deliver hot pizza slices and cold beer through the coin door, but the price better be less than 5k, or I'm not buying it. If they were looking for the top of my market, congrats, they found it.

What??? Are you nuts? They can't just give it away. If LE owners want the good stuff, they are going to have to pay. Stern can't have people who cheap out get the best features.

Lloyd, when was this fixed? I've heard that current games still have them, but I haven't seen them for myself recently. I'd love to see that this has been fixed.

Really? How many people here have said they think they could do it better? I never hear that from people here. There are not many people that could do it at all. Very few could even attempt to make pinball machines. Does that mean that we should never complain when someone does a suck job? (I am allowed to say suck job because the replacement playfield in my Game of Thrones is now starting to ghost at one of the inserts, and that sucks implying that in this case, the job done on these playfields sucks in my opinion).

I bitched about the artwork. I kind of bitched about the game. And then I played it on location. And 2 days later, I bought one. I've admitted I was completely wrong about GOT. I love the game...

However, since it bought it Stern has replaced the playfield (with a populated playfield). I just noticed the other day that the Lannister insert has started to ghost at the top. Will a bunch start to do that? Will the clearcoat break over the multiplier inserts again? I have no idea. Frankly, I'm pissed off that after going through 6 months of replacement procedure it is showing up again. I let the game sit to "cure" just in case that had something to do with it. But really the Stern playfields are crap. And the outcome of that is going to be price increases? Higher price for cheaper components? Ummm, no, this thread is nothing like the GOT thread. This is all new. I'm really curious to see what happens to this playfield will do over the next few months. I'll probably start a thread to monitor it.

If you had ponied up another 5k you could have had the SLE (Silence, Limited Edition)

I agree Taz. People shouldn't be bitching about Stern lying about the quantity of "Super Limited" games... They should be bitching about the sub-par playfields, or the incredulous pricing.

I'll put it on the record. The SLE will go for more, but the LE and Premium will drop. That's my guess.

You can pimp out any Premium, and it still isn't an SLE. I can pimp the crap out of my Tron, and it will never be an LE. And you can pimp the shit out of yourself, but you still won't be DaveH. It just doesn't work like that

Jack Danger should be SLAPPED!!! for cutting and pasting himself into Robin's seat. Bad Bad Bad...

I totally put that to being the very first version of it. They are just writing code to handle it. I'd expect the LCD to improve over time.

Unfortunately I missed the Dead Flip playing video, and don't see it online yet. So how did it go? Did the game play like a rehash? Or did it seem new?

Well than... I need to learn how to read

No. But really, there are two camps on that. Some people like them to play lightning fast, and others like the slower and calmer. It is always funny to go to someones house when they say they are a great player, and find their games to be slow and easy. To each their own.

Why the hell am I too? Is that a requirement now?

I saw a bit of the stream. The gameplay looked fine. I didn't like the ball hangups, but that's life. I'm sure the code will be good, because it's Lyman. But that is all contradicted by the price. I respect that Stern didn't like to see flippers make money off of their work, so they raised games up to the flipper price level. But that means everyone pays the flipper price now. I don't see that as a sustainable model. However, if it works for them, great.

That is something JJP did well. if you have seen pin2k, the JJP stuff is an evolution and modernization. When you are testing lights, the light is highlighted on a play field picture. The switch matrix labels every switch for function. Adjustments are on a scrolling menu.

And I agree, at some point Stern will do something cooler. But just porting what we are all familiar with was probably easiest.

Yeah, that's robin instead of Jack Danger!

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