I think the node board concept is a freekin disaster for everybody, but maybe stern in the short run. In the long run it probebly is a deathblow to them aswell.

A modern pinball obviously costs lots of money, which is understandable, since players expect more advanced blingies and deeper rulesets, but there is no reason to rely on small series of non easily replaceable electronics.

If the pinball manufacturers wishes to survive and ask the customers to bare the costs of theese wonderful machines. Playfields need to last and parts needs to be accesable over time and easy to change.

My dreamsetup as a customer is a windows computer and adding to that a controller card for all the lights and outgoing stuff(like motors for toys), all theese can be dmx controlled, which makes the board a breeze to change and securing lasting spares. Then you need an additional board for sensory input for switches and such. theese boards could also ofc be standardized.

When the prerequisites are met from the manufacturers, we customers can buy theese expensive pieces of art, fully confident that they will last.

Spike is the exact opposite of this concept.

Good luck repair multilayer circuit boards with integrated transistors and components.
Good fucking luck.

This is somewhat true. I´m looking at buying a walking dead if i can make my family( Wife ) accept the artwork (we have three small kids), but i would never buy a spike machine. In fact i think spike can be the nail in the coffin for stern (pun intenden).

On that topic, who in their right mind would buy a used spike?

It will be interesting to see. Williams et al seems to hold their value, and stern sam´s seems to do fine on the used market.
How do you think Spike will fare?

Do not buy board?

After all the customers are in charge.

Agreed. Some of the older games are somewhat protected, due to large series and still lots of them beeing around.
I also think that older boards are built more robust, if not so advanced.

This would have been manageable if the manufacturers took longevity into the production design, but mostly it´s the other way around.
I think the reason is that unique parts with special traits requires original spare parts, from which the companies can benefit and explore the customers even more.

Example: The smaug head in the hobbit. Seems to break now and then, costs 500$ to replace. Where will owners be in 10 years if jjp went belly up, or decide not to support the game anymore?

Now if the head itself was sturdy normal plastic attached to the playfield via a standard ball barring controlled via two normal rc-servos and switches. It would have been fixable forever.