That's actually a completely contradictory statement.

Remove the word "boy" from your statement and it's fine. The term "fan boy" applies to someone who is such a fanatic of a company that, in their eyes, they can never do any wrong and they will constantly deny any possible shortcomings of the company, make excuses for them, and generally bash anyone who criticizes said company. I.e., they are completely blinded by their allegiance to the company and can't be remotely objective. They never "keep it real."

Things may have changed, but as the saying goes, the proof is in the pudding.

No doubt that Hobbit's are rolling off the line at a pretty good clip these days, but couldn't the same have been said for WOZ prior to Hobbit?

All we have to go on is history. Based on JJP's history, guessing that JJP's pin #3 won't be shipped for 18 months from now is actually a bit optimistic, if anything.

Having said that, nobody would be more happy to be proven completely wrong than me. I love my Hobbit LE and am really looking forward to seeing Lawlor's pin.

I hope you are right!

.........but I doubt it.

Funny you mention this. It is so true, and it is a very large part of the reason that my plan to sell off nearly my entire collection in order to finance another hobby (off road vehicle) is pretty much on hold. I can usually recoup 90% of what I pay for a pin, whereas the substantial money paid for the large number of modifications that are required in the off road hobby are the complete opposite: nearly a 90% loss.

We all bitch and complain of the high prices that we pay for pins (and rightfully so) but this hobby is actually one of the least expensive hobbies that I have ever been involved in in terms of retaining value/getting your money back.

laughing-my-ass-off-smiley-emoticon.gif

Good point. But you do have the non recoverable costs such as all the ammo, shooting range fees, gun cleaning supplies, etc.

Sorry you are.

I have not looked at the specific language being proposed by Stern (whatever it says it's ridiculous) but if it is phrased as you have stated above I don't think it is enforceable. You either own the property and can do with it as you please or you don't.

A Right of First Refusal can be an enforceable provision in a contract, but it does not mean that "you can't sell your game to anybody but us for 18 months." The way a Right of First Refusal normally works (and it usually applies to real estate transactions) is having someone who owns real estate that they want to sell to someone. However, someone else (STERN) has a right of first refusal to purchase the real estate. Before the owner can sell the real estate to the person who wants to buy it, they must first offer it to STERN under the same terms and conditions offered by the person trying to buy it. If STERN exercises the right of first refusal and follows through with the purchase, the other person who made the offer will have no right to acquire the real estate (pin).

It should be pretty obvious to anyone how you can get around this when it comes to a pinball machine. Hint: there is no requirement that an offer to buy a pin be in writing like there is in Real Estate.

How is Stern going to know if you sold your Super Duper Excellent Triple Ultimate LE to someone?

Are they going to require the owners to open their home to a Stern employee to confirm that they haven't sold their SDETULE?

BINGO!

.

Just pointing out the obvious contradiction. I know what you were trying to say. But if you are "out based on principle" because of the price, you obviously *do* have a "problem with the pricing." What you are saying is that Stern can charge whatever they want, which is simply stating the obvious.

It really is funny how completely different our imagination and expectations are compared to reality.

The star field projector on ST was hyped in a huge way. There was no way that it was ever going to come close to matching the hype. So when it's revealed, it is mocked as a Disco Ball etc. But looking back on it, if you take away the hype, it is actually a fairly cool little feature that fits the theme well. Is it some great new ground breaking tech the likes of which we have never seen before? Not even close...but those were the unrealistic expectations.

Ridiculous!

You did the right thing.

Ed is a fellow Pinsider who posts fairly regularly, and by what I can tell is a good dude, "celebrity" or not.

Why should he, or anyone else for that matter, just let this go?

It's freaking insanity and should be (perhaps repeatedly) called out as such (in my opinion).

I agree that this is not a black and white situation.

Believe me, I now have very conflicting feelings about this whole thing. On the one hand it really pisses me off to see that JPop had the balls to try and sell yet another pin when he had already screwed more than a hundred people out of tens of thousands of dollars, and to see some people indicating that they would be willing to preorder a pin from this guy is just plain insanity. There is a big part of me that just doesn't want to see JPop involved in designing another pin, regardless of whether it is technically for a new company.

OTOH, my friends who have been screwed out of a lot of money by JPop probably have little chance of recovering all of their money. So if by some small chance (and don't get me wrong, I definitely think the chance is *very* small) this American Pinball can actually make the buyers who JPop screwed whole again (or even mostly so), then I am obviously all for that.

