I got lectured about how the internet works followed up by him doing exactly what he said I can't do... It's quiet funny to watch play out. It's like the naive have been let out into the wild for the first time...

When you've been following the company, its employees, their statements, interviews, and tours for 15 plus years... You may know more than the guy who just assumes the company is the carbon copy average mechanical assembly plant.

Gotta be more to it than that.. as output has seemed to stall. If it were simply stern would ship 150 games a week, and now want to ship 300.. but are stuck at 150.. we'd at least have the 150 games pouring out a week. They seem to spit and spurt right now.. which infers a general part availability issue.

Churchhill has been mentioned before in rumors.. but we haven't heard anything solid besides 'suppliers'... for a problem that has been going on for like 9months now.

Ritchie, keefer, and others used to post. I think Jodi had an account too (too lazy to look).

When people don't treat people like people... they won't stay around to take the unnecessary abuse.

No - it's called DISTRIBUTION.

Do you call your car company for your order status or your car dealer?

I guess you just can't handle the truth... its the same.

If Stern were to try to correct every idiot on the internet they'd need an army. Pros didn't even start shipping till end of april/start of may. Anyone who thought they were getting an LE at the end of april was delusional.

or he could have said... do some research before coming in an trying to tell everyone the way the world SHOULD BE... but since you needed it spelled out..

When jack launched jjp and had a ton of preorders right off the bat... That's when stern pivoted... Starting by rehiring George Gomez to lead game design and their subsequent attempts at new marketing (the transformers and men videos etc) were highly visible. The le games in 2010 were very limited in concept... But they had been trying the alternate level games (Costco, etc) leading up to that time. It's after woz that stern followed that you can make Cadillac games and people would pay for them.

If I screwed that timing, sorry, but the gist is the same. Stern rebooted their inhouse team and assigned Gomez as a new position to establish building feature rich games, and getting the talent in house vs relying on the idea of contracted designers like they had been relying on for the 'big name' designers. Re-establishing the in-house team with a vet like Gomez at the top was really what I was focusing on.

The easy at which the Stern PF gets out of skew is a negative of the Stern system. The WMS design keeps the PF square when moving in and out much better IMO. Of course the locking, vs the 'slam it over the lip' is better too IMO.

No, that is a macro view of the world, that misses the actual activities within Stern itself and specifically the pinball industry. Stern had been squeezing the BOM for some time. They flirted with the 'A lister' designers by contracting SR and PL but they kept the inhouse team on the cheaper side. Gary was focusing on building cheap games to meet his intended operator price point.. and as volumes kept sliding, he kept building cheaper and cheaper games trying to make the numbers work (and we got crap like NBA, 24, IJ, etc). Then, with the increased pressure of the recession, they got ultimate cutback and lay off more than half the design staff in 2008. Gary was cutting to the bone trying to keep production going and things were iffy. Then in 2009, Dave Peterson comes into the picture as an investor and leader in the business and Stern starts trying new concepts to diversify.. build more than one type of pinball machine, sold through different channels, etc. But the 'build them with these mandatory features, and build them cheap' was still Gary's mantra, and we get lightweight games like IM.

Pinballnew's 2009 year in review highlights Gary's comments about the design trend at the time - http://www.pinballnews.com/comment/2009.html

People were clamoring for richer feature games.. but Gary won't hear it, arguing his model is what is necessary to make it all work. To his credit, he did keep the ship afloat, but the trajectory was not good and home buyers in particular were calling for change. At the end of 2010, JackG believes he knows the potential market is strong enough to make that cadillac game that Gary Stern refuses to make.. and shuts down his relationship with Stern to create JJP. They introduce the WOZ concept promising to build the best game every made, promising innovation, and basically everything that Stern refuses to do.

JJP also immediately starts hiring all the top talent Stern threw to the curb. JJP promised to build a cadillac and was hiring industry vets and collector favorites to do it. JJP hired JoeB, Keefer, Nordman, Greg Freres and other well known players. JJP offers the WOZ pre-order with the promise of the Emerald City LE edition and price discounts in exchange for deposits and things go gangbusters. The market responded to JJPs moves positively... while meanwhile Stern is sitting there trying to build the Gary formula game as cheaply as possible with a skeleton crew.. heavily relying on John Borg, who up to that time had been more of a C/B lister... rather than the celebrity designers.. and relying on contracting out most disciplines he can (like art, sound, etc).

