Quoted from PinMonk:Stern pays for the cabinet they want. They give the specs and are quoted a price. If they wanted to have better cabinets and pay for it, Churchill would make them however they want. It's just that Stern has been focused on squeezing more costs out of the machine - that's their main focus. Crappier cabinets, ghosting/chipping playfields, and a wimpy, underpowered Spike system are the result.
Maybe you should just go run Stern pinball vireland
And yet they sold 10k pins in 2017 and will sell more this year, despite all the doom and gloom. Some to you as well.
You have zero idea as to what their "main focus" is. I would say making great pinball machines is number one focus. And they are doing a pretty good F ing job at that.
If all they cared about was cost cutting was true they wouldn't have hired all the people that have come on board in the last year and a half.
Any business is going to attempt to be as cost effective as possible without trading off too much on the quality. Split cabinets good? Nope. Widespread? Nope.
Buy it or not? Your choice. A lot of people are voting with their wallets it appears.