But the devil is in the details, and how this will actually work. AP saying that MG will be delivered to all of their rightful owners by the end of 2016 sounds....well.....too good to be true, which means that it probably is.

This is true, but it is also the reason that you can get huge discounts from sticker price on a GT-R now compared to the first few years after it was released. I don't see that happening with the new Stern pricing structure, especially in light of the strict minimum selling price that Stern is putting on their distributors.

It would just be nice to see them "change things up" by actually *lowering* prices for a change.

I have to disagree with the idea that Stern opened the door for a "highly tolerable price increase from JJP."

This implies that people wouldn't have a problem with a JJP price increase just because Stern is increasing their prices. I think it's getting to the point where a lot of us are pretty much sick and tired of these price increases, and if JJP just follows Stern and raises the price of JJP #3 by more than $500.00 compared to Hobbit, it ain't going to go over well.

I really have no idea what your point is?

Bingo! The funny thing is that THLE's price was actually $500.00 above my limit as well. I was weak and went ahead anyway (part of my weak ass justification was that at least I didn't have to wait 3 years for it like others did, so it was worth paying a little more). I really do enjoy the pin, and do feel like I was getting more for my money vs a Stern LE...but either way, since I already broke my price limit by $500.00 on that one, any additional price increase just makes it that much further away from what I'm willing to pay.

If Stern Premiums are going to be $7500.00 (street price) that is going to be a hard pill to swallow too. I am resigning myself to no more than one NIB purchase every year and half or so.

Exactly.

I think people like Odin and NimblePin have this figured out.

Yep. I think we are looking at $7500.00 as the new normal on Premiums.

Being a bit of a videophile, I can tell you that I *hate* those outlines. It reminds me of the DVD days when edge enhancement was so prevalent.

http://www.videophile.info/Guide_EE/Page_01.htm

You forgot the non-refundable part.

lol at Big Hurt being linked to this thread.

Couldn't agree more.

I know Steve Ritchie. Steve Ritchie is a friend of mine. Kirk, you're no Steve Ritchie.

-Lloyd Bentsen

Funny how different opinions can be when it comes to art. Lots of love for this one, but it's definitely not for me. Tomdotcom's picture that he posted earlier sums it up nicely.

Messages Image(3836515410) (resized).png

No, we used to. Now we blame Stern because they have leapfrogged JJP.

The question now is whether JJP #3 (Lawlor's) will leapfrog Stern.

Seems we have a battle for who can charge the most and get away with it.

I just saw the FB video of the BM66 SLE and it looks twenty times better than the static photos. I like it a lot!

Wouldn't even consider paying $15k for it, but it does look pretty damn sweet.

Easy. Yellow Submarine!!!

AIG is still around and they are one of our biggest clients.

This is how you do a presentation!

I could listen to Gomez speak longer than pretty much anyone else in pinball.

Thanks for posting that. Very cool.

One thing that I really agree with Gary on is when he said "I want you to think about this beautiful game without that backglass in it. That is pinball, and it is absolutely stunning artwork."

While I do love the big LCD in my Hobbit, I also really like the size of the LCD that Stern is using because it still gives you a very nice sized backglass (well, translite) vs the small narrow one you get with the JJP pins. It's a tradeoff obviously, but there are definitely pros and cons to each approach. The size of the LCD screen on Hobbit can be a bit overwhelming while playing, whereas the smaller LCD on the BM66 will be easier for the player to see.

The more I see (and hear!) of BM66, the more impressed I am, and the more I want one, even though it would be the premium version due to pricing.

Wrong.

Hey, that was just a lazy post on my part, as I didn't specify what I thought you were wrong about. Obviously it's all personal opinion based on various factors including being, as you put it, "old AF"

But for me personally, hearing that Batman theme music, and seeing those characters on the LCD screen had a far larger impact on me from a pure nostalgia standpoint than pretty much any pinball theme released since I've been in the hobby. It immediately took me back to when I was a kid, and my younger brother and I would watch BM when we'd get home from school (they were already re-runs by then...so I'm not quite as old AF as you might think).

Yes, nostalgia can be a powerful thing, and despite my earlier criticism of the overly colorful artwork, I am more excited about this theme and this pin than anything else currently being released, including Alien (even though I think Alien is the better overall theme for a pin).

My reaction to this pin has changed a lot over the last few days. In other words, I too feel like I've been "bi-polar" on this title.

