Let’s just say the Disney vampires have smelt an artery ripe with the fresh blood of post COVID baby boomer nostalgia related excess cash and have started circling the sky waiting to swoop down and relieve us of it. If they keep making games as good and fun as they have been recently, the price is the only thing I have against Stern. Otherwise, buckle up, the price roller coaster has just left the station… can quality and entertainment survive the profit maximizing onslaught? Be sure to tune in next week, same Pin-Time, same Pin-Station.

Six sigma in a nutshell:
Continous improvement.
Apply to EVERY ASPECT OF YOUR BUSINESS.
Rate everyone yearly on "what have you improved for me lately?"
Promote those who can, demote those who can't.

It becomes a bloodbath of cut throat cost cutting and the ONLY thing preventing this from destroying a business is if the customers stop buying the "improved" product due to reduced quality from cost cutting measures. We tried it at Honeywell. Boeing said "not liking it" so they had to reverse a bunch of "improvements" before Boeing would accept quotes from us again.

Now we just wait as the employees at Stern duke it out to see who can cut costs the most as the product quality heads south and the MSRP goes up to maximize profits.

If Stern goes all blood lusty, cost cut crazy- reduces coil counts, thins out stamped metal parts, reduces steel gauges and strength requirements, turns pinball machines back into disposable cash generation devices like the old Gottlieb wedgeheads, we will see nothing but the same crap- different themes on top of similar if not identical layouts, generic rulesets, who’s depths are shallower than a 90’s Bally Williams. And here I thought Gary was saving pinball, but turns out he was just maneuvering for a better golden parachute?!? Thanks a lot Gary if true.

Sorry, the reference is to the “commodity” aspect of Gottlieb wedgeheads, that they were very generic and similar from title to title. They were built better than the competition, I agree, but end of the day, once a title ran out of money making steam, the dumpster was their usual reward after being stripped of usable parts. That as many of them have survived the dumpster these days is a miracle and if the machine title was forgettable, none have. Note my collection has 3 wedgeheads in it and I love them. They are a bargain compared to more modern machine pricing these days.

You forgot they brought in the Disney cost cutting trolls to reduce the quality and impart the company killing profit maximizing that has done so well for so many pinball companies in the past.

What I see is a lot of the hard earned cash we pinheads have in our pockets will soon be in theirs, at least with my addiction to pinball as feverish as it is these days. I mean, there is some truth to GZ being one of the best Stern Pinballs made since LOTR, and if they can make GOTG playable with software updates, then almost anything is possible. They have seen the whites of our eyes and they have see that halcyon-ic stare as we step up to their latest half baked titles, slap our phones on the IC sensor, and let the dollars just flow out of our wallets like water, both on site and as it’s delivered, white glove to my driveway, (sorry no steps or stairs). We are fools, and the sharks have smelt the blood… god help us.

I believe the addiction part is real. You can see it in the faces of people as they play… I have seen it in their eyes- I have seen more GZ’s and JP’s sold to guys with just one single great ball under their belts. Stern is minting fun and we foolishly let them rape our wallets on a regular basis. Until that changes, prices will continue to go up. Do “better” drugs ever get cheaper at your dealer’s house? Didn’t think so.