Panzer

How many toys are on this game?

Lol! I've lost count. So many toys.

The moving mini playfield with integrated canon, the multiple spinning disk toy, the apron LCD, the ship that the ball can be fired into, the whirlpool ramp, the spinning pop bumper pirate, the treasure chest with physical ball lock, lockdown bar button, camera, 5 flippers, 2 magnets, subway, 100+ modes covering all 5 films. Omg its insane. It's as if WOZ and TH had a baby, lol.

Meh, all I need is a tie fighter Christmas ornament on a spring

Our definition of toys are way different......

Haha, yup. JJP could have opted to use these two amazing unlicensed but probably copy right breaking pirates toys I saw at a store over the weekend instead of all of their fancy mechanical toys.

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I hope no one desecrates their new POTC playfield with a bunch of dolls

But all those items will depreciate MUCH faster than a JJP pin. Much.

I believe the shortened answer to your question/statement is as always, "You have to pay to play!" They will all sell and everyone has a different threshold for pain as well as $$$$ comfort. For me (just my opinion) I do not buy a pinball machine to make a profit, only to enjoy. But So far (I've bought some real looser titles) none have depreciated as fast as a car, boat, motorcycle, watch, or any other toy/hobby that I play in. Yes I may loose a little, but in the end no matter what I felt comfortable paying for it I still own an asset that I can confidently say I will make a good percentage of my money back on should my feelings change.

Absolutely. They will sell, just not to me. Good for them, but I'm out on principle alone. Prices will keep rising until they don't sell and they rightly should keep raising the price, I mean why not?

The thing is...there likely won't be a second-hand market for these games. Nobody is paying $8000 for a used machine. Someone who can afford that would just buy a new one for $9500. Am I right? I'll just buy one from someone down the road for $7k if it turns out good.

Great post - thanks.

I've noticed as well that many posts seem to be negative about JJPOTC because of the price. The physical machine and its price are two different things. A machine does not 'suck' because of its price. Reading pin reviews on pinside is a great example of this with so many low reviews because a pin is 'overpriced'. No one likes price increases but we should be clear-minded about this difference.

Would you really want to live in a world where the best car anyone could buy tops out at what only you can afford?

As Vdrums mentioned above, its good for a market to have a wide range of products because the high end tends to pull up on the quality of the lower end, whether it be because of tech or because consumer expectations are raised.

And at the end of the day, no matter how expensive a pin is to buy, at least everyone has a *chance* to play it on location or at shows. Nothing is possible if something doesn't exist in the first place.

I'm just happy to live in a universe where JJPOTC exists at all regardless of what it costs.

Hi Eric,
think 99,9 % positive reactions from us sometimes hypercritical pinheads here is telling its own tale....hope you & your team are now sitting at the bar, pretty exhausted but with lot of good drinks and a big grin on your faces after the stress of the show is over now....Congratulations!
But hey, what do you think: will there be a chance to see & play one of the prototypes at the DPO (biggest pinball show in europe as far as i know) in the middle of November in Eindhoven/the netherlands? People here overseas are soo excited to have look in person at your game...

Oh yes, having one at the DPO would be awesome.

WOZ was not sold as a loss. The only reason it tecnically could be considered a loss, is because he was trying to get the entire company and startup paid for from WOZ alone in the first year, instead of first 5 years like normal businesses expect to have an entire company paid for. If you don't think JJP isn't starting to make a profit past the 3500 mark, you do not know pinball manufacturing very well. The ONLY reason prices are like they are, is because Jack started off with a super high price. People bought into it. Stern saw this, and jacked up their prices as well. People kept buying. Jack pushes forward. People keep buying. Stern pushes forward. People keep buying. Jack bumps it up again.....guess what. People keep buying. what does stern do? Well, if jack can make 200-300% profit. Why shouldn't we? Stern increases prices.......people keep buying. 4th release. what happens? Jack increases prices yet again......people keep buying. If you think the cost of these games has gone up over the course of these 4 games, you are gravely mistaken. B/W went almost 10 years with only a $400 price increase over those 10 years. cost of materials, building and what not does not increase as fast as you guys seem to pretend to think. Only reason you guys try to act like manufacturing has increased so dramatically over the past 4 years, is because you are trying to justify the constant price increases. Which people can't.

By far your best post...as someone who has started and sold many companies your logic is surprisingly correct as an investor you are only interested in the bottom line...they will keep pushing prices until sales soften (I guarantee u its investor driven), and they can't keep up with their overhead. The danger in this model is its difficult to reduce prices...unless you allow your distributors reduce so there's a degree of separation...

I recall prices for some games (MM, SC, MB CC, TOTAN) starting to climb to Woz preorder prices before JJP announced Woz at $6500.

I think when Jack saw people bought into those prices, he figured out what he could charge.

they were going up a bit, but nothing to the extreme like it was when WOZ introduction price point was announced.

