Quoted from Rarehero:Stern isn't selling creativity. They're selling a licensed product. They're not assuming that every potential customer already has a Stern pinball, let alone a similar Borg game. Their market: People who like GOTG & want a pinball machine.
Also, we go through this every time a new game is revealed. Someone always says "this is a clone of that" ...but slight differences in geometry & rulesets go a long way to make a similar game play TOTALLY different. Case in point - Borg tweaked Austin Powers into Iron Man. They literally have the same exact ramps and a similar bash toy - yet no one thinks the games play anything alike. He also tweaked Space Jam into Stern NBA. They play nothing alike. So, GOTG looks a bit like Met and/or IM...but, I guarantee the rules will be NOTHING like those games. IM = the simple yet challenging 2010-era rules. Met = Radically unique Lyman Sheets rules ...from the looks of it, GOTG is going to have more of a traditional story mode based rule set.
Agree with some of your points but the reason we go through this every time is that it (Stern rehashing with phoned in layouts) happens every time. Can't blame people for being a bit over it.