Keep 'em coming! Flood the market. Make it so cheap everyone has an Iron Man!

All these complaints and comments about what this must mean about other machines and sales and what it earns and what Stern is planning are all incredibly laughable.

1. Unless you work for Stern and are involved in those discussions, you don't know the actual reason for these decisions. There are plenty of reasons they decided to do this now, none of us actually knows.
2. How does this hurt you? Maybe if you have a first run on the vault and don't like the idea there being more out there and affecting the value I can see it, but that negates any want for any vault ever, and most of us want more vaults. Otherwise, you don't know what is going on behind the scenes so you can't claim this is bad because of X reason.
3. Ultimately this means more of the machine available. Many people like this machine. Having more of them available is only good for people in the hobby who would like to have one.

But that is literally the only argument against it, that it devalues the current machines, which is true. But the benefit to the community at large far out weighs that. Any remake or vault is going to do that. MM and AFM were much bigger deals than this money wise and I think the vast majority of people would agree those remakes are a great thing that happened. It only hurts people who have been using pins as investments, which should be a fairly small number, and frankly, sorry but get over it. Pinball is not guaranteed money, it is an expensive toy that may appreciate or depreciate. That's how it goes. But having more of the toys available is better for everyone else and will probably benefit you when it comes to some other game that gets remade.

Honestly all these complaints about not vaulting Tron or LoTR are also ridiculous. You have no idea what it would cost to make vault editions of them. The cost for the license, the cost for the upgrade from whitestar, the cost to remake the parts, the cost to redo the art (as some have suggested), other costs we probably aren't even thinking about.

They surely have done the math on this and have come to the conclusion that it isn't viable without them charging more than the current rates (at which point all of you would bitch about that cost and how Stern is cheap and are con artists). Or there is some technical limitation making it not possible to do. If they could do it at a point where it made financial sense, they absolutely would. As has been pointed out many times, they are a business and they like to make money.

The idea that they won't remake it because people would realize their new products aren't the same is laughably stupid. Do you think anyone that would care doesn't already know that?

But, you are making that argument absent of the facts, because we don't know the facts. Maybe they had parts around for these machines already, or had a great deal on getting more parts made cheaply. It would be financially stupid of them not to make it if they had the parts to do it. It doesn't matter that you don't want it. Someone will. There are always people with deep pockets that will buy the games they put out.

None of us can say what the market wants or needs. The market surely didn't need a Beatles reskin or another Elvira machine, but Stern made them, and people bought them, and Stern made money, and we get to play them. That's how it works.