You are basically saying what I said. The only difference I said was that they went above and beyond in their price increase to gouging the customers which was shown that they could by other manufacturer companies.

Point noted. But who OK'd the investors Jared??

Yup!

Consolidation will be coming soon enough here and Stern will rise to the top....again!

Don't agree? Then ask yourself how many other companies could survive a total flop title and keep on chuggin along like it was nothing more than a blip...

http://www.pinballnews.com/news/sternpartner.html

I can offer up and opinion. It was necessity that OK'd the investors to keep the doors open. He was painted in a corner in part probably to saleing games to cheap. Games were $3500 shipped to your door in the early 2000's. Think about it $3500.

Stern ain't going anywhere. Only putting its itself in a better position. I'm no big fan boy but it's Sterns NIB machines that have created such a buzz in this hobby/industry. You really can't blame them for finding the top of their market all businesses are doing it nowadays.
I was in bestbuy a few days ago they had three different televisions for sale at 19995. I thought that was kinda crazy but it told me one thing. Someone's pay it!

I'd be sad. Like a part of me died.

LTG : (

After manufacturing consumer goods for 38 years, watching the changes in consumers, for better or worse, all I can say is I'm grateful for My meds, and retirement!

I'll leave it with the next generation on how to get perfect, fast, complete, and cheap!

I'm afraid my experiences don't leave much
room for optism.

In relation, I ask my 21 year old, what would
he do without his phone or without the internet.

Talk about a millennium breakdown!!!

not even early 2000's. in MAY of 2007. I got LOTR (5th release) delivered to my door for $3400 flat. That's right $3400 Delivered. Full game with 10.0 code roms.

Stern has a lot of problems right now, but I think they're all correctable. Stern leaving the industry would be very, very bad for pinball. Jody Dankberg leaving Stern Pinball and the industry as a whole would be very, very good for pinball.

That wouldn't fix everything at Stern, but boy, it would be a great start.

Well isn't this the point of running a business? Stern isn't an non-profit organization. We shouldn't expect these companies to be in this for the love of pinball.

Blockbuster, via their shit service, actually created the demand for their competitor (Netflix).

Netflix later on adapted & kept customers. Blockbuster stayed the same & lost customers.

Seems like a legit comparison to me. Cant blame the internet & credit it at the same time.

that, and blockbuster made your asshole hurt with the manditory $3.50 charge for one day rental. but instead of lowering prices, they decided they couldn't function with a lower rental price.

With Stern, if people stop buying. They can lower prices by at least 50% and still make money, so they have a lot of room to move the prices lower until they hit the sweet spot, where customers buy again.

Ok, I'll just ask - why does this guy's name seem to nearly be embroidered with disdain from the community? Did I miss something, somewhere?

I had no idea they were still in business. These games look like they're from the 70s and 80s.

Have you seen the prices of older games recently?

yea, I just bought a bunch of them. $400 each. It was a real wallet breaker, but I bit the bullet. But that was only the last 5 games I bought. maybe it's just a fluke.

Here's how I'm gonna feel when your putt puttin ass is gone :
partytime (resized).jpg

I'm the second owner of a ST Pro, it had about 50 games on it when I bought it, a NIB Mustang Pro and a basicly NIB GB Pro (that only has one problem Ghost Trap backboard light). Not a single problem with the others. Very satisfied with Stern.

Hell no.

Well Fidel Castro died and some celebrated and some mourned. There you go.

I own a lot of Bally/Williams, and I love them. I picked up a couple of Sterns along the way. When Ghostbusters was announced, I loved the movie, and everything about the game, so for the first time I ordered a NIB Stern. I paid my deposit a month after it was announced, I like the upgrades to the premium, so I went that way.

Because I did my deposit a month after it was announced, it took me about 4 months between when the fist game was shipped, and I got mine. All I was hearing, was bad, bad, bad, and I was nervous, but I still wanted my game.

My distributor is not the biggest, but I know he moves some games. I was at his shop when I was picking up something else shortly after the fist shipment of games came out, and he had what looked like 20 ghostbuster's in boxes, so I know he sold a quantity.

I finally got the call, time to pick up my game. I drove to my distribute and picked up my game. I wanted some add ons, and they did that while I waited, so it was time for small talk. Again, it looked like about 20 boxed Ghostbusters. Since I was a bit worried about my game, I asked them, if they sold a bunch of these, of course they said they did, which I knew. Then I asked the question I really wanted the answer to, how many of those games did you have problems with, they said one, and it was not bad enough for any kind of play field exchange.

