I was all set to order one. Until jack jacked up the price by 1500. Now i'm out.

drop the price to $6500 and i'm in.

because $6500 is more than enough for a pin. Even at this price point, he's still making mad cash. Actually he'd make more, because he'd sell a lot more. I know about 7 of us that would pull the trigger if his "Limited edition" was $6500 instead of 8000.

Bullshit, at 5k they can give us everything they gave us in TSPP, LOTR, Sopranos. OUR price was 3200-3400 back in 2003-2006 era. You can't tell me production costs went up that much. even at 4% inflation every year, we are still below the $5k mark. They are just getting cheap about things. We could easily have nice quality, full ROMs, quality toys and be under the 5k price point. They jack up the prices, because people fall all over themselves for the opportunity to overpay.

least with all the chit chat, it keeps his thread to the surface. If it wasn't for that. it would be bumped off the page in about 15 min and nobody would see it. Like most things on this site.

that's 7 in my area alone. Take those numbers by %'s of pinball buyers of new games in that same demographic. Now you have your test sample. Take that number and spread it over the U.S. Now you can have an idea on how many Lost sales Jack as received because of this business plan.

if you honestly think JJP isn't getting a 200% markup..... well.....

Actually no I didn't buy Xmen or TF LE. And I wouldn't at those prices. I got both of them in a trade.

And if Sterns and JJP can make shitloads of money right now, because people throw their money out there without playing the stuff first. That's great. Good for them. How far can they go before a lot of you guys stop and think for a min, how much your spending on a NIB, you've never played only to be disappointed. The blind buyers is the reason they can ask, what they ask. And JJP, asking for money a year and half ahead of time, before his first is done. Jacks up the price another 1500 from the last model, and acts like $500 discount is a gift for getting my money year or years early is a laughable business plan. All it's going to do is piss off your demographic. And around here, it has. There's only a handful of us that can or willing to buy NIB. and seems JJP's business event has pissed off 80% of those around here. That's not looking good for JJP. If he makes it to 3 or 4 games, it will be a miracle.

that joke took way to long.

i've seen it and played it. YAWN. Looks pretty. Bore to play. Kinda like TOM.

For half finished code making it out in the masses every single game. You can thank the preorders for that as well.

Quiet down about Pink Floyd pin. I don't want to see it because I don't want to be tempted to buy into this crazy NIB pricing war that's going on. But since I resisted Hobbit, I probably could resist Floyd. Unless it's main focus was the Gilmore years. Then I'd be sweating it out.

Yea, TAF and TZ were dogs. STTNG, IJ. Just the numbers from TAF alone, out do all the production numbers of all WPC95's combined. I think License is more powerful than unique theme. We may not like it, but it's true.

and you quiet down Lloyd. It won't happen. Lucky for me. Pink Floyd hasn't done shit since 94' and doesn't look like they will again. So chances of Sterns giving a shit to go after that license is slim to none.

Can he even hear anymore anyway?

Hobbit cabinet looks great. Not $8000 great, but great. Still i'd rather wait and save $8000, and buy them on closeout at $4000 because there are way to many LE's floating around from the saturated pinball market with 10 people making pinball machines.

In his head he could. But there is only one game i'd plunk down 10k for. And only 2 people know what that game is. No way in hell i'm putting down 10k for any new sterns or JJP title. Unless it came with a permanent Stripper that stays with the machine 24/7 to keep it clean and rub her tits on me while I play.

what would suck, is that I would have to get 2 of those games, because the wife would want one so she can play with tits too. So it would cost me $20k for the tit rub edition.

Spiderman was $3500 NIB.

Sterns was struggling with minimal profit then. That is true. Price increase was in order. But not double the price, and games half assed in the process.

oh they still have a good share of gouging. Especially with this watered down shit. "lets give them half of the game for the normal price" bullshit. Good for sterns to cash in while they can. The market won't stay like this for too long. But when you pay for LE's and have tons of problems because they wern't playtested for shit, and code is half assed. WTF? That's when you should be pissed, as you paid double for what the game should have been.

20% inflation per year for pinball. Not bad for them.

Exactly.