Yes, this timing also aligns with the rebound in the overall economy, but it was the movement within the pinball world that finally got Stern to pivot. Left facing new competition that is on a hiring spree, promising the world and everyone thinking this is the second coming and throwing their money at it.. Stern pivots. Gary capitulates and mends fences with SteveRitchie in March 2011 and promising he will be able to build the kinds of games they think are needed, not just Gary's vision of the world (aka NBA). They hire the king, and then go onto to rebuild the inhouse talent pool by bringing in Gomez to lead engineering, and try to lock up more talent, hire in more staff.. and start approaching game marketing entirely different. The first real splash and launch of this new company strategy was evident with Transformers. Multiple pimped editions, multimedia marketing, etc. Stern starts marketing directly to customers and not just Operators first (yet Gary is still adamant about which market matters first.. Ops)

This is also the time when the market starts being flooded with new types of customers.. and the rise of the direct home buyer starts taking off like crazy. The market is flooded with new buyers looking to buy NIB.

The recession has a lot to do with the buying demand returning... but it was the direct challenge to Stern and the arms race of what JJP was promising and building in his staff and potential that posed the threat to Stern. When the market reacted so positively to the WOZ preorder and early teasing, that's when the new blood at Stern saw the opportunity and rushed to address this "new" (or to Stern.. forgotten) market segment with NEW price points and features.

JJP made the moves Gary refused to do... proved the market viability... set a new standard.. and Stern had to react.

Remember.. Gary preached if another Pinball company was started... only one would survive or both would fail. He was wrong in that, and wrong in what the market actually wanted and would tolerate.

Obviously there are other outside activities in this 2009+ era that opened up the new demand and customer base.. but Stern's change in product direction and staffing was a direct reaction to industry shifts started by JJP... not Gary reading the tea leaves about the economy recovering.

You skipped over the truth where in that period Gary was selling AC/DC, Metallica, ST, premiums, LEs, and more... and not NBA, CSI, and 24 as he was before. That's not by accident.

You need to look around.. it was the people willing and eager to buy 6k+ games that drove the prices up.. not JJP per say. They just proved the market was there.

When people are spending $300 on toppers instead of $300 games like we used too... you can't blame the manufacturers...

That's true about one particular offer.. but you've closing your eyes to rest of the reality like they didn't even try to shop it around, they didn't even give their reboot a valid shot, they broke it up, and the commentary from the other side who did pursue williams and were basically weren't give any legit opportunity.

Its even simpler than that...

One curve was pointing down... and had lots of overhead
One curve was pointing UP with a bright future and much less overhead...

Pinball was an anchor, gaming was an opportunity.

Reposting from another thread... For those of you who were not in the hobby back in 2005-2011.. and wonder what people are talking about with Gary Stern's approach to things..

Turn back the clock to 2008, when after Stern has been struggling and the economy is really headed south he basically lays off everyone in design sans a handful of people. Here you have Keith Johnson, a player turned game coder and designer hang out some dirty laundry about what happened inside Stern... and then you get 'The King', Steve Ritchie himself chiming in on what was wrong.

https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!msg/rec.games.pinball/pt79ouRvHpw/IFsx_cjge1UJ

It should be very eye opening for those who only know the 2011 and later years of being in the hobby.

Probably more shocking for people is realizing just how dead people thought the industry had gotten and no one saw any light at the end of the tunnel.

Yeah it was pretty clear at that time that SR was DONE with Gary... So when they announced his direct hiring in 2011 it was quite a change in direction. Kind of what I am trying to get people to see... Stern did a hard yank on the steering wheel. Doing what was needed to bring SR back meant some serious concessions

Not all kills are instant...

To jacks defense here tho... Operators care about earnings far far far more than unit cost. Unit costs are depreciated and recovered in resale. Earnings only come from the players. The coin drop is virtually the only thing that matters... And pin wasn't earning it's keep verse games that earned more AND has less upkeep.

It's why every pitch to ops is about earnings, not margins.

Or more in context... just because WMS and Bally still had successful titles in the 80s.. that doesn't mean the fatal shot had not already been fired. Pinball was no longer the king of the arcade and no longer were its burdens so easily overlooked. The industry had pivoted away from pinball as they had viable alternatives now that would earn more and were less hassle.

Talk about trying to start shit about nothing...

This was a simple email from Stern to it's business partners... not to the general public, not a published document, not to customers, etc. It's a 5 minute email written to give Stern's distributors an update.. not the new latest book published.

It's this kind of petty, pointless nitpicking that keeps companies from wanting to interact with the public directly. If you are going to grab your pitchforks over some stupid typos in an internal email, insisting that they are cutting corners because they didn't have proofers.. well you're just setting yourself up for failure.

Focus on what matters, not minutia of ZERO consequence.

customer registration with channel accounts.. issue done. Stern could credit the channel for the margin they'd normally get on a sale.

Now, what it does negate is the ability for the channel to get additional markups.

I like cake...

And that has about as much to do with my last post as your reply did :p

Typos in an internal email have nothing to do with their playfield issue.

Tell that to the VE threads

Because the email is about availability for the products the distributors are selling... Not a stern corporate plan they (dust) aren't selling can crusher so it's not relevant to share that info with them