Thank you for interviewing pinball ninja, GREAT show!

I'm sure there is a lot of marketing math going on there. If customers thought they could wait for a NIB title instead of buying up front, there wouldn't be the demand there is right now. Maybe they WOULD rerun a very old title, but there would have to be reason to (demand = profit). I think LOTR could easily sell for $5-6k in this market.

Love the TFTC story! What a great store owner! You should have told that other buyer "Hey, I think I have a kleenex in the car in case you're about to cry again"

So I take it KISS license was snagged by Stern then?

You can get a good look at a butcher's ass, but wouldn't you like to take his word for it? No wait, it's gotta be your bull.

Arrgh, why do I have to have a meeting early this morning. Looks like I'll be trying to cram an episode on my drive in.

yea, I can imagine what's going through his head right now "Man, I should really record a podcast.. Orrr I could play pinball. No really, I haven't done a show in over a week. Oh look at that green glow coming from AMH, one game won't hurt"

4 hours later..

"Crap! I gotta go to sleep. Well, no time to record a show now"

Best coast2coast episode ever, so much inside baseball. Love the story about Ben buying space shuttle just to piss off parker.

I'm also worried about wrestlemania being too much stop and flow with the upper wrestling ring. I mean I guess it's trudeau's style, but if this bombs it'll be 2 titles in a row that were low sellers.

ahhh!! you're a machine Nate, I can't keep up!

Nice job Nate, very well said.

FORward slash!

Every year we hear Dan complain about how hard it is to run a pinball show, and every year I'm very grateful for the increased blood pressure he endures from fighting the city. and OH MAN! oculus rift demos, sweet!

most entertaining C2C episode ever!

dude, you couldn't have had a better guest on the show (and timely). I don't even remember him being on the show before.

"Stern Pinball.. We ship 99.9% of all games in the world" ???

So let's do some math since nate loves it so. Let's assume the pinball pot is 15,000 games/year (and that's probably on the high side). So that means Stern ships 14,985 games per year, and every other manufacturer only builds 15? hell, Spooky ships that many in just 5 weeks and they're building out of a little warehouse.

"We have no competition on the commercial level"

Wha? What's considered commercial level? operators? I've seen plenty of wizard of oz machines on location.

I listened to the mp3, but the video is much longer so thanks for posting that. I eat up everything Ben posts, he's an amazingly interesting guy.

What the hell, now you have ed robertson on speed dial?

I enjoyed that interview. I see women get nearly bullied off this board all the time (unless they have thick skin), and it's really sort of sad how immature some guys are in this hobby. If you want to see more people getting into pinball, that includes women too.

I'd say Lucy is really pushing the boundry. Kiss is only showing the top half anyway (which is still covered by vests and gear).
WNBJM is highly offensive, and I'm amazed Stern agreed to it to be honest (but then again, they made playboy). Can you imagine if they made "Woah Tommy, big juicy cucumbers"?

This.. I watch stalker (tv show) and the statistics are interesting:
(1 in 6 women will be stalked, only 1 in 19 men will)
(1 in 6 women will be raped or attempted to be raped in their lifetime, men only 1 in 33)

Not that I'm comparing heckling, or being sexist to much more serious crimes, but if we're comparing genders, even a weak threat on a message board could raise flags for some people.

I still like his "5 slow thoughts" segment best

Imagine what the artist on this game feels like right now "Oh man, I really botched this up.. But HBO and management approved all my artwork, ARGG!"

Stern as a company, or Gary? I guarantee Gary doesn't have ears to much of anything. As for the designers (artwork, programmers, project managers), I can almost guarantee they have an ear to feedback.

Everyone needs to back off Nate. Nate seems to try to do his show unbiased like a news report, not some sort of investigation reporting where he grills them. Also you have no idea what the stipulation or agreements he had to make to even get John on the show. John tends to not want to be on any media, he didn't even agree to be on the TILT battle to save pinball DVD. The fact that he agreed to be on a podcast for 2 hours while he currently has 30 people sueing him probably means there's little he could talk about publicly. I know this might paint him in a better light than he deserves, but John can't control what Nate decides to comment on the next show. I just hope Nate talks about some of the feedback on the next episode.

