Quoted from teekee:

They were able to buy a machine even though they couldn't necessarily afford it

Quoted from islandpinball:

If they just stuck with the original MMr whatever the number was, this would be a non-issue today.

Quoted from Miguel351:

Well, in hindsight, if PPS was making them as exact copies of the originals, and seeing as how they're using Stern to assemble them(unknown back when it was announced), I'm fairly certain that price point could've been much lower(given that they wanted to achieve the same percentage profit margin).

Keep in mind that just about everything in the backbox is gone and a whole new set of boards is in place under the playfield. It's not cheap to develop a whole new system like that. Those development costs get put into the retail price of the item and voila, $8k. I think if they knew going in that they'd have Stern assembling the machines, given their employees experience building largely identical machines, they might not have gone with the new board system and kept it true to the original, therefore lowering the price.

My guess is, they knew what the selling price point was going to be before they even started this project because they knew that's what the market could bear at the time. They knew they could undercut original MM sales by thousands and have people lining up to buy them. Then, upon seeing the profit margin being larger than they anticipated, they decided to innovate and spend into that margin to make a better product(more durable, easier to service, uses boards of their own design not someone else's, upgradable, etc.).

Where this new remake board design might take a hit is when it comes time to remake other titles like MB and AFM. I don't know how much "universality" they built into their design.

I could be wrong, but those are my semi-educated guesses.

Quoted from Teekeesuxcock:

You are an idiot!

Quoted from Glarrownage:

Jalpert, what happened to your post? Someone hack your account and type that out or something? lol