I don't think anyone is disputing this--at least not me. However, when you look at a AAA title console release, be it on the Playstation, Xbox, or Nintendo, you have legions of programmers that only work on physics engines, another group just for foliage, and a group just for facial expressions, etc, etc. Plus debugging and refining for each console's unique specs.

The market for pinball is several orders of magnitude smaller, and you might have a couple guys looking at code on, comparatively speaking, a shoestring budget, all working congruently on different pinball machines for code updates and such. It's impossible to compare the two industries--other than the fact that they're both designed for entertainment.

Not to mention, these games are all meant to be vended, and I doubt that the average player in the arcade is really looking at the breadth and depth of the machine's code.

Ah! Please don't think I was undermining their abilities! I suppose the tone of my writing is lost through text.

What I'm saying is that development of games on consoles is orders of magnitude more complex than developing code for a pinball machine, and that they sometimes have teams of specialists that focus only on certain tasks. I agree with you. Those who develop any sort of code, especially those on consoles, are brilliant. Hell, I could never do it.