Quoted from jeffspinballpalace:So the games is for sale by distributors and gold pricing has been established, while pricing on the other two models is little loosey goosey.
The Beatles pinball machine is targeted towards non Pinball people - why? Wouldn’t it be an easier sell to build a product to the people who want your product, rather than finding new customers? 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 a game draw you in. Is the sound system on the game state of the art? No, it will sound like other Sterns - ok but not audiophile quality you can get with your phone and a $20 set of headphones.
So if not sound, what is being used to market this pin? Artwork is the main focus of Beatles pin. Artwork on diamond is safe and boring to me. Looks pretty but lame. So how wonderful is the art in the other models? Nobody knows cause nobody has seen it. That’s right, Stern is taking orders on another pin we haven’t seen and artwork is supposed to be the best feature. We have seen one of three models and all are for sale.
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 of fools, business is looking up for #1 maker of pinball machines sold to fools.
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