And I think some are over valuing JJPs "quality". LCD in quanity isn't going to cost much more if not less than plasma DMD's. He's buying these in bulk and the technology has dropped so much in price. It would probably take more to manufacture a DMD with the circuit board and plasma gas glass, than to just crank out a china LCD screen. Computer motherboard. Again. in bulk. Cheaper than making your own board, having to have them assembled and mass produced for your company. Buy commercial mass produced computer motherboards. Again. Cost saving. Widebody? No extra cost. Think TZ cost more than TAF to build? Not by much. Direct ink playfield? Over what? silkscreened? Direct ink, is cheaper. JJP's cost isn't much more than sterns for production. He might have more into design and programming costs, but we will see by the results. If you talking build quality. Gottleib system 3's were built like brick shithouses. Sturdy, heavy as shit, and durable. Built like tanks and way above anyone else in quality. Too bad many of the games sucked. But build quality was top notch.

Well jack does piss away money on some things that didn't matter. like the metal weld fabricated house. Really? needed to be a welded formed house that never comes in contact with the ball? No reason that couldn't have been a plastic molded house. This idea of "better build quality" is just throwing out money in places it doesn't do any good. Put that money into programming or somewhere else.

how is the metal house good in anyway besides jacking up the cost? It's not interactive and you could get a lot more detail with a plastic molded house.

Seems extremely unneeded at an extreme cost to manufacture. Could have been used somewhere else. somehow I have the feeling he intended to do more with it, than what actually happened.

I don't want price controls. And it's really not Sterns or JJP that's allowing these price hikes. It's you guys preordering the second this stuff goes up for sale. If everyone is throwing out tons of cash at everything, without playing it, not caring if it's finished. not caring if there are manufacturing and design flaws. And no matter how much I increase the price another $500, $1000, $1500. I would look at it the same way. If these people blindly throw their money around. Cash in. Don't need price controls. Just need people to be smarter with their money. So the ones that are now paying 4k for a SS and 4k for a STTNG. Thank the ones that preorder every damn thing that is offered.

try $1500 more. Because he can, and buyers allow it to happen.

please. Even at $6500 he's turning a sweet profit. He's just trying to recoup all his business startup costs in one release. When starting a new business it's suppose to be over a period of time. THese machines are a lot cheaper to make than you guys realize. If you think it costs more than $3k to completely manufacturer a machine when buying parts in bulk. You really don't know the purchasing aspect of things. That price includes the design costs. I'm sure jacks design costs are going to be higher, since this is his first machine and i'm sure he made some mistakes along the way, and had to redo and change things. that's what happened to Gene. Plus Gene's run was much smaller. So your costs are higher. He had some major production problems that put his cost through the roof, hence why he ended up taking a loss. For full production runs, you cost per game is significantly less. Since design and programming costs, get cheaper the more games you make.

props to the pacman pie chart. This is pretty much the exact business model Jack is going for. Walka walka.

He still had to build the game, which is a majority of the expense. Gene's expenses went over budget because he had several thing happen with playfields where they were shit and he had to get them remade, plus another bad deal with cabinets, and boards. He had one bad deal after another which cost him tons of money each time. With a production run of only 150ish, you can't recoup major losses like that. jack is making 1000's so the overcost gets less and less for design and what not.

yes, but the price of those items goes down drastically, when you have production numbers in the 1000's compared to 136. You don't think Jack is banking on selling at least 5000 WOZ's? He's hyped this up so much, you know the numbers are at LEAST that high. if not more. Jack thinks he's the second coming in the pinball world. When you have those kinds of numbers. Your looking at around $10 per game for design and software programing.

It's like having something printed. If you have a 4 color process, they usually charge you $200-250 per color per plate/screen. So right up front your looking at $800-1000. if you make 100 shirts/posters, your costs is going to be astronomical. now make 5000. That charge is insignificant.

that's true. So game 1 is more expensive to make than game 2. By game 2 he has everything ready to go and has his shit together. His prices should at minimal , stay the same if not go down.

Jack claims he's going to sell way more than 5000 Woz's. Just LE numbers alone are what? 1000? Says every op is going to want one of these on location. 5000 are WPC95 production numbers. He's talking revolutionary. that's 10000 or more.

where you getting $500 increase from? Prebook WOZ $6500. Prebook TH $7500. That's $1000 in my book.

Used pin prices are not the same as NIB. NIB would increase $100 per year. If that. Used, was all over the place depending on the flavor of the month. Cannot use logic of one, with the other. One is a collector market, the other is manufacturing consumer product.

