Do you have an explaination for the relative numbers recorded on collector sites such as pinside which show that while it may be prevalent on route, it is overall a bust? What data we have at minimum can be comparative to other games...

I think your fandom and ownership is possibly making you a bit out of touch...

Star Wars pinball is a bust like Last Jedi is a bust.

We should all have such bust in our lives.

Whiny, vocal superfans don’t make something a bust.

Hilton, come on. Owning a game doesn't mean anything to me. If it sucks I'll say so and owning it doesn't change that. Many of us do not list our games or update our collections. Pinside is becoming a toxic place for a lot of people and I think you greatly overestimate the community participation with pinside.

Close to 800 LEs are sold, literally all of the Marco flipnout booth at the last show I went to was SW premiums. Both distros acted like it had really picked up steam after a good but slower then expected release and is now selling great. We have 4 main local route locations and all 4 have a SW pro. All I can tell you is what I see and what people I trust tell me. The pinside nonsense is almost the complete opposite of what I hear from people that actually might know something and from what I can see with my own eyes.

Stern will be selling tons of Star Wars for years to come...Great game and even better recognition on location. Dont think they're worried one bit lol

I can only project my feelings. Its difficult to project someone’s else’s. That’s what every single one of us are doing here. Could be worse. I could start a podcast or YouTube channel to further broadcast & project my feelings.

We’re both full of shit anyway

You claim with no proof that Star Wars is selling well.

I claim with no proof that maybe Star Wars is not selling well.

At least I use Pinside data. You talk about “a ton” of people, not on Pinside, who buy games, that love it. Reminds me of the dude who says he has a girlfriend but she goes to another school. Riiiight.

How can a dude like me with 5 Sterns express his disappointment with shit code & cracked cabinets without offending you? For reals, let me know.

I give Stern my money & props when due. The same for criticism & no sale.

If you think Pinside is toxic then log off. Sorry, that sounds dickish, I don’t mean it, but your victim role is tiring anytime someone doesn’t rave on a game.

Why would I care if you are disappointed with stern? How would that offend me. You and Whysnow are just making up a big stern decline based on your personal dislike of stern or SW or both. You have zero evidence and it completely contradicts what people that sell stern games are saying and what stern is reporting.

It’s the same argument about Stern quality.
Find me more than a couple (if even that many) Pinsiders with current, unresolved issues.

You have no evidence

I used the Pinside data

Neither are too valuable tho

Stern reports are often nothing more than marketing

Can we be pals again?

I promise to only be impressed by everything from now on.

Good to hear. I’ll have to give it a shot on the new code. TWD was also panned on release by Pinside and grew and grew on people.

I think the playfield and board concerns are a big deal for Stern in general. Things like lighter cabinets (they feel lighter on recent releases anyway) aren’t a big deal but the risk of board issues and failures that can’t reasonably be solved once the warranty is out are enough to scare some potential buyers. Reliability is key.

I am not making up anything. I happily give stern props when they deserve it.

I am making logical deductions based on the pinside and other website data. Pinside is if anything an accurate reflection of the typical pinhead and even moreso weighted to those that tend to buy NIB sterns. PInside is pretty decent data and if you look over the trends frm the past few years then you will see what others are seeing.

I am using the data available. IT is not perfect but it at least allows for relative comparisons even if not pure numbers.

We were never not pals and you can hate on stern all you like. My evidence is from people in the industry that I trust and what I see.

But you yourself think that pinside data for game reviews is all biased crap. So do you think some pinside data is on point and other is crap?

I haven't experienced issues with mine. Based on some posts others have. But if you go to the cgc thread there are a ton of issues, if you go to the DI thread you see more of the same. Any of them can have problems. If you just read pinside one might think all games ship broken beyond repair.

I have to say Tiger i was one of the LONE lovers of TWD from day one, and mocked heavily for it, loving the unique layout from Borg and knowing Lyman was gonna bring it home.

Deja vu is happening all over again with BM66

Stop hating on CGC!

It’s all eightballs & giant DD’s in the land of AFMr

Show us the evidence!

(Just having fun now)

Now now, I never mocked you for TWD

I did mock you for BM66, Lebowski, Alien, Predator & the Jpop games. Ok and maybe for buying a GBLE when I told you the PF would ghost & then a few weeks later it ghosted.

But those were isolated incidents. All 6 of them

I think people alter game reviews because they feel it has an impact on perception, value, or whatever...

