There is more demand for pinball games than there are machines to fill it. This has been the story for the last 23 years or so (think it bottomed in '97-98?) Prices been going up ever since.

Problem is, right now_ the demand for games is far exceeding supply, mostly thanks to covid hosing up the supply chain. Every owners' thread here is filled with future owners waiting on backordered machines. How many thousands of games is Stern behind?

Stern cannot allow themselves to become backordered til mid 2022 on mid 2021 prices, especially when labor and component costs are rising a fair bit more than they have in the past.

Add in additional demand from everyone helped with stimulus (left) or lower taxes (right) and these prices increases are pretty much what one would expect. Sucks, but like others have said, everything's getting higher. I can sell my old games for newer ones if needed.

So Stern pays the line people good wages and the price of a new game goes up even more to cover it. Are you going to switch back to complaining about prices at that point?

I don't think Stern is gouging their buyers, now or in the past. They're reacting to economic and market forces that extend far beyond pinball. Pinball machines have gone up, what, 15%? Meanwhile pool chlorine is clocking in at 50-100% more than last year.

Mandalorian LEs did indeed come before the premiums. Some Pros for locations preceded those, but mostly for ops and no premiums. If you want the premium features, the LE is the quickest way to obtain them nowadays.

Depends, you could get lucky on the Stern direct-sales site, or have an 'in' with a distributor. Or just pay a flipper. Either way you'd have premium features before premium buyers.

Your sarcasm detector is broken.

We do get it, dude. It's called inflation. And when the cost of all other fun things rise just like pinball is rising, you'll be back to buying games with your similarly increased salary.

Same here, liquid shock pretty much exclusively. While it's gone up from ~13 to ~23 a jug, it's still pretty cheap compared to tabs and does a great job. Switching to SWG requires changing equipment, so won't look at that til it's time for a refresh.

So if you understand this: wages going up, costs going up, why are you always complaining about the resulting price increases?

lol someone go bump the turntable, record's stuck again...

Don't you bullshit me beelz, I know you're old enough to remember them

Cost of wood *now* doesn't apply to games made earlier this year. Also, costs on all the other parts have increased, especially electronics.

So the pros will go up 600 in three months, or 10% since Stern's last increase, which was over a year prior to 1/1/2022. How many of y'all complainers can pull a list of items that HAVEN'T increased 10% over the same time period? Aside from dollar store junk, some groceries and maybe gas in some areas, what hasn't increased?

How about a list of stuff that's gone up 50% or more? We're kinda lucky in some regards.

Guitars?