You talk about innovation. Yet I never hear you speak of p3. JJP has nothing of innovation. Color display. Big whoop. THat's not innovation any more than it was for Sega to go with a Large DMD. yea, that really changed things up for Sega didn't it.

you mentioned Innovation. I was just wondering what you were refering to, because I didn't see any mention of p2k or p3.

JJP pulled new people in? So before JJP existed you didn't give a shit about pinball huh?

play it. Played pretty good. Way better than Woz did when I played it. Least it's innovative. So many possibilities they can go with. Changing how the ball interacts with the playfield. Being able to have the ability to have the game see where your ball is going and what direction. THat's fantastic. Could make games battle with the player. Screwing with them. Grabbing the ball, stopping the ball, redirecting. Plus the graphic enhancements. Interchangable backhalfs for playfields, is just a nice bonus, and can be done extremely cost effective. Completely change the dynamics of your game for $1000. New software, would feel like a totally different game. People already claim AFM, MM feel like different games. Tho they are almost identical layouts and rules. So this really would be different.

As for the other comment. You arn't new to pinball tho. You played back in the golden age of TAF and TZ. I didn't buy my first game until 8-9 years ago. But played in the early 90's hardcore. I'm surprised you would have heard about JJP, if not in the pinball community to begin with. If I asked anyone of my relatives besides my dad, what JJP was. Nobody would know. How did you stumble upon something when you wern't even looking?

I was seriously thinking about it. But I want to play the finished product. No preorder here. And if I can get enhancement interchangeable new games for $1000 or less and make it a new game. that is very appealing. You only buy the cabinet once. Kits after that. P2k was going to do something similar if they would have been able to.

Plus, it's not a whole playfield. Which makes that 1/3 of a playfield fit into a box barely bigger than a laser printer color cartridge. Very easy to throw that under your game for storage. Could have a pile of 4 or 5 games under there and swap out in less than 5 min. They also said the software would know what playfield you dropped in, and automatically turn on the software for that game. So no software swapping. How awesome is that?

Most of us don't look at "list" price for any game. If we arn't willing to pay the $6500, we sure the hell arn't going to pay the $7500. You know even with sterns. They suggest say Ac/DC premium at $6700 or somethign like that. and you know damn well no one thats in the "know", pay that. We are all paying $6100-6200. I don't even know of anyone that paid full retailed suggestion for any Sterns.

For me, I saw $1000 increase over WOZ. I was prepared for the $6500 price tag. Was not prepared that he would increase that prebook price $1000. and 2 years in advance. So in my eyes. It's $1000.

Sterns see's it's competitors selling similar product for X dollars. They see the market is going for that price. They are going to increase, and just stay under it and reap the profits from it as well. If jack would have came out and said $5k. Sterns would have came out with $4500. Sterns doesn't want to be the most expensive machine out there. But they do want to get as much of that money everyone is throwing around. If it wasn't for Jack and his "i'm going to be the best and charge the best for quality" attitude. Sterns would still be in the $4k range for NIB. Sterns turned into a monster, because of Jack. But time will tell if jack lives up to all his hype. But the price war is going to come sooner than you think. Anticipation only sells so long. Onces it's out, it's going to come down to price, theme and layout. Just like it did before. Jack will learn from his mistakes, just as Sterns is still learning even 13 years later. Sterns used to not give a shit about the collector market. IT was all "for the ops". Sterns is realizing the home owner is the one to spend foolish money more so than ops.

It's not jacks fault they do it but he laid the carpet for them to do it. I'm not blaming Jack or Sterns for the prices anyway. It's not their fault. It's our fault for buying them at that price. If we didn't buy them, they would know it's too high and shoot for a lower price. THe ones that buy before you play and throw the money at them are the ones that cause it to happen.

Also a fan of P3. Refreshenly new concept that has endless possibilities. Greatest thing since P2k.

yea, I havn't plunked down 10k on it either, as i have a huge problem paying over 6500 for any game. But it's still early. There might be some perks coming with it, that make it worthy of 10k. But the ideas coming with it, are fantastic.

that is true. I just want to see where they go with the artwork and software for both of those. If it truly does feel like 2 completely different games.

i've played it at expo, but would love to play a finished version.