I don't think people purposefully are not listing games in their collection to make it 'appear' SW is sellng poorly...

I do find it ironic that Whysnow is assuming sales "making logical deductions based on the pinside and other website data" when he admits his own collection is incomplete and doesn't even list any Sterns. Aren't you skewing your own deduction

Did you also check out the Premium/LE numbers? 263 for SW, 120 for Aerosmith. Interesting division there, not necessarily what I'd have expected. I wonder if most Stern games have significantly more Premium/LE owners than Pro owners on Pinside (Walking Dead does, I'm lazy to check other games).

As for sales to ops, I know squat about total numbers but have certainly seen more SW Pros on route than I have of any other Stern game I can think of other than LOTR. I've also read posts from four or five ops on Pinside saying that SW Pro earns very well (Whysnow may be the exception there, since he's got a SW on route and I think he's said it is out-earned by other games). So I'd have to think if there's a shortfall in sales to collectors, Stern's made up some of it with sales to ops.

None of which is to say that SW has sold well, or met Stern's sales expectations, no idea about that. Just some more data (and more anecdotal evidence) to throw in the hopper.

Regardless, I do hope you'll give SW another try down the line, despite your initial disappointment. There are a few people that just plain hate it which is fair enough, but it's really a fast, fun, and pretty unique feeling game if you give it a little time and figure out how to attack the modes and use the multiplier button.

That’s funny -but not as funny to me as the idea that Stern made these comments JUST to lie about things?
Like if sales really are down, wouldn’t they just have stayed hush as they have in the past?

They’re pretty tight lipped about almost everything, so we complain.
Now they share info and Pinside is arguing, saying that they’re lying, and that it’s more likely based on “our information” that sales are actually declining.

What a joke this site can be sometimes. Or at least the opinions that are shared by some.

Insanity is an excuse that some tried to use to avoid being drafted, but looks like this time around, the army actually declined an enrolment proactively instead.

Chambahz: Stern is a beacon of truth... BM66 updates every week.

Fosaisu: Good point sir. 385 total Star Wars vs 308 Aerosmith.

Jgentry: Maybe you’re right & Aerosmith owners just have a higher propensity to add games to their public pinside collection page than the clandestine Star Wars owner hiding in the shadows? Maybe I have a Star Wars & I’m holding out? Lol, I almost want to buy one now & tell no one!

Got damn. The Russians did it again. Why are we arguing. We should band together!

For real tho. Super lame Aerosmith & Star Wars are only 77 sales apart. Considering Star Wars is such a loved theme they could make it a box of lights & it would sell. Wait, I swear I heard that somewhere before.

Aerosmith has a large head start on Star Wars. The game only came out 6 months ago! Not really a apples to apples.

It's an incredibly bad idea to use pinside collection stats to draw any assumptions whatsoever. Not everyone keeps their collection up to date. The vast majority of pinball players I talk to have never heard of pinside, and some have stopped coming here because of the negativity and intolerance exhibited by a small but vocal minority.

I don't know anything about Stern's sales. I do know that we are in the midst of a pinball boom. It would not surprise me one bit if their increased sales were purely due to the boom, even including a reduction in sales from the hardcore pinsiders.

Pinball is now big enough to cater to different tastes. That's a huge milestone. Personally I hate AC/DC and Metallica, but SW is my favorite pin. They're different. That's great for pinball.

FWIW I'm an operator. My SW Pro is crushing it on route.

Good for Stern and pinball!!! I really enjoy Stern tables. Good titles and a ton of fun to play. At least they are making machines on a regular basis. I’ve been waiting for another machine by another company for three years now!

I haven't read all the back and forth in this thread, but speaking of price increases for NIB pinball in general over the years, if what Lloyd said in post #2 of this thread from a year ago is accurate ( https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/price-history-of-pinball-machines#post-3556169 ) and a NIB Gorgar was around $2,200 in 1979, wouldn't that be a $7,400 Stern Premium game today using a standard inflation calculator? Are NIB prices not where they should be based on inflation? Sounds like NIB prices are +/- in the ballpark to me. And I am in no way in Stern's demographic of a NIB customer as I don't own anything newer than 1980 and probably never will, just an observation.

-Steve

Interesting point!

