Hello, well if anyone has "rocket" ideas to get cost down, then please call me. going to China is easy but i have a problem sending all that money and jobs out of the country.

in the old days we made 80k-100k games or more per year and amortized all manufacturing over this high production. still profits were low. at Bally (when I started) we were making 500 games a day. this is not happening now in any form. today the biggest maker is probably making 6k-7k games a year (30-40day) I would guess. pinball machines have a lot of parts and custom devices and cost a lot to develop. a tough challenge. it just takes buckets of money.

when i was at zizzle we built the largest pinball factory in history (and secret) with capacity from 5k-8k games a week. yes a week. that model is high volume and low margin. we invested in hard tools and new design/manufacturing/testing methods. ultimately labor was cheaper so having 250 people on the backbox line was easy. but in that case we had to make a 0 defect game that worked. so again all this amortized over high production to get low cost.

So we will all have to work on better pricing, yes, and at least someone is still making "new" games while we come up with solutions. a full hang LE game selling at $3995. is never going to happen unless the margin is like 5%. so we need a happy billionaire to foot all this for the goodness of mankind. Only other option is financing. Buy a new game and pay over 5 years like a car. then it is $179 month for your new LE. this was done in the heyday, but today the credit market is changed. Jpop