160 CE were sold by Sat night.

It's kind of bugging me that JJP is calling the LE version a Limited Edition. I know that sounds silly, but it's not limited. More of like a Stern Premium which they will make as many as the market bares....just sayin.

Yep, no surprise here.

People like myself were having pent up JJP demand after DI Put my deposit down Friday night

Crazy $$, no doubt. Guessing that many people will stick by the time they ship next summer. Maybe sell it out?

your spot on....2500 units on DI LE is not really that Limited that being said there was value moving to the LE versus the standard. At least thats how I saw it...blue trim, invisiglass, LED on ramps, printed manual, external volume head jack...I felt it was worth the extra $1K

Not saying it's not worth it...just not limited

ya think? 2500 of anything is NOT limited. It's a F ing JOKE. It will be years before they actually sell that many though.

Potc and Toy Story will swamp DI. The CE is the LE.

When Jack was on Kaneda's podcast a few months ago Jack himself said that JJP originally thought that WOZ's build of materials cost would be $4500. That was back in 2011. Well, he said they were way off.

With the quality, features and code development work put into JJP games I can see why they cost so much. Stern however no. What they are pulling would be like Ford charging $200k for a Mustang GT just because Ferrari can do it and then not putting in the extra features and quality to justify the price increase.

It sold at a loss because they set the price before they really knew what they were doing.. and all the overruns and delays. Not as a means to create a beachhead or other strategy by selling under their normal pricing. They maintained their price point as a matter of principle for the pre-order people.. and promptly raised their prices for people who didn't buy in early when reality started to hit. The LE features were the carrot for early buyers... the discounted pricing was more about ignorance than strategy.

When the price was set it was way beyond at prices at the time. But because he was able to sell the idea before people even knew the game, he was able to validate his 'premium product at a premium price' model.

They were losing money because they were a startup.. and they knew all along game #1 wouldn't be enough to make it all back. But the delays and overruns put him way further in the hole than they had hoped.

Actually 160 refundable deposits were received.... big difference than 160. 12,500 pins sold. Same as all the le deposits ...100 refundable . Its easy to put up a refundable deposit to get in early(y not).... will see how many drop when full payment is due in 5-6 month's. Coming up with additional 9500 and 12500 not to mention the shipping..... many will drop out.

In listening to the interview with Pinball News and Pinball Magazine, Eric said he first layed out the main toys associated with the 5 movies and then put the shots around them. Just curious as to what lines up with which movie.

1...The Black Pearl upper playfield
2...The Treaure Chest ball lock
3...The Spinning Disks??
4...??
5...The Devil’s Traingle sculpt on the left orbit

I guess the left ramp is one but I’m not sure what movie that goes with.

I know 3 is the left ramp. It has a diverter on the top that makes it go down the Maelstrom funnel (Eric was telling me that when I played it..though I never got movie 3 multiball).

4 would be the spinning disks since that is the map that was used to find the fountain of youth in the 4th movie. It was introduced in the third though.

Cool...I guess that clears it up. Thanks!!

absolutely factual. Jack was really proud to say at the initial seminar at expo "Wizard of OZ bill of material?! to HELL with that, I'm building what I want", which is crazy talk when you pre-announce the final price. It's one thing to just build a pinball, figure out your BOM, then announce.. it's another to announce retail price before you know what it's going to cost to build.

I design new product often at my job, and there's NO way we would announce pricing without not only building a prototype, but multiple revisions of the prototype until we were happy with the features, quality, strength, reliability, UL compliance, production volume vendor pricing, estimated production time it takes to build each unit so we can factor in hourly labor rate, production fixtures. I admire Jack's passion and alternative way of running a company, but it sure bit him in the ass early on. It's only because he keeps building great quality games that he continues to sell them.

Don't forget when stern made people create videos to prove they are worthy of a $15,000 SLE with beta code. I think 80? Was the run and who knows how many people submitted videos but didn't get accepted. Maybe Stern could have sold 300 who knows.

so that's 80 pinball people pretty much burnt from stern who have the money for $15,000 pinball machines. $12,500, $9,500 and $8,500 is chump change to some.

only because he's buying parts for the long haul. Flipper mechs, lamp boards, crap like that, that can be used on every game is bought in bulk. Not just for this run, but for many runs in the future. Has to pay for the jigs for assembly, assembly line material, and all the startup things he needs. He's counting all this shit and balling it up in WOZ total profit. Which it should be split up over 3 or 4 games. Plus he had to pay for a lot of screwups that happened through the learning process. Which he's not chalking up to loss, he counts it as cutting into WOZ's development cost. If you break it down, with all the releases and versions, his costs get less and less as you spread it out to more games. This is why I think Jack would benefit to put greed aside, and instead of prices continuing to go up. Drop back down to the 6500-7500 range and sell more games. Guarantee he would sell at least 1000-2000 more games by doing that. And more than enough make up the money from not cash grabbing from fewer sales.

