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Quoted from WeirPinball:Looks like I'm going to write off buying sterns - with the new price hike - I just cancelled my deadpool order - It's to a point where they crossed the line. Bummer because they have some titles I still wanted to get. Someone has to start saying no - Looks like I'll be one of them.
People have been saying this since Sterns crossed $5k. For every one of you, tons more jump in to the hobby and buy. 
Quoted from Gameseum:I know the Beatles overstock is driving them all nuts
On a recent podcast, Kaminkow claimed all existing Beatles are sold out & orders for the unbuilt ones are sold out as well.
He lying?
Quoted from cooked71:I reckon Rush LE will be a hard sell at $10500
Not to Rush fans. What’s $10k to Dave Grohl, Jack Black & Paul Rudd? It’ll sell out easy.
Quoted from Pin_Fandango:rich people's lifestyle only, soon.
Don’t kid yourself, always mostly was.
Quoted from medeski7:IMO, the price points should be about $5,000/$7,000/$9,000 for a three tier setup, but nobody cares what I think.
When AC/DC came out, it was like 4800/5800/6600 (street price, MSRP was a little higher)
Quoted from SantaEatsCheese:In the future, we intend to create exclusive game extensions, such as special access to new modes or new rules and features to increase the All-Access Connected value.
Soooo...are games being released with complete code now? Did I miss that one? Or...does it still take a year or so for games to be feature complete/bug free?
Will modes/rules now be intentionally left out so subscription buyers are paying for what should just be in the complete game?
Pre-emptive cheers to the hackers, who will hopefully figure out how to circumvent this & unlock all of the features in the games we've paid $10k for!
Quoted from V8haha:They need either a tier below pro or they need to find a way to bring the pro price down. I really don’t know what else they could strip from the game but these prices are going to hurt location play.
There is a tier below the Pro. “The Pin” …but that’s also for home sales.
Quoted from V8haha:Without location play pinball dies… i don’t care what you say, it may take a few decades but it will die.
Currently, the opposite is true. Without home sales, pinball would absolutely be dead. Way more games going to homes than location. The LE FOMO model is literally what has kept Stern in business.
Quoted from BMore-Pinball:have 5 machines which seems like a good number to me.
Maybe those with mega collections should consider trimming the heard to the ones they enjoy the most.
I don't understand a basement with 20 machines, how often can you play each one?
I wish I had your discipline! I used to have 30-something. I’m down to 23. I wish I could easily decide to cull it to 10 or 15, but I legitimately love my games and still play the ones I’ve had for a decade or more. The truth is, I’m mostly playing whatever is newest (right now JP Prem and R&M). My toddler likes going into the gameroom and playing everything, so that’s fun!
It was easy for me to sell off my arcade games and classic console games - as there are easy ways to revisit those titles without keeping the physical item. If I sell off a lot of pins…it’s unlikely I’m ever going to play them again (or rebuy them based on where prices have gone).
Quoted from Scandell:Downvote my post if you have never sold one of your games for more than you purchased it for.
I think there’s a difference between “yanking something off the shelf” so a legitimately interested customer can’t buy it, vs. buying old games, fixing them up, selling them for more later….or buying a game, enjoying it, then selling it for more when it’s out of production & demand is high. Sure, the end result is making money - but the intent & process are nothing alike.
Quoted from greeneye:Just don't buy from flippers. Thats it. Don't buy NIB
The prices will only continue to increase
Bingo. Ignore flippers, buy the Prem if you really want it to play.
I kinda wonder what the scalper percentage of LE purchases was in this one. The hype over the actual game seems kinda tame compared to other new releases. Even if it’s 50/50, that’s 500 scalpers competing with each other. If you really want an LE, wait it out…they might buckle at MSRP (or less) when they realize no ones biting.
Quoted from Blindseer:1000 LEs selling out in 4 minutes is tame? Also are you basing that off of pinside because im sure the majority of buyers probably dont speak in the forums. I purchased a Pro and a Premium for our location.
You misread what I said. I meant the TALK about the game is tame. People aren't losing their minds and talking about the game a ton like when other games come out. Which leads me to believe most of the LE purchases are speculators and not actual "real" buyers.
Quoted from HC2016:Not after given a price . That’s not cool man
More like CapitalJISM, amirite?! 
Quoted from Gameseum:At the most extreme least possible, by 2009-2010 there are no more excuses and everything was LCD-a-plenty by then. Every house had a widescreen LCD for their computer, a modern flatscreen LCD for their TV, the things were modern, and practically all hardware on Earth had switch to LCDs. Even car stereos switched to LCD around that time or earlier. The fact that it took 7 years after 2010 is laughable.
