I just think declaring it’s $200 with absolute conviction six times per page is a little overboard considering we don’t actually know what the cost.

Maybe you are right? But who knows? We’ll find out soon enough, so why keep deliberately spreading misinformation?

But hey you are on a fucking tear these last couple days so don’t let me stop you.

Want air quotes around it every time, will that make you feel better? Or how about $XXXXXX ? We all know it's simply a number for the sake of dialogue.. the number itself isn't that critical because...

It ain't free... it's gonna cost per game... and unless Stern turns over a new leaf somehow between now and the end of the month it I am not going to be that far off I bet.

So have your angst about the SPECIFIC number - but there will be a number these features need to offset and justify.

You're getting hung up on nitpicks and hiding from the point.

What do you think the number is going to be Levi?

flynnibus has been dead on with his analysis of IC so far, but this is slightly off. Stern will sell the retro kits closer to $300 for sure and more for games like Batman and Elvira that require special aprons.

If Stern really wanted to see IC adopted they wouldn’t be making a profit on the readers/kits (and perhaps subsidizing them - think giving away the razor to sell the blades).

I’m sure there will be some use of IC moving forward (because it will be built into the game) but there’s no way most ops are going to pay to retrofit existing games at hundreds per.

Can I ask someone to post (or perhaps PM me with) the email address from which the account verification request comes? I think my ISP is aggressively filtering messages again, and I need to add it to my "safe senders" list...

[email protected]

Thanks kindly, lemme give this a shot...

Update: Did the trick... Thanks gambit3113 !

Probably around 200 bucks

If it were price is right I’d say $149

$149 or under and everyone will get it.

Did yours update to a basic account?

I think the price will be better than most people think it's going to be. Stern has a lot riding on IC and needs a good launch to get this off the ground.

Cheers, it pulled in my All Access subscription. Renewal date is unchanged too.

What are you expecting?

Email support. Zach Sharpe reached out to me within 12 hours.
[email protected]

Your name is “King Vidiot” yet you don’t own either VIDIOT game????
BRUH.

I would think somewhere around cost, but what that is I have no idea. I'm sure they see a lot of future income with IC or why even invest all the time and money into it. So if it is about future profits, they need to get it out in the wild. It's like video consoles. Very little profit in console sales, but big bucks for games etc.

I sure hope not! I was trying to be optimistic that Stern would be aggressive and price the kits on the lower side.. hence my $150-$200 estimate. I think if they reach that $300 plus level they are going to have a hard time getting Ops to buy retrofits - especially across the board.

Hopefully Stern has been stock piling these things and can actually ship them in volume... can't have their usual 'maybe in 4 months we'll have it again' approach they take with accessories.

The privacy document really doesn't make any distinctions yet about Operators and data they might collect from Ops or make available to Ops. At this point, I'm just hoping there is a more completely baked story really soon. With Godzilla hitting the street now... Ops need to know.

I’m not gonna throw anyone under the bus, and I was tempted to say this a few days ago, but the distributer I talked to said the retrofit kits will be $180. Seemed pretty confident, and is pretty reputable.

I presume that was for the games that don’t require new aprons?

The idea of making some bucks off the ops to retrofit existing spike2 games along with the idea of increasing prices to cover NIB machine inclusion and the addition of a subscription revenue stream coupled with shared operator revenue possibilities was obviously enough revenue enhancement to green light this whole program. They will run with this model until it plays out and move on to the next system, probably ap based.

I just hope I can put money directly into games, press start and play pinball. 3 balls, game ends, repeat. Uninterrupted. Any time I can disconnect from everything else and just enjoy myself in the moment would still be a bargain at several times the typical location price.

As long as I can do that I'll continue to dump money into location games for hours at a time.

If every game starts, ends or is interrupted, delayed or otherwise encroached with ads for the service, pleas to log in or taunts that I'm missing out on something, I'll dump that money into something that doesn't do that.

You will always be able to do this. Unless of course you earn some EBs. Haha

I'm a little disappointed in the game instructions section. It's as sparse as the instruction sheet on the machine itself. I was hoping for elaborate visual tutorials with screenshots of the playfields and arrows and diagrams highlighting which shots to make, etc. If they were really interested in making this thing top-notch, that's something they could have paid a low/no cost intern to put together already at launch. The fact that this area has such little attention and it's something that would be relatively easy for them to make nice, gives me little hope of where they will take this in the future. My dreams of having IC work such that I play a game, go into my phone/PC and can analyze my recent play and see what shots I made/missed or offer suggestions about how I can score better based on what shots I did/didn't make in certain game modes is almost surely not going to happen if they can't even put together a static visual guide to the rules of their own games.

The retrofit kits need to be $99 or less for any serious consideration of these getting installed en masse.

Stern's annual fee should easily support any lack of profits on the kits themselves.

