Just think: there will be a day when you pay $7200 for a pro. It's going to happen, and you know what: you're going to be conditioned for it, you're going to do it, you're going to incessantly complain about it, and then in the end, you're still going to like it when they drain you of your money for a product of identical or sub-par quality from the year 2014 or so with a $2000+ price increase.

Jaws, Muppets, Led Zeppelin, GNR, - whatever white hair, old man completely irrelevant "dream theme" you can think of - you'll pay the price you complain about, you'll get behind that keyboard with that courage anonymity and curse Stern or JJP's name and their business practices, and then in mid-rant something like AIQ will get announced and you won't be able to open your mouth or other pucker holes wide enough to take it.

Soon, toppers will cost as much as a JM in 2012, and you'll pay it.

You know why?

You can't help it.

It's your drug.

Pay the price, or shut your wallet and make them change.

But you won't.

You can't.

You need your fix.

Year after year. Nothing changes except the price of the product and this community's willingness to accept it.

fair!

If you buy it, they will raise it.

Honestly that does not sound so bad.

What I don't get is if you look at distributer's websites all pros have the same price no matter when made. So a Stern Pro sitting in inventory made a year ago is now going to cost $100 more because the next game is priced higher?

Does the overall quality of the product become exponentially shittier over time as well?
That’s the case with Stern pinball machines.

I think Stern is smart to raise prices when they think they're about to release a winner like Keith's Avengers.
There seems to be enough people who are willing pay up for what looks to be a great game (even with potential quality issues) and a precedent has been set for the new price point.

they were $3700 shipped around family guy, potc, bdk, spiderman time....
think about that one. not long ago.

13 years seems like a long time to me.

We know

Are you still referring to your star trek from 2013?

So you got a late production NIB Star Trek last year? Are you having playfield issues?

check out this thread, all models went up in relation to the MSRP

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/sterns-game-release-history

This. I vote with my wallet and therefore doesn't own a single Stern (or JJP), simply too expensive for being a toy.

That’s why real competition in the market place is so good. It curbs this erratic behavior to constantly raise prices, just because you can and people will take it, because their the only real game in town. When you have 2/3 or more real competitors, pricing will stabilize ($1,000.00 toppers for $35 dollars worth of LED’s and plastic? Come on!) (This is what the real allure of Deeproot is all about, lower pricing. A pinball for every home mantra.)

Right now, Stern has no real competition at all. JJP has a 3 tier system and could be potential competition, but their pricing is out of whack. If JJP wants to send a message to the pinball world and to competition, match or beat their pricing is marketing 101. It’s not good enough in today’s world to have a few more features and price pinball machines $2,000 to $3,500.00 higher, in each of the respective 3 tier offerings. Beat competitor pricing and the world will become your oyster. Then watch the competition shake.

Make no mistake about it, everything comes down to pricing. Everything else is secondary. Unless you’re looking to only sell a very small number of a highly sought after collectible.

Based on the exchange rate AMD uses that should equate to an increase of about $500 on the MSRP for each model down here.

Repost from here https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/sterns-game-release-history/page/4#post-5829996
Since someone mentioned inflation rates, I spent some time recently and made this. It only shows MRSP tho and doesn't account for dropping value in the second hand market.

pasted_image (resized).png

While the games may feel cheaper made they do have some nice features like the tilt down display, the large color LCD, LEDs etc.

I can point to a few examples of true cost cutting like lack of support rails on pro but I think those are back now. Lack of spinners on some pros like TWD and Met but those are back too for the most part on Stern pro.

I think imo you need to look at what you are getting not how heavy something feels. Code on SW for example 350 movie clips you don’t get that on WCS, you can’t weigh the code but it’s there.

If you don’t care for new games there are hundreds of older titles to buy.

I will say this, in support of OPs post:
ENOUGH WITH THE 1-TARGET TARGET BANK!!! I WANT FULL BANK DROP TARGETS!!!

Anytime I've seen a title with a 1-bank, I immediately think "PASS!!!!".

Really pleased to see that Elwin decided to avoid that nonsense on Avengers, and installed a full, 3-target bank.