Newton slam = tiger saw from TOM
magnets = John loved the magnasave on black knight
french curved ramps = same as all 3 pinballs he worked on at williams
Punch & judy hammer = probably stolen from some EM I don't know about
Jinn bottle = Same giant ball from cirqus voltaire
Reverse jinn mirror = same mirror from TOM
Full backglass with speakers hidden - repeat from cirqus voltaire
DMD in the back - repeat from cirqus voltaire
magic post - up-post stolen from space shuttle, which was stolen from an EM
spiral ramp = no flipper coil in the world would allow it to get up to the top

It's really laughable (in fact, people should laugh at him if they ever see him) seeing how his ego was so big how he was going to revolutionize pinball... by repeating all the same things you did in the past and just repackage it.

the ONLY innovation I saw (which never got done), and I don't know if it was John or Ben Heck's idea was the 4-D playfield where the lower playfield would rotate to reveal a 2nd playfield. It might limit would could get populated around it, but it's a great idea.

Right, but I think this is the issue most people have. Is it really "personal" money, or whatever money he has left from the $90k/year salary? Being that between 1999-2011 it seems his only income was the zizzle project, and some iphone app development, I would question he had a big savings account. In fact if he did have savings, why would he ask for pre-order money to begin with?

$7500, but who's counting? Toss in $2,500 for rent and you have a nice even $120k/year without spending a dime on utilities, capital equipment, materials, or salaries. Hell, nearly half the pre-order was spent in the past 4 years with that alone. Math is fun, pinball is hard.

Keeping this thread on topic, 5 fast thoughts

1. If anyone hears about a zidware auction give me a heads up
2. I say John gets his pinball award revoked, just like a baseball player that is later found out to be using steroids during his win
3. If John is going to be living out of his van soon, may I suggest streamwood high school to camp out. Cops probably won't bother you there parked overnight. Plus there's a strip mall within walking distance with 5 restaurants, probably could dumpster dive for some expired food.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Streamwood+High+School/@42.0305456,-88.1977127,704m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m2!3m1!1s0x880f07af73d012a9:0x7d812ebc98b55b6!6m1!1e1
4. Winter is coming, better invest in some warm blankets now
5. When pinballinventor.org expires next June, I call dibs on the domain

do it nate! do it do it do it!

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/the-one-and-done-podcast-would-it-work

https://www.uberconference.com

Hope Theresa recovers, she needs that knee to play pinball
You really could have waited to post a show, but always appreciated

Nate, the next pingeek!
"Who would have even dreamed to take video of a pinball show 10 years ago, I didn't know this stuff would sell did anybody else?"
pingeek[1].jpg

Just kidding nate, great cinematography. I hope you keep up with this.

I will never understand bingo or bagatelle, but that's just me

Dead flip is selling more sterns
Pinball browser is selling more pins

What's the next big thing that puts pinball over the top?

Been thinking about this pindemption model. Modern pinball in NYC does that "Apply hourly rates towards a discount of buying a pinball machine". Now obviously a Dave n busters or a gameworks couldn't do this, at least not on their own since they don't officially sell machines. However, what if they assumed a loss (say half the credit goes towards a fund), knowing that just getting bodies in the doors would allow them to sell more alcohol and food and still profit. Since they already have card swipes and tracking, it could be automated. You can go to their kiosks and check balance at any time. If you want to spend that credit, you get a printout and take it to local retailers and distributors they work with to spend it (even older pinballs if you desire). The distributors get paid by the establishments, and it gives those pinball resellers more business too.

Just seems like there's such a disconnect between the collector, and casual player. If you motivated casual public players to get into the collecting hobby, it would just make it grow more. Even I would probably participate playing publically more, knowing I'm banking money into an account since I've yet to buy a NIB game from Stern because of the price.

Can you just call ed robertson every week? Call it the robertson report

there's also a big difference between taking in money, and keeping money. There's a public league that runs in chicago, everyone chips in $20 for 6 meetups over 6 months. There are prizes at the end donated by Stern, and 3 custom trophies paid for by that money. I'm willing to bet even with $200 collected, there probably isn't any money leftover for personal gain. Anyone running a league is doing it for the love of pinball.

great guest spot on spooky's podcast Nate!

anyone that would pay $5500 for an iron man VE, would certainly pay $7500 for a spiderman VE!

I'm not even in the market for a NIB Stern and I'm pissed off at this pricing!

$3700 spiderman in 2007
$4,235.24 spiderman in 2015
$0 - new sounds, animations, and code update (that's part of R&D just like any other title)
$0 - artwork update (that's part of R&D just like any other title)
$0 - new toys (that's part of R&D just like any other title)
$20 steel protectors at pop bumpers
$40 VUK steel protector (aka cliffy)
$40 - anti wear magnet
$-50 - removal of toy mech
$80 - swap out incandescent to LED
$100 lasercut side armor
-------------------
$4465.24
So if we assume 500 units and amortize it, it cost them 1.5 million for the code updates and new toys (which again should be the same as any other title developed from scratch, embedded in the MSRP price).

