A short on a node board can destroy it, costing hundreds of dollars and days to fix. A short on a Sam game results in a blown fuse or transistor, pennies and minutes to fix. These are pinball machines, it's inevitable something will break, which system would you rather have when it does?

Reads like a sales pitch to me. The fact that we as users cannot easily and quickly repair games means the people who wrote that didn't care about anything except reducing costs. The games may, however, actually be more efficient.

Nobody knows the full stats except stern. What we do know is that pinball machines break. Pinball machines with node boards break. Pinball machines without node boards are realtively easy, quick and inexpensive to fix. Pinball machines with node boards are difficult, time consuming and expensive to fix out of warranty.