Interesting article that may be the sign of the times or not. The traditional model of test driving a car at a dealership or the experience with dealing with salesmen and the haggling experience is going away possibly. https://jalopnik.com/ford-ceo-wants-to-abolish-the-dealership-experience-as-1849007700
Ford CEO Jim Farley claims "dealerships would get rid of inventory entirely and become high-quality service centers for customers who purchased their vehicles online". Ford and all the manufacturers are heavily investing into the EV market for quite a while now. Essentially Ford wants you to purchase your new Ford Lightning or whatever car it is online and then it's delivered to you like an Amazon package. If there is anything wrong with your vehicle you can return it to the dealership for service. In fact servicing or buying the car would be through a company sales portal rather than your local dealership...no interaction with a human. Jim Farley also said they would eliminate spending on advertising entirely. Currently a third of vehicle sales in the USA are digital as well.
Now how does this relate to pinball? Well this has already been going on since 2008 or so and I would give credit first to Jack Guarnieri for starting this trend. http://pinballsales.com/shop/pc/home.asp Jack, at least to my knowledge, sold games online primarily to home consumers cutting out any barrier such as other distributor regions or even internationally. You want a certain game then you can purchase it via the Pinside Marketplace. Spooky Pinball games are pretty much sold-out instantly or any LE model of any manufacturer nowadays.
Do we see show rooms disappearing in the future?