Well I ain't no SLE buyer, I can tell you that!

Hey Rick, Jaws *is* yawn!

Bingo!

Nostalgia as pure as any I've experienced in pinball yet.

You in on both Mark?! You lucky SOB!

I would be surprised if that turns out to be accurate, but I hope that it is (obviously).

$200.00 more for Sterns first LCD pin would be more than we could hope for (and I'm afraid that it is).

Doesn't look "blah" to me!

Capt._Obvious (resized).jpg

How much more did you think Stern was going to charge once they implemented the LCD screen?

I figured it would be somewhere between $800-$1200, and it looks like they came in right in the middle.

And most Stern Premiums have not included a shaker.

You are smarter than this, so I'm not going to waste my time spelling it out for you since you are obviously being deliberately obtuse.

Sorry for the confusion, I was talking about the LE/Premium price point, not the pro.

And yes, part of it most certainly is the "new and shiny" and "new fangled" LCD screen that many people on this site have been *begging* Stern for for years, so obviously there is going to be increased desire/demand.

Your original post didn't say a single word about "developing content for a high rez LCD display" and you only referenced the actual cost of the LCD screen, which is precisely why I said you were being obtuse. But you already know that.

Oh, don't get me wrong my friend, I don't intend to freely open my wallet for it, and despite how much I expected Stern to increase the price I am certainly not happy about it. In fact I'm pretty happy to see just how pissed off people finally seem to be getting about these ridiculous price increases.. I just read that thread about high pinball prices being bad for pinball, and it seems that perhaps we will have more people keeping their word about not buying at these ridiculous prices.

The vast majority of people who "are very rich" didn't get that way by dropping an extra $5k for for a whole lot of nothing in return.

Edit: not worth it

Life isn't fair.

I just came up with that one on my own.

But now we have LCD's!!! Pure MAGIC!

I think a big part of the problem, or reason for these continuing non stop price increases is due to the fact that we all keep making excuses to ourselves: Well, if I was in at $5k and that was my limit, is it really worth not having a pin that I want for $500 more? So now your new limit is $500 more than it was.

Then the next new and shiny pin comes out and it's a theme that you love, but it's another $500 more than your last (increased) limit. Same excuse/logic applies: if I were in at $5500.00 does it really make sense to deprive myself of a pin that I really want over $500? So your limit has now been increased by $1k.

So yeah, where does it stop?

The thing is, I can buy these pins at the asking prices and still not be spending more than we earn. But that doesn't mean that I feel that the prices are worth it to me, or that I will be willing to pay it.

5,250 posts about a pin that hasn't even been release yet. That's called HYPE and you are still posting in the thread!

Well you can say that about any thread on Pinside about a newly revealed pin.

You might want to head over to one of the many Dialed In threads for an example.

Why are so many people in this thread acting like a premium version doesn't exist?

Hey rd, I don't remember you having a cup of tea when we were there last time?

Wonder how much would be involved in hooking that light up to the pin. Shouldn't be too hard, similar to the Tron Lightcycles.

That's bad ass!

Congrats.

Exactly. I've said this many times myself, it just doesn't make sense that people actually want *fewer* choices instead of more.

Apparently the assumption is that if one of the versions is cut, that will mean that one of the other versions will either be cheaper, or have more features on it.

Neither assumption has any merit. As far as I'm concerned, having more options (3 game tiers) is a good thing, not something to be criticized.

If an LE is too much for what you get, but you want all the PF features, get the premium. If the premium is too much money, get the pro. If the pro is missing too much compared to the premium, take a pass.

The entitlement mentality has been strong here lately.

Absolutely.

Can we stop with the bashing of those Pinsider's who have made the decision to buy a BM66 SLE (or LE even)? I mean seriously, just because the price might be too high for you doesn't justify telling another Pinsider that they are "dumb" for taking the plunge on a pin that they are obviously as excited as hell about buying.

Nothing like public shaming of fellow Pinsider's who are excited about buying a new pin just because it costs more than you (or even the majority of Pinsiders) think it is worth.

And which version should they all be the same as?

The pro? The LE?

Which is the "correct" version?

There are pros that play better than the LE, and there are LE's that play better than the pro.

One advantage to having different game play features is that Stern is able to sell the pro for quite a bit less money than an LE. JJP basically has the model that you are talking about (all gameplay features are the same) but their "standard" version isn't as cheap as Stern's standard (pro) version.

