I appreciate what Aurich is saying, and his point is valid, but that logic would suggest that a potential buyer avoid ANY games from any company other than, maybe, Stern. (Even with Stern, there are concerns about availability of game-specific node boards a few years out. I know of customers who have waited months for replacements for node boards for Sterns currently in production!) It's not even just PCBs ... for example, if your game's plastic ramp suffers a large break, is an OEM or repro replacement available?

So I suppose if your absolute top priority when buying a game is to ensure that the game will be serviceable for decades to come, stick to EMs or solid states where you already know that all replacement parts are readily available. Otherwise, it's difficult to do more than look at the present-day reliability and customer support of any game, because it's just a gamble to predict what's going to happen 5+ years down the road.

Indeed, very good to have these conversations. I think we can all agree that if someone likes a game from Stern, or American, or Spooky, or Pinball Brothers, or whoever, they want to have confidence that they can continue enjoying that game indefinitely.

And personally (NOT speaking on behalf of American or any other company) I totally agree with you... I'd love to see all companies provide complete schematics for all their games. And maybe even some escrow repository service for everything from code, to plastics, to molds, etc, that gets released, say, 10 years after a game is no longer in production. It's in the interest of all manufacturers to give their customers a warm fuzzy that their products will remain viable far into the future... and that is easier than ever to accomplish, with all design being done digitally these days.

Also: quoting Aurich's last paragraph, just for emphasis.

@flynnibus, what you describe is why I was advocating for this info to be escrowed and "time capsuled" for the benefit of long-term repairability. Today's IP offers companies a competitive advantage today. Today's IP is unlikely to offer a competitive advantage a few years down the road -- the only value is keeping "obsolete" equipment running. And if a company is still in business and servicing old equipment at the end of the "time capsule" timeframe, they could simply extend the timeframe without releasing the IP.