No one's bought any from me. I don't sell pinball machines though so maybe that's a factor.

If they’ve been calling then you know the prices for those models right?

Isn’t that what good distributors should be doing anyway?

Ringing their regular customer base “hey xxxx, not sure if you saw but xxxx is coming out we have an allocation of blah are you interested?” That’s it.

I’ve heard $8k for Gold...other 2 are up in the air.

The fact that these are apparently already for sale and no one knows the actual prices kinda says it all.

Still not listed on Stern's website. Maybe I should go back and look in the archives.

And the world resounded with a deafening...meh.

DOA title for me unfortunately. Like the music. But as a pin? Not feeling the love.

I was told $7,800 plus freight & tax by my distributor for the low-end model

They have to pay for the license somehow!

I think its great that distributors are looking out for the customers. The just need to know how many to order before they run out.

Run out?!

How?

I could be completely wrong on this, but I predict that a good chunk of sales will occur outside the usual pinball distributors at places like high-end “lifestyle” and collectibles stores such as Hammacher-Schlemmer (which currently features a $13k Sgt. Pepper’s jukebox on the home page).

I really think this is going to be a success for Stern, regardless of whether or not it is ultimately well-received by the Pinside community. (I sometimes think Pinside is a bit too provincial in its outlook and tends to overestimate its influence on pinball as a whole - there’s a world of pinheads out there who don’t actively frequent forums but are nonetheless essential to the success of pinball companies, and many of those folks are much less jaded and easier to please than the crowd here!)

No interest at all and I like the Beatles.

I like the Beatles and Seawitch. Don't like the prices. Easy pass for me.

I’m just hoping another manufacturer takes on Bowie. It could make the room pop.

If it were $5,000...then I'd probably get one.

But not for $7,800...just not enough of a game to justify it.

They only need to sell 1600 Golds, right?

Levi trolls iceman...iceman trolls Levi...

This has to be the Worst Stern in 20 years. No offense to Gary, I really like the Guy, but, let's just boycott this Title. It has more mistakes than a monkey playing grab ass on a back glass.

If they only pay the license for each machine sold the bill won't be very big.

Good license gone Bad.

I've only been solicited once by a Stern distributor. I was a frequent LE customer at the time and he was one of the big selling distributors pushing WWE at the time, which fortunately for me, men in tights killed the theme from tempting me to buy NIB at a time when I was making more money than I knew what to do with. Solicitation calls to frequent LE buyers is a possible indicator of pricing confusion or distress, considering that the same distributor who solicited me on WWE, later couldn't sell me a Ghostbusters LE or BM66 LE due to not having enough units left, despite me communicating my interest to him prior to the official announcement.

I know that the Beatles is possibly the ultimate theme and most likely they'll sell to someone, but it's a roll of the dice on the higher end versions, which are definitely targeted for wealthy Beatles collectors or pinball flipper speculators. Either way, it's way too rich for my blood. Good luck, if you dare.

Hmm...25k on the market, or a Beatles pin. I give it 50/50.

I’m still not understanding the pricing...are all three models the same price for distributors? And the way Stern is incentivizing them to buy more units is they need to buy 10 at a time in order to get a Diamond edition? And they can then mark up Diamond editions however they see fit?

$3995 by Christmas!

https://www.bizjournals.com/chicago/news/2018/10/29/the-beatles-are-honored-in-new-stern-pinball.html Just sharing. This info may already be on another thread.

I'd rather have a Supreme

I owned a Stern Elvis once. My lovely 70+ mother is a huge Elvis fan, spends a good 30k+ per year on more Elvis stuff she doesn’t need and flights around the world to follow Elvis impersonators etc so when I went to sell Elvis I turned to my mother who put an ad in her Elvis fan club newsletter/booklet. I received not one call! All lovely people no doubt, all of an age who have discretional income, all major Elvis lovers that collect everything Elvis but not one bite. When asking my mother why no sale she simply said they love the look of it, no problems with cost but it’s a pinball, we don’t collect pinball! So while I keep hearing people say this Beatles pin isn’t for pinside it’s for Beatles fans I wouldn’t be 100% sure.

I truly believe Stern made this for pinball collectors who are Beatles fans. They just underestimated how many Beatles fans collect pinball and how much they would pay.

What a crappy pinball. People pumping this one up is hilarious. The Beatles pinball is for beta males.

So far, I haven't been sold any.