Well, guess not all operators see the value.
Probably inevitable to see a few being flipped to recover some cost.

https://pinside.com/pinball/market/classifieds/ad/122291

Yup! $100 for the module style and $200 for games requiring a new apron + module sounds far more reasonable. Stern should be focused on onboarding as many customers as they can to the platform versus short term profits on retro kits.

Usernames must be more than 5 characters.

Uh...yeah.......well..... f...r...a....x.........1...2....3.....4........F-----

Fraxxx!

So much to unpack there. Some, just not true or valid.

"Why $500obo? That was the price increase on this game to cover it and it is currently limited."

Stern's site clearly shows Insider Connected markup as $300 retail. If someone buys that for close to $500, we have really gone mad.

for the TL;DR crowd:

it's way overpriced, it might not work in your machine, the seller thinks it's probably stealing both the player's and operator's personal and financial information, it might be useful to someone who wants to commit fraud, and NO REFUNDS!

I'll take it! Welcome back, Whysnow!

He was pretty forthcoming in the ad that people are hinting at MUCH less direct from Stern when they're actually available. I see no problem with the ad.

Wow, if he was only this paranoid about Kevin Kulek's ability to produce anything in his Mom's basement.

It's a clever protest; more high profile than a post buried in a thread, and no one can directly reply to it. Pretty sure he doesn't expect any takers at that price.

It's not clever. It's petulant and attention grabbing. You don't like it. Cool. Thanks for airing your laundry on the classifieds.

Maybe I'm being a little harsh on it, but charging more than you paid and misrepresenting the price increase is particularly irking considering the content of the ad before the sham price.

I actually agree with several of Hilton's points in his ad on this one... If he was actively posting in this thread I'd give him an upvote on this topic.

His objections are 100% ridiculous because you don't have to connect to a network if you don't want to. Not possible for Stern to get any information in that case.

EDIT: Hilton reports he had issues setting up the machine without connecting to a network. IMO that’s an issue. Not everyone will want it connected and some of those willing to connect will want to know what data is being connected and who it’s being shared with.

Pretty sure Hilton is banned from participating here in any way besides the market, so you have to empathize with his efforts to work around the system.

And as there is no policy here against joke/protest abuse of the Market forum, I'm sure we can look forward to more insightful releases from the Desk of Hilton J T.

My advice to him is to stop purchasing Stern product, and stock his route with nothing but Spooky machines, sit back and watch the money roll in, and fill his bathtub up with the oceans of cash that will result from an all-Halloween route.

Wouldn't be the first time LOL.

I figured something else out that will no doubt irk someone, somewhere.

Fair point, that was misleading. I still don't have a problem with the ad.

I'm gonna be honest, I don't really know the specifics of all the drama surrounding the guy but there seems to be a bunch of a pre-existing conflicts at play.

No no no, don't misread it... He's actually a really nice guy, respects opinions outside his own, and never gets confrontational. I think his ad is just one big misunderstanding.

Oh, it's definitely that stuff too.

xXx--69--FRAX--69--xXx is still available, can't believe you didn't go with that!

George Gomez specifically said in his interview that they are keeping the price of the retrofit kit as low as possible and they aren't trying to really make any profit on it. We'll all just have to hang tight and see exactly what that means, like Levi said.

In the meantime, feel free to post your username over in my thread for sharing your SIC account
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/stern-insider-connected-share-your-usernames-here

This is pinball, not Xbox Live. ;0

Not Xbox Live... yet!

Has Stern explained why they show a cost with and without IC on their website? It seems to indicate they value the upgrade at $300.

JP Prem: MSRP $7,799 (Insider Connected Equipped $8,099)

Because one will be the price you pay if the machine is already in stock at a distro. The other price is for games that leave the factory here on out as the kits will be in the games already.

And when have they done that before after a price increase?

this is different. if you buy one already in stock, it's not equipped with the IC, so they can't charge you the IC equipped price, despite across the board increases for all new production.

Yeah so out of box experience so far?

These guys are not ready for operators.

No way to setup a location… you just register the game to an insider account and it treats it like your personal game.

You add the wifi details, then scan a IC profile QR code to link the game to that profile. Then goto your profile to complete the registration. There you add an address for the game. But then says that address will be used for all future games….

A new group is seen in your IC account “machines”

You can’t cancel a pending/incomplete registration… but you can unregister a game once registration is complete.

Other notes… the QR advertisement takes the spot you’d use for pricing cards… and no card designs are provided that include both iC branding and pricing.

One interesting feature… after you add wifi details it gives you a QR code you can save to streamline wifi setup on your other games.

We were able to setup the game and play without using IC at all as well. So fully optional - but it is all or nothing at this point for IC enabled functions. No control over what features are on/off etc that i have seen yet