As long as the orders keep coming in, they'll promise you anything. Think of a car salesman.. they will promise the world to you while in the showroom.. once you drive off the lot, they forget all about you and are waiting for the next sucker to walk through the door.

How about Stern does what every other consumer product company does? You know, don't release the product until its FINISHED. Sevenrites is correct here.. this machine shouldn't even be manufactured and shipped until the code is complete. They need to have the programmers working on the machines until its completed with all features complete, and then reserve any future firmware updates as bug fixes only.

Right now it seems their current business model is to get the most basic code on the machine and ship it to customers, milk that title for as much as possible- then assign the programmer to another machine and have them work on the "old" title on lunch breaks and spare time. Look at GB for example.. it's been out a long time, and the code is buggy and has had literally nothing but a lame video mode added in there.

You are right, TZ is so shallow

Dude. Really? TZ has some of the best and most thought out and complete code there is, sorry.

Well, they already cashed those checks and that $15K is in their bank account.

Time to promote Aerosmith!

It's clear Stern makes almost all of their money during the pre-order process of a new title release. After that, orders trickle in for the title and they need to quickly release a new one to get that chunk of money in again.

Example, Aerosmith. Right when BM66 is released and the checks have cleared, it's on to the next game and promoting that and collecting pre orders.

Since they have already made their money, what's the incentive to continue to improve the code? They will tell you anything to pump up the latest pin, then move onto the next release. BM66 is old news... time to get all that money in for Aerosmith now.

lol... seriously !! New Stern releases are literally public betas