I can recall most of the pinball world scoffing at DialedIn at the Chicago Expo release a couple of years back too.....just sayin’

Well, to be fair, most people are still scoffing at Dialed In.

So Beatles pins are for sale by distributors and gold model pricing has been established, while pricing of the other two models is a little loosey goosey. Yet distributors are reaching out.

The Beatles pinball machine is supposedly being targeted towards non pinball people - why? Wouldn’t it be an easier sell to build a product to people who want and already buy your products, rather than finding a new customer base and having no lead time? Wouldn’t it be easier to sell if it were priced competitively?

A Beatles pinball machine should be about the music, right? This pin has 8 songs, half are good and half ok, but none are in the style of music you want to hear when playing. No earth shattering bass or adrenaline pumping music that can help draw you in to playing one more game. Is the sound system state of the art? No, it will sound like other Sterns - ok but no better audiophile quality you get with your phone and a $20 set of headphones.

So if not sound, what feature is being used as a hook and to market this pin? Artwork is the main focus of Beatles music pin. Artwork on diamond edition looks safe and boring, overall it’s pretty but lame. So how wonderful is the art on the other models? Nobody knows cause nobody has seen them. That’s right, Stern is selling, and distributors are taking orders on another pinball machine we haven’t seen. But one is being asked to make a decision without seeing the product AND not knowing the final feature list of each model. We must be dumber than we look.

The Beatles release has so far been a big joke and Stern must think their previous pinball customers are fools. They know any new customers they bring in for this pin will also be fools. With an expanded customer base, business is looking up for #1 maker of pinball machines sold to the stupidest people on earth.

Never seen so much hatred for a material object. You don't like , thats fine no ones holding a gun to your head to buy it or play it. Like Rudy said " It's only pinball" . Relax yourself, and take a long walk.

My guesses: why market to Beatles fans instead of pinball fans? Because the market is literally orders of magnitude greater?

Why those songs? I have the Beatles channel preset on my car. They will often have these fan-based top 100 song lists. I've learned my tastes don't always align. I'd bet that you could find thousands of fans that would have the complete opposite opinion of which songs were good and which OK.

Quality of the sound? I guess I'm in the minority on this one. I have a 1957 Wurlitzer in the game room. Love it and it sounds just great to me. Of course, it is crappy when compared to a true audiophile system, but there is something about analog, pops, hisses and all. More importantly, given all the other noises going on in a pinball game, which I also enjoy, I'm never expecting anything close to a true audiophile experience when playing pinball. For me, the music is more about background ambiance.

As for the fools comment, while I'm not a buyer of this game, I'm confident that I am a fool given the $ spent on other games. $6k for a Genco bball game with a rotted cabinet and half the wires eaten/missing?!? What kind of idiot spends that much money for that crap? This idiot. And if you don't think I'm a fool, well just ask my wife

Thought process at stern.

The fans want a remake of some of our great old designs at a reasonable price.
The fans want a full featured Beatles pin, to go along with their other music pins.
The Beatles fans will pay extra for this license.

Solution.
Let’s do the exact opposite of what everyone wants. Let’s remake an old pin that is popular, but instead of offering it at a reasonable price let’s slap on a Beatles theme and inflate the price until it no longer makes sense for the average buyer. Then we can disappoint everyone that wanted a full featured Beatles game, everyone that wanted a remake, and everyone that hoped for something reasonably priced

Were you absent during the WWE GOT BM66 or other releases? They were way worse than this and aimed at the product itself. Most of the Beatles complaining is about the business decision.

Stern ruined a great theme. They could have made an amazing pin with great music. No dmd? Really? Ramps? Really? I am very disappointed. Even more than what they didn't do with Star Wars.

People who were looking forward to this theme can and should be pissed off by the execution of it. It's not as if another pinball company can come behind them and build a proper Beatles pinball. They got the theme, and they ruined it as a pinball theme for the foreseeable future.

Thanks, Ka-Pow!

Not really that different from most releases. I get at least 4 emails from different distro's everytime a game is released.

With that said it doesn't seem to be selling that well or really at all yet. Things could change with a good release on Nov 6th but as of right now my distro wasn't even getting the 10 pack. They were concerned about having 70K tied up and being stuck with some of the 7 golds for an extended period.

I'm excited to see the release and am looking forward to playing the game. I'm a Beatles fan and I love Seawitch so it's exciting for me. Doubt I'll get one though.