You know what, I've changed my mind. I hope Stern starts charging $10k for NIB vault editions soon and they cause their own crash (except this time by charging too much instead of not enough). That way companies like Spooky and Heighway pinball can swoop in and and do things right at the right price by keeping low overhead. Clearly a building 3 times the size is a glutton cow that needs to be fed, and the only way to do that is by increasing margins and selling overpriced accessories.

No, because I know what your cost is. Had you just declared what the MSRP was I would have been in

Loved hearing from you Aurich, great opinions on a multitude of subjects

pets passing on sucks.. Sucks even more when you're on the road and not only can't say goodbye, plus the guilt you feel when your partner has to deal with it on their own. Had a cat since I was 12, lived to be 21. Finally had to put him down when he started getting a brain Arianism.

Soundcloud is 35 million in debt. Uploading shows there seems like a waste of time considering they are likely not going to sustain. Makes me wonder how podcast garden pays for all that space.

can't believe how bad the echo was on the live feed.. I can finally hear clearly on your version.

I heard Nate is going to be a "bare naked lady", some new mascot idea Ed had. Oh also Ed wants Nate's employee discount on taylor guitars.

potty mouth

acting career or a different nate?
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm7727087/

gary_meme8_(resized).jpg

I HATE that tired old excuse. Imagine saying the same thing about cars. "You know, driving is on the road. Car's purpose is to get you from point A to point B".. Ok dad, it's nice to have a car with features on it like an LCD dash, LCD radio, heated seats, lane assist.

If nothing else, more pixels gives you the ability to display all 4 scores during tournament play. 128 x 32 pixels is CRAZY by today's standards. Most bank displays have switched to just buying big screen TV's to display rates because it's cheaper to buy a $400 television and a raspberry pi, and just have it display a slideshow than spend big bucks on a dot display.

You have an extra 1 at the end

Yea, like Jody Dankberg making statements like this:
"We probably do 99.9 percent of the games shipped. That's not an industry, it's a monopoly."
http://www.polygon.com/2016/10/11/13240766/stern-pinball-photo-essay-tour

So let's do the math on that (nate loves to). Let's say stern builds 10k... let's even say 20k. .1% would be 20 games. I'm pretty sure Jersey jack, Heighway and spooky combined build more than 20 pins a year. It's probably closer to 1,000 pins.

So let's reverse the math then. If the competition builds 1,000 pins a year, and Stern builds 99.9% of the market, then that means Stern builds 990,000 pins a year.. Almost 10 times more than every pinball manufacturer in 1992 built. That would mean 19,038 pins a week, or 3800 pinballs per day. That's twice as many units as Ford builds F-series vehicles.

I see you kept all your games. I hope work chipped in to pay for moving costs

I have no issues.. I use gpodder to pull my podcasts from RSS feeds. I ditched itunes 3 years ago when I switched from iphone to android.

http://www.podcastgarden.com/podcast/podcast-rss.php?id=164

If you're on a PC it sucks. It's a hog, you can't access your photos easily.. It's constantly updating. We had an issue at work where our QC CMM machine stopped working, they thought maybe a storm fried something. Nope, the latest itunes update corrupted system files on that computer, starting working again when they uninstalled itunes.

it's been too long since a coast to coast episode, where are you Nate?

Music to my ears

66367601[1] (resized).jpg

That's what WWOP is for.. I wanna hear nate talk about all the pinballs news in the past 4 months. Come on Nate, you don't need a laptop. Just open up a recorder app on your iphone and just start talking. We don't care about the quality.

I was really hoping Nate went to the dutch pinball open

Seems like Nate is busy at his new position. My guess is he'll get a moment of inspiration, scribble down a bunch of topics on his notebook, and just record an impromptu show out of the blue. We don't need the fancy intro music, just need good dialogue.

this is what we're talkin bout nate.. Don't think for a minute your podcast needs to be edited perfectly, sound drops, talking about the latest news. If you simply have to record mostly about life with a cheap pair of usb headphones, I think most of your listeners are cool with that. Just don't go dark for months at a time.

i dont think its an "obtaining pinball" issue. sounded like hes still in a temp apartment that doesnt allow noisy pinball

Missed ya.. figured since you were playing pinball with Ed on facebook there might be a chance of a new episode.

Keep them coming Nate!

Podcast garden seems to always have issues. Surprised more people don't use soundcloud, seems to be rock solid.
I'll just keep hitting refresh

always grateful for a new show Nate!

yeaaaa.. this sounds more like a rebranding of the show to fit in the landscape of the vast podcast world.

yea, put his RSS link into a podcatcher
http://www.podcastgarden.com/podcast/podcast-rss.php?id=164

wow, 62 days between cornerstone games!