Congrats to Toyshock for beating Stern to market with a sub-$500 pinball machine. Not much here to repair - cabinet, monitor, cables, pc, lights and buttons, and monitor or cabinet being the most likely point of failure. Virtual Pinball does have its advantages and these are Gottlieb’s best titles other than Stargate. If these sell, expect to see titles offered from other manufacturers.

Ironically the point of virtual pinball is one cabinet and multiple games. One should be able to add modules to existing game without having to buy an additional machine.

This sounds pretty fun. Will you be spending the first hour plus of podcast assembling the pin? It took me six hours to assemble a 1up arcade and that was very boring to watch.

Toy Shock is the only one building a $400 pin and surely many compromises were made. They are not trying to appeal to a Pinball collector who wants upgrades. Screen size was probably the first thing they figured out. This undoubtedly requires material to be purchased in bulk and for the end result to be one simple product ie all the same. They probably did some market research to pick $400 as the point that people are willing to spend money on entertainment. To that end, if they were to increase screen size and offer upgrades, they wouldn’t be able to hit the target numbers. Keep in mind, the large bezel may be required to provide structural integrity.

Working backwards and considering hypothetical unit costs ...$400 price - $75 profit - $25 design, marketing and customer service - $25 license - $25 transportation = $250 cost of goods. Not easy to manufacture the entire kits for that bill of material when a full size wood cabinet costs $1k.

Yeah I have always believed the magic number was $500, but I won’t be buying one either. It needs a bigger screen to capture and keep my attention and it sounds like the CPU might be maxed out. Their low cost, Volkswagen Beetle approach will be a great one to watch. These are not sold on Amazon yet, but should they appear in the future for $400 with free shipping, they’d reach another audience.

Black Hole looks best. Hope the cabinet image is reversed before printing.

Went to Brandsmart tonight and they had 6 1up arcade machines set up. It was nice to try them all. I am sure they would have offered the 3/4 pinball machines if they had been available. Would like to judge the flipper lag myself, since that is a known issue.