I got my game, one minor problem, a screw was loose, I tightened it and not another problem. I few people in my house play, so we have about 1,000 plays, no problems.

My feeling is the bad ones are very vocal, the good ones, you don't hear from. Plus on this type of forum, you are more likely to hear the negatives then the positives anyway.

The prices are high, yes, but they hold their value pretty good. It is better then buying a car and selling that in 2 years. If the prices get higher then I want to pay, hey their are plenty of good used titles out there, I don't have enough space or money for all of them.

So I am very happy with my Stern. I spent $6,800 on a NIB premium, or I could spend a $1,000 less and get a real good quality A list game that is 20 plus years old, and if I buy it right and take care of it, I will get my money out of it.

No, I do not want Stern to go out of business.

It's a hobby, and I love it.

Now I actually laughed on that. Point.

Curious, as you were around when Williams closed, what was that like?

It would be a terrible loss. Don't even think it. I have 4 new Sterns purchased in the last 25 months and still love them. Toss in another that was a floor model.

They had already prepared us by releasing pin2k. If they weren't going to make another real pinball machine it didn't seem to matter. At least from where I was standing.

Sucked huge. I was stocking up on light bulbs and rubber rings. We didn't know how much longer they'd be available. A lot of common parts were already hard to get. Game specific - forget it.

I was in a mad scramble of what the hell now. Lived through the air hockey fad, fooseball fad, early video game fad, and the video game fad. Nothing new was on the horizon and hopes of pinball carrying me through were gone.

Not to mention I had traded in a bunch of pins too cheap with the coming of P2K. I was always grateful my distributor, the 2nd largest in the country, and knew Williams would close the pinball division, didn't bother letting me know to hang onto my games. BASTARDS.

They were exciting times. Ushered in my worst decade ever in business.

LTG : )

Don't care. It would be a shame, yes, but it would not affect me personally. I want them to stay in business. But in the end I would not lose much sleep over it. I just worry about pinball's future and right now they are stable and creating it. All of the other manufacturers are from the last 6 years while this iteration of Stern has been around since the 90's or the early 2000's, I forget. I love JJP but I am not sure if I see them lasting for 20+ years.

Onto my main point:

There at still thousands of previously made machines out there (Stern included) to collect.

I am not one of the ones scared of a little age or even some dust who needs to keep buying the newest toy to keep himself happy. Waste of money. Too many DMD collectors are too caught up in pinball's future and current rather than appreciating its past, meaning primarily from a buying perspective. Can't believe how many people here are afraid to get their feet wet in older games. Not talking about opinion. That is fine. What I mean is some don't even TRY. They assume they are all the same like the 8 year old kid who thinks their precious DMD machines are just hitting the ball around for points. They complain about not enough games but there are literally thousands of titles out there from the past and for the kind of money spent on one of these new machines, you could buy 8 (or even 20+ if you get deals) different older lightly used games.

No one here should want to see Stern out of this business...
BUT, you have to stop and think "What's next?"
I hate to be a downer but I don't think the future in gaming is pinball.
Collecting will continue and the hobby has more than enough machines to keep it alive for a LONG time.

There was the EM era (where my heart is), the SS and video craze, and resurgence of pinball as we see it now....

Gaming seems to be changing again I think. Look at interactive gaming, virtual reality, augmented reality, cloud based gaming....
I'm not smart enough and way too old to keep up with these changes, but you have to see the wave coming.

New manufactured pinball will die off eventually, yep, but Stern will be the last ones standing.

VR and other innovation. Not enough of us will be left to care, especially at these prices.

Not until Kiss gets it's no code it won't!

You and I will be dead by then Odiner!

Stern kept Pinball alive when every other company didn't find it feasible. That deserves much respect. I'd hate to see them go the way of Williams, Bally, Gottlieb, etc..

And respect they are getting. People lining up with $15k for Super LEs.

I was trying to accentuate the positive.

I don't see Striker Xtreme in your collection.

I first joined netflix around 2000. I also signed up for a free trial of Blockbuster that would send you discs. I also did the same with Walmart, believe it or not. Guess what I have today, Netflix. No discs in the mail, but streaming. Hope Stern doesn't make the same mistakes as Blockbuster.

However, the comparison doesn't seam right. Blockbuster was taken down by a technology they didn't see coming; internet streaming. Stern is trying to keep up with ditching DMD and reducing electronics.