I don't care much for the 8K price but I don't buy new pins either, except for WOZ. I bought WOZ at $6500 and I am buying THLE and I will buy PL's game if I can afford it. There is no way I could pull 8K out of my ass to buy a pin so their layaway plan works for me. No pin is worth what they are selling for now but it is what it is. Jack raised the bar along with the price then Gary just raised the price but as long as people are jumping to buy his games he will only raise the price and leave the bar where it is or lower it if he can get away with it.

No doubt Hobbit is shaping up to be an awesome game. However, I don't think pinball companies can flourish at the 8k price (plus tax and shipping.) You cannot count on selling 1000 LE's to home users/collectors alone (much less 1500.) So JJP will still have to rely heavily on route operators. Despite WOZ currently earning ... the verdict is still very much out on sustaining long-term earnings and what the ROI might ultimately be. Unless it's earning bank on location (for at least a couple years) ... game prices will have to get a little bit cheaper again.

you can pull anything currency related out of you arse?

I agree with you except for certain exceptions. If you pick the right theme you have a built in market. JJP (woz and th) and recently stern (acdc and Metallica). But those are limited in nature. I think $5-6k is the sweet spot medium term. Love what I am seeing in the Hobbit. If JJP has the HP license then that will be big dollar as we'll.

you can pull anything currency related out of you arse?

Not lately, no

Never stand behind zr11990 in line at the bank!

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/jjp-woz-hobbit-update

I uploaded some pictures from the JJP open house with some good pictures of the playfield and assembly line.

Sounds about right. I saw an Avengers popcorn tin with the exact same clip art as the pin, except with better printing quality.

I saw an Avengers popcorn tin with the exact same clip art as the pin, except with better printing quality.

I LOLed at that. Well maybe snickered a little, out loud.

It is best not to look to closely at the artwork on the PFs.

That's what I meant when I said Smaug will be the game. Thanks for putting it better than I did.

I like the barrels. They look great and it makes sense unto have them on the pops. Cool.

If they were lit so the inside of the barrel looked like water moving, that would be cool.

One of the Avengers translites is just the DVD cover, so that's not really surprising.

Good point - if there is only one Smaug, there should be a toy or an image on the PF, not both. But I'll put that down as a minor quibble.

I look at it like you see him in the back ground as the journey begins (play field) and once you knock everything down in the way to get into the mountain you come face to face with the real "live" Smaug

For what it's worth, though I think the PF is nice. I would actually remove Smaug from the PF art, and make the Lonely Mountain as large as it was on the prior PF - and remove the dragon. I am not a fan of the look of dragon in that particular pose, and I wouldn't use a 'fire breathing' image of him either. So why have the mountain so large? I think it is a core piece of the story, they spend half the book trying to get there, and after they do, the main 'evil' lives there, and the rest of story is fighting around and for it...

If however, the top left was not going to be dedicated to Smaug, and instead did something like have Dol Guldur, or something along those lines, I would definitely have Smaug in the PF image front and center. Otherwise, a nice toy in the corner would do nicely. Especially it the toy is very different in looks to the movie version. If he is too different then you are looking right at something in the center that is going to reference how different/good he actually looked in the movies. I just wouldn't want that directly competing with the toy is all I am saying.

I don't want to come off negative, just wanted to add my 2 cents. Love what I am seeing otherwise

Sounds like a good mod......

The toys look fantastic. Did not expect this quality. When smaug is big and still detailed like these.... Frikking awesome.

Anyone wondered who is in the barrel?

Are there any high-res close up shots of the new playfield yet?

A few hear.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/jjp-woz-hobbit-update

There were some close-up photos earlier in the thread:
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/photo-of-keith-johnson-with-hobbit-playfield/page/2#post-1828792

Dunno about the obsession with toy detail quality. Sure it's nice, but (for Smaug) I'm more concerned about what it *does* than the fine details, as long as it looks reasonably cool. People expect the world for an $8k pin? I dunno; I've seen lots of people here pay that for a game that has just a couple of off-the-shelf toys, a laser pointer, some extra LEDs, and a single interactive mechanism....