Screen Shot 2018-01-09 at 6.31.50 AM (resized).png

Nah, if you owned one you would be busy playing it instead worrying about what people have listed on pinside. But seriously, why would you tell anyone if you bought a SW? Does anyone actually give a rats ass what others are doing.

As for the box of lights, Gary and Gomez say all kinds of stupid crap that constantly gets them in trouble. Fortunately Gary doesn't design games and I'm pretty sure they have Gomez hooked up to a pipebomb that goes off if he mentions a code release time frame.

That’s funny right there.

Can't wait till the haters come around on BM66 too haha

You gotta love the self importance of some on here.

I probably know 100-150 pinheads and there is less than 5 that read/post on Pinside.

The percentage of pinheads on Pinside is so small yet some think it represents a large majority.

Congratulations to the Stern Company! Great news to hear sales are up and the profits are rolling in.

Now can we get an update on code for all of the games you sold us. It would be nice if they worked like a game should.
(GOTG)

it is a minority of the pin head population but is for sure indicative/ representative of the larger populous.

Yeah I think you're wrong on that one.

Just curious, what are you basing that claim on?

I heard that stern is on a rapid decline and sales continue to plummet based on pinside data. It's the only logical thing to think when they move to a larger factory, hire new designers, bring in new artists, secure the largest licenses, hire graphic artists for LCD displays, hire employees for social media and marketing, continue to test the pricing ceiling, and work in a hobby that has continued to grow over the last 7 years. The sky is definitely falling!!

1. that it is the minority since about 1 out of every 10 pinheads I know actually frequents Pinside to lurk. That means the majority may visit but done really use it, so pinside appears to be the minority of total pinhead population. There are also pinheads I dont know of course but I assume they are non pinsiders or not active at all.

2. that is it a representative sample of games owned since even the lurkers tend to list their collections in some form and compared to non-pisiders the collections are similar (i.e. newer collectors have lots of newer games and older collectors tend to have a variety.

If you also watch the # of each title ebb and flow over time you can start to piece together how a game sells over time.

PW79 don't ignore the huge change to pinball purchasing behavior that coincidentally started in 2015 and which has lasted through now. By early 2015, Stern started enforcing it's minimum floor pricing for it's distributors to sell each level pinball machine. So instead of street pricing being offered around $800 lower for a pro, the best any dealer could offer you now was $0 off. Who do you think ended up with the extra $800 per pro, $1.5k per prem and $2k per LE? I doubt Stern let the distributors keep much of that, so Stern either raised their internal pricing or eliminated discounts. Either way it was a money grab for funds that were in the pipeline but which did not automatically belong to Stern nor did it automatically come from the buyer's pockets before now. And that one change continues to impact every new machine sold since 2015. The other part of the rise in revenue was due to increases in final pricing.

We moaned about it at that time and have ever since. Our collective tears formed a river and if you row down it at night, you hear the cries of nib pinballs being opened, $100 bills rubbing together as money churns down Stern River, emptying into their bank's tide pool and filling the vaults, and loud maniacal laughter. So where Stern needed to sell 12k units per year, maybe they only sold 10k units each of the last years. With higher revenues being charged on each unit, it had just built in a permanent 30% profit into the structure. I think they will fine for awhile at these reduced sales levels.

As I understand it, the old deal was that a distributor paid Stern whatever they paid for the machines, and could then sell them for whatever they wanted (so any "discount" from the listed MSRP came out of the distributor's margin). The new deal is the that distributor pays Stern whatever they pay for the machines, and can sell them for whatever they want, except that there's a non-published "floor" price (still well below published MSRP) that the distributor cannot price below without risking Stern's wrath. Presumably, the goal would be to defeat a high-volume distributor from selling tons of machines all over the country at low margin and driving smaller distributors out of the business. But a distributor selling at MSRP has got a much fatter margin than the distributor selling at Stern's price floor.

Without knowing how wholesale prices for distributors have changed over the years, I'm not sure how you'd determine that this specific change made Stern money, vs forcing distributors to set their margin at a minimum amount (and thereby limiting price competition among distributors). Without that wholesale pricing information, it's also impossible to know how much of the increased revenue from price hikes flows to Stern vs to distributors. Of course we can assume a good chunk goes to Stern, but are distributors saying that their margins are actually shrinking even as street prices go up?

Serious question

Its been said Stern mentioned PF ghosting had a negative impact on their sales.

Did anyone else read that comment too?

How did prospects learn of the PF ghosting if Pinside is so meaningless?

