They're ASSuming that sales are down because a bunch of Pinsiders didn't like GB and SW and don't trust Spike.

Whysnow says above that Stern's street prices rose $600 per year b/w 2015 and 2017 (roughly 13% price increase per year). If "revenue" means the total money paid by distributors to Stern each year (i.e. not accounting for Stern's costs of production or marketing), even assuming that the entire 13% annual increase in "street price" went to Stern (i.e. dealers don't get any cut of price increases), how could Stern's revenue be up 30-40% annually if its sales numbers fell? Wouldn't you need a 40% price increase in 2016 and a 30% price increase in 2017 to see those revenue increases, even if sales were flat? I'm not an accountant or a math guy, so this is a real question ...

Always possible -- I don't know Mr. Sharpe personally, but people in this thread seem to feel he's a reliable source.

Obviously the BM SLE thing would have helped revenue increase in 2016. But do you have reason to believe overall that many more people were buying Premium and LE (offsetting a numerically larger decrease in Pro sales) over the past two years than in 2015? Based on the Pinside comments, many people seem upset with the additional content at the Premium/LE level for the past few titles, so I wouldn't have assumed a significant shift in that direction. I guess Stern would be psyched if you're right though, since their profit margin is presumably much better at the Premium/LE level.

I would have thought with the new large production facility (which presumably has higher overhead), they would pretty much have to be selling more machines per year to keep the lights on. Are there confirmed reports that Stern is idling its production lines much of the time? Wouldn't that have to be the case if they were producing fewer total games, yet they now have 2x the production capacity and are making mechanically simpler Spike games at a faster clip?

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.

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?

Big data aside, you should disclose that you’ve got access to specialized equipment to support your analysis:

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