You actually just made my point for me.

Stern BM66 has no pro version, and the prices are too high for many people. Great argument for keeping Stern's current 3 tier structure.

And to say that "JJP has it figured out" seems to miss the boat, as their cheapest (standard) model doesn't come close to being as inexpensive as Stern pro models.

To be honest, the designers opinion of which is their best design isn't going to always be what you or I think their best design is. How many LE's are going to be the designers choice for their "best design" even though many of us think that the pro version plays better? (take a look at GOT for a recent example)

Give me the choice to decide for myself. Stern is doing it right.

It absolutely clearly makes my point.

Just because you refuse to see it does not mean that it doesn't.

I'm pretty sure that anyone who bought a BM66 SLE would have had the chance to cancel when it was determined that there were going to be 80 of them. Not that big of a deal really.

It's not like Stern sold 30 BM66 SLE's to 30 people and a year later sold another 50 of them.

I don't think that word means what you think it means.

This thread reminds me a lot of the original GOT thread. 90% of the posts in that thread were nothing more than repeatedly bashing the artwork.

Fast forward to BM66, and 90% of the posts are bashing the prices.

Of course it is. Just because the source of the complaining is different doesn't mean it's nothing like the GOT thread.

90% of the posts are complaining about the same thing over and over again. You know....just like the GOT thread.

Correct. AC/DC wasn't done quickly either. But it sure as hell was worth the wait!

I wish you were talking about me!

I don't think that the majority of people who are in the market for this $15k pin really care all that much about seeing a game play video.

They are buying it as a collectors item, top of the line, 80 of a kind, with a theme that truly appeals to them. They know exactly what it looks like, and we know that the layout is based on BDK. Combine that with the fact that Lyman is doing code, I don't think seeing a game play video is going to make or break many sales on the SLE.

I'm going to get a Premium and definitely want to see game play videos first, but even then, I really doubt that it is going to have a huge impact on whether I proceed with an order.

He's lost any ounce of credibility he (may have) had.

He titled one of his recent podcasts "Stuck Fern." Someone posted that he said in a recent podcast that he promised to be "more positive?" What a joke!

Beating a dead horse indeed.

Dead Horse.gif

As if nobody is.

Dead Horse.gif

You can say that again.

No, seriously.......YOU CAN SAY THAT AGAIN!

What are the chances of this being a "physical nightmare" though? It's a BDK with a few tweaks, and I don't see those tweaks having much of an impact on how the pin is going to shoot.

And while GB definitely has it's issues, I think calling it a "physical nightmare" is a bit hyperbolic.

No, it's not.

But you already know that.

Obviously you didn't hear some of the things that he said at the Stern party.

Any chance our first video could be from Dead Flip/Jack Danger from the Stern factory like we saw with GOT and GB?

lol

Yes you do. You bought the very last pin that they released, according to your own post!

Funny, I don't see the guys who actually spent the $15k on this pin that you make reference to complaining much at all.

Looks amazing!!

With people like you posting the types of things you do in this thread, many of which are nothing more than trying to shame people who bought the SLE, would you really expect many of them to post in this thread? So you can point out how foolish they are? And tell them how to spend their money?

I love how you resort to personal attacks on specific people at Stern. Well done.

You know a lot of us here are really pretty tired of your crap, right?

Seriously, why are you continuing to post ad nauseam in this thread? You have 88 posts (edit...90 posts) in a thread discussing a pin that you have zero interesting in purchasing with nothing but non-stop bashing.

It is beyond ridiculous, and has got to the point of childish trolling. Sad, especially considering how you said in a recent podcast that you were going to start being "more positive."

Not when you have a single person virtually taking over the entire thread with his incessant bashing, repeating the same thing over and over and over and over again. 90 posts by someone who has zero interest in ever buying the pin that is the subject of the thread. Do people have a right to give their opinions even if they aren't a buyer? Of course! I am the first one to defend that. But 90 posts? Ridiculous.

But I guess we shouldn't be surprised that you would defend that kind of behavior given what you did with the artwork in the GOT thread.

Nope.

I prefer to call out the trolls, but thanks for the suggestion!

That's impossible! Everyone knows that Stern sucks and doesn't listen to feedback!

I'm sure we will find out shortly!

I wish the video quality was better, but I like what I see except:

Yep. They probably should have put spotlights on the slingshot plastics.

I'm more convinced that I will be buying a premium, not less.

Sweetness

That's freaking cool!