I once thought Pinside was nothing to Stern too but little by little I'd hear on a stream or read a comment from Stern staff that swayed my opinion.

Plus 1400 people have Metallica listed in their collection publicly. I'm sure there are lurkers & those with their collection set to private that take that number even higher. Maybe North of 2K?

Thousands = a lot of people

But I guess we can argue how unimportant Pinside is to Stern forever. So far we're off to a good start.

No question that Pinside represents a minority. Stats say 10,000 pinsiders were active within the last month. Worldwide that's a small fraction of pinball enthusiasts.

I don't understand how you are drawing all those conclusions from very flawed data.

For example, AFMr classic is only listed in 11 pinsider collections, but 105 SW Pros are listed. Did Stern sell 10x more SW pros than AFMr classics? Is SW Pro 10x better? 10x more popular with players? Which is worth more? We can't answer any of those questions based on collection data because... the data simply isn't trustworthy.

not sure what data you are looking at???

There are 4 AFM game options listed in the database. The original and the LE remake are the primary ones and the only ones in the rating categories so what most will select.

AFM Original has 841 owners plus over 100 locations
LE Remake has 227 owners plus 25 locations

The remake "special" has 46 owners and a handful of locations
The remake "classic" has 12 owners and a handful of locations

Using these as relative comparisons it is really nice data.
1. We can see that approximately 1/3 of the total claimed production run thus far of the remake are accounted for in pinside data
2. We can see that clearly the LE remake is the most popular, the special edition next, and the classic model a far last
3. We can get an understanding of where people see the value (the LE) and also still see that Pinside captures the upper crust of collectors that are fine with blowing more cash on a Special edition
4. Interestingly the Original AFM is accounted for approximately 1/3 of the original production run in Pinside data also

This is all very solid data for social science self reported data. Keep in mind that there is incentive to report accurate data as individuals like to use their collection to keep track of what they own and show it off. Locations like to report accurate data as Pinside is often used for advertising and locating games to play.

And what happens when someone stops using pinside? I know several people that have collections listed that haven't been updated in years because they either no longer use pinside or only use it for buying games or mods and never even look at the collection again. MET, AC/DC, and ST have sold a ton of games since their release. Like all games they had the initial boom, then it dried up, then code release bring more sales, then code polish and positive reviews bring even more sales, them game available dries up so distros tell stern they are still in demand, stern makes more of them, cycle continues and sometimes the license even gets extended. It takes several years to sell that many games. Stern is still selling MET and those new sales count towards 2017 and now 2018 profits. There was a time period that people considered MET and ST as dogs if you remember back just a few years. Part of the reason stern is doing so well is that they have games from years ago that are still in demand. Stern currently has 12 different titles listed as still in production and that's not counting the different versions of each game.

Don't feed the troll he just stirs the pot

13.-The-Troll (resized).jpg

Not really that good of a comparison. In 1979 electronic devices were WAY more expensive to build due to the cost of the computer's and the other electronic devices used. You can use inflation for some things but when the cost to produce a key component significantly reduces in cost it skews things. I don't even want to know what it would cost to build a new machine if the cost of electronic components weren't so cheap now.

There are two guys around that I know of that sold games out of there homes Stern set a min price to protect there large distributors with higher overhead cost

I'm not really discussing pinball anymore

From now on I'm just here to argue with you guys about speculations of undisclosed info & the impact it has on the universe.

Follow me to the GOTG owners thread. I'm gonna be a dbag there for a few minutes & we can bicker about more of the same but sorta different.

Less than 5 eh... not sure you are accurate about that. I know a lot of the same people in our area and it's definitely more than 5. I could count at least 5 in the TCPL alone. Perhaps that was hyperbole?

At this point I think stern keeps adding the KISS bug to new game code just to screw with you.

Agreed

They're prolly gonna license only one tit on Elvira just to upset me too I bet.

Think that's called "side boob".

And the 5 you can name would be the only 5 I know. The only pinheads I ever see are in that league.
Or people that have been around the hobby for a while and none of them on pinside.

In this intreview Zach says sales are up 40% 2016 and 40% 2017. https://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/stern-pinball-ces-2018/
That means 2017 is almost double of 2015. Can we conclude 2015 must have been not a great year? The Walking Dead came out fall of 2014, 2015 was the year of Wrestlemania, Whoa Nellie, Kiss and Game of Thrones.