What’s laughable is that you don’t understand that tech wasn’t the issue. Stern had 1 or 2 guys doing dot animation. For an LCD you need an animation crew that’s well versed in modern traditional & 3D animation. It costs more & is a different pipeline. To keep on Stern’s schedule, they couldn’t just switch quickly. On top of that, licensors were letting them get away with likenesses & footage on dots that they are sometimes not allowed to do in HD full color.
Quoted from Gameseum:Such a shame because I feel like Ghostbusters would have been a home run with an LCD. Now I can't even play the dang thing, having gotten a taste of pinball with LCDs
Goatf***ers’ problem isn’t the display. It would still be a horrible box of unfun hell with an LCD.
Quoted from Frax:If we ever end up in a tournament together somewhere, and Ghostbusters is an option, I'm definitely picking it just for you. Especially if it's a Premium or LE.
I don’t play in tournaments, as I find them to be torturous unfun slogs….so, sorry, you won’t be able to double torture me lol
Quoted from Gameseum:Now that they're doing 3D-modeled graphics (thankfully) which they weren't doing in the earliest games like Aerosmith, obviously that requires yet another set of skills and hands, albeit it seems they are going totally 2D animation or totally 3D animations (GUI always being 2D obviously) so never "both"
They were actually doing 3D on DMDs…which was probably a transitional ramp up to LCD. Star Trek had some 3D modeled scenes of the Enterprise (or Vengeance?), Goatf***ers has tons of 3D…the Ecto-1 scenes, for example. It’s just downrez’d & displayed as dots.
Quoted from Gameseum:I believe you could find 20 2D animators and 20 3D modelers (having experience in said things, they're all over the place) per 1 dot-matrix animator. You really think it's the other way around?
It’s not about finding them. It’s about affording to pay a crew vs. 1 dude & creating a schedule/pipeline that Stern has never done before after doing dots since the 90s.
Quoted from Gameseum:Shows like South Park make an episode a week because all of the assets are computerized and the animation is standardized.
Once you get the characters and worlds 3D modeled, it's smooth sailing from there.
South Park is animated more like 3D than 2D as well in a program called Maya, and takes any of the drawing out of it.
With the aesthetics on certain Stern games in the 2D era, I assume this route may be used as well... albeit not in all cases. It's definitely a streamlined process.
I would consider the amount of animations in a pinball machine to be quite small as well. Very repetitive.
South Park is reusing 90% of the same assets week to week. The art direction is simple & hasn’t changed in 20 years, so creating new assets is relatively simple. Every single Stern game has a different style, art direction, rules from the licensor, assets available or lack thereof. I don’t think 1 Stern LCD game has reused anything from another.
Quoted from Gameseum:Yep, it's the same vein of Stern using real pictures for pinball artwork in the late 2000s and early 2010s. Thankfully they went back to the drawn style. Lots of Pinside threads were had over the "cookie cutter" artwork from that period.
On that note, I really like the stock JP code & amimations, not sure why the movie code is such a hit - feels so tacky and fake too. To each their own I guess. Like you, I'd rather have new animations than old real footage. And that's a mod... when they do it officially it's even more of a shame. Easy way out I suppose.
I hated on the JP LCD when it launched, but now that I have it, I respect the approach & while you’re playing, it fits perfectly. Sure there are a few wonky things, but overall I think they did an excellent job. Now, if I had a TMNT, I’d def change that to the 80s cartoon clips mod lol
Quoted from Gameseum:Now I just scratch my head about why they didn't do perhaps the most simple change ever, create a simple front-end to not still make the operator menu an emulated DMD screen, but whatever
I’m sure it’s been in the works, and eventually all the LCD games will get a menu update across the board.
Quoted from phil-lee:This all began with Lebowski pins demanding 12,500 and getting it.
All other pins suddenly began going up in price.
Pretty sure this trend started with B66 SLE.
Quoted from kvan99:The "Don't buy" mentality may have finally hit a tipping point. I don't know but I would love to see the numbers for Stern next quarter, they've broke sales records for the past couple of years but this may be as good as it gets from here on. I fully realize we'll never know the real numbers from Stern but the dealer
s sales numbers could be a good data point.
I can only speak for myself - but I said "I'm not buying" around 2016...but then I played Elwin games, and now that I'm hooked, what am I gonna do - not buy Elwin games? I'm back in, baby! Prices be damned. Also speaking for myself, I can sell my current games for more than I paid for them...so it's all relative, the new purchases aren't as painful.
Quoted from chuckwurt:I say 9999 for a CCr LE.
With the remakes, at least there's a point of comparison....original CC's have been going for over 10k for years. So, it's not THAT bonkers that they'd price an improved version at 10k. We'll find out soon, I guess!
Quoted from Viggin900:The solution is simple. Start buying EMs. I hope they make a comeback and people start restoring them.
LOL, stop trying to make EM's a thing. Today's buyer/player gets bored quickly with DEEP games...EM's will hold people's attention for half a game.
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