That's a bit harsh. He's purchased a Disney license, had a design team and all the other people's efforts working on it for a year + and you think it should be priced below an MMR at $8,000 that's simply a rerun, no new layout, no new mechs and toys?

I think JJP are smart to not compete in the same space as Stern. If you want a cheaper pin buy stern pro, if you want a premium product that has all the bells and whistles you have an option. Some people drive toyota and only few drive Ferrari.

stern bought it, and POTC was $3800 NIB
Stern bought tron license from disney. It was $5400 NIB. and pros were $4200.

So you are really buying this shit that JJP's manufacturing costs go up by $500 every single release? Really. So Jacks manufacturing costs go up per game as fast as it took bally/williams to increase prices over 8 years.

Yes but what would stern charge today? stern pirates was 11 years ago. Now don't get me wrong as I think Tron is a brilliant game and have owned Stern potc in the past but neither compare "for me" to the recent release of JJPOTC

Apples vs oranges

Twice or three times the price. We now have a choice and its a great thing.

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if both were not on a race to see who can charge the most without losing enough customers to make it worthwhile, we would be getting 1 full version from stern for around $4700 by this point. Sure jack has more stuff on his playfield, but to cost twice as much? When you can make 2 completely separate games in full and sell them for half of someone else. You have to be able to realize the bottom line to make this game is considerably less than what you think. Which is fine, make 300% profit while you can. Because every level they shoot up, knocks another group of potential buyers out. Yes they are making more profit with less games, but eventually you are not going to sell enough games to make it worth while and either have to lower prices and sell more games again, or close shop.

And you have to admit. Sterns POTC has a badass toy in it. I'm not that big of a fan of POTC because of the rules, but that is one of the better toys out there. Up there with the Trex in JP and MM's castle.

I agree but Stern just sold $15,000 machines. I don't think bm66 compares to JJPOTC in value for money but I don't think bm66sle should have ever been 15k.

I guess once prices get too high the market will dictate.

Pinball is far from car manufacturing. However, many could have said Ferrari cater to the premium market, let's wait for it to out price the market. Then comes Lambo, Bugatti, Pagani, Aston Martin etc etc

If stern show there's a market for it, then cater towards their needs. I'm just thankful that there is a Bugatti in the pinball manufacturing world as our previous option was a toyota at Bugatti prices.

Sorry but I don't buy this whole "JJP are responsible for high pinball prices" argument that has somehow become Pinside folk law.

JJP were responsible for proving there is a market for a top end, full featured premium game with deep and complete code, solid build quality and plenty of toys that doesn't cut any corners.

Stern on the other hand were responsible for proving they could sell what was once a $4000 game for $8000.

Why are people getting bent about something being called limited? You can buy a “Limited edition” model vehicle and nobody gripes over production numbers. You get the Limited because it has better features, not because it’s rare.

Limited IS limited. Even if it takes 5 years to make and sell 1,500 games, they will only make 1,500 that way. It sounds silly, but you could call it a limited run of 10,000 games and maybe you never sell them all. Who cares? LE# is like a serial #.

Yes, but once the limited edition runs out, Jack will just make another limited edition for you to buy...sometimes one that's actually better than the one you forked over all that cash for. (The WOZ Frankenstein green edition is NOT what I'm talking about here, btw...)

WOZ: ECLE, standard, 75th Anniversary editions
The Hobbit: standard, limited, Smaug Gold, Black Arrow SE

New investment group came while Hobbit was going into production. So since Hobbit has wound down, we have:

Dialed In! Standard, limited, collectors editions
Pirates: standard, limited, collectors editions

Notice any new trend?

Dang! Gives me some perspective on how fast I'll have to dial when they announce Toy Story.

You are making a ton of assumptions...

Jersey Jack Pinball games cost much more then Stern games due the build quality, features offered, included LE features and the amount of code work that goes into each title.

Please stop blaming JJP for Stern raising prices. If anyone is to blame for Sterns price increases it's ourselves for buying their games as they have continued to raise prices while cutting quality, features, and code support.

Yes. The CE of DI never sold out, and POTC hasn't been released yet.

And PS - I hope you're right.

JJP cost more because there are buyers paying at the price point. Build quality, features offered, and code don't raise the price $500 per title.

Sure if you calculate all of their startup expenses and operating costs they weren't making enough or producing fast enough to cover their costs initially. Plus how long did it take them to get it out the door... that calculates into those costs. But now that they are established they should be able to turn a profit at $6,500 a pop. How many full time employees did they have when they built WOZ?

Stern was running a much larger operation at the time for a lot less so I'm pretty sure JJP could as well. Houdini is selling for 7k... are they going to lose money on it?

The CE of DI is limited to 150 total units of which most are shipped already. Of course there is the recurring issue that was the subject of so much discussion, that being that some distributors ordered a few more units than they had commitments for at the time. That said, it’s pretty close to out of stock at JJP and that will be the only run.

Smaller development team + existing contract manufacturing business. I can see how JJP cost way more money to get going.