(I'd much rather pay an extra $50-100 bucks and keep the drop targets if that's why prices get raised.)

It doesn’t bother me if they raise prices. I ain’t buying anyway. I am surprised they don’t go higher and test the waters out.

Costs go up. Call it inflation, costs of materials, wages, taxes, covid, whatever. It's just reality. Pins will never be cheap or easy to build. I have no problem saying Stern is doing a great job. They are making some incredible, fun pins lately. Competition no where close.

Stern could raise the price of a Pro up to $15k and start making the playfields out of cardboard and 1,000+ buyers would still be lining up because it's their 'dream theme'. They have realised they can make the same profit off of 1,000 machines as 10,000 machines, so why go through all that trouble?

Nope.

Inflation is a tax on savings. Buy more pinball machines NOW!

What everyone isn’t realizing that shippings costs at every step of the supply chain have soared, both freight and ground. No one is running efficiently, so that costs more money, sales are down, and everyone, from billion dollar corporations to small retailers are trying to figure out not to hemorrhage cash.

I can't be certain, but I think Avengers is the second price hike this year. Wasn't TMNT also $100 higher than the last title? And now Avengers is $100 higher than that? I can't recall exactly. Crazy year. They do bump $100 across the board each year though. You can bank on that happening every single year.

I don’t know that a few days after they reveal the most innovative game that they have produced in years is a fair time to wage the cutting corners battle.

A lot of people just paid $10K for MM with a lesser display system, dodgy clear coat, and the same RGB lighting innovation that Stern uses. Is Icarus flying too close to the sun at CGC?

i'm just glad they went back to the standard service rails, and that peg BS is a thing of the past.

Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. I’m a service provider and market my own services. I value the relationships I build because I know if I treat my clients well that they will keep coming back to me for many years to come. I always take the big picture, long term approach and never try to make a quick buck at the expense of jeopardizing that trusted client relationship. I think Stern is at least straddling the line at this point. If another pin manufacturer every gets their act together completely and takes a more customer centric approach, I can certainly see Stern losing market share.

On/off switch relocation is the best. Saved mucho cashola cutting out 5 feet of wire.

This post is gonna get downvoted but I’ll say it anyway. Stern runs a business, not a collectors distribution fan club, not a hobbyist let’s make a really cool one off pin, not a let’s make pinside happy retail shop. Yes you are some of their customers. Yes anytime they do anything that makes you all unhappy it will be whine and complain and product quality .... Their job as a company is to make money. And yes they continue to make money by doing some things to appease their customer, but not everything or even close to everything. If they did that they would be out of business. They are the only pin company that routinely puts out multiple titles a year. So something must be working there. At some point if their quality does continue to decrease and they cut corners too many times and raise prices too much their customers will stop buying their machines. Look at what happened to Bally around mid 80s - their games were atrocious, the company had to sell out. I would be surprised if they did not monitor feedback after each release. But they would be fools to take everyone’s individual opinions and try to satisfy them. They made a calculated decision that prices needed to increase for whatever reason and they are betting that the price increase will not be offset by decreased volume resulting in no change to revenue. I suspect they are entirely right in that calculation. And since I want them to stay in business and continue to put out more titles, I hope they continue to make good business decisions that earn them more money. And further I hope that in earning more money they put out better more and product (grow the business not the bank account) If they don’t grow the business the approach will likely backfire and then they will put out less games due to having less customers.

$100 is less than a %2 increase get over it

Inflation is real. Lumber has shot up in price and the feds just printed trillions.

Thank You most people are dumb-ass and think that this is a extra $100 in Sterns pocket $118 would be a %2 increace on the Pro yet people bitch about $100 LOL. I have know doubt that the $100 all goes into increased cost year over year

I worked for 21 years in marketing in construction equipment manufacturing for two of the larger names in the business. I saw this every new model year, watched accounting push the downscaling of the quality of components to drive more profits to the bottom line. Gave the end user a less quality, less solid product every time they did that ... to a product that needed to hold up to the demands of tough jobsites.

And every year that they reduced the quality of vendor supplied parts, I had to issue new price lists with the standard 1/1 increase of the usual Extra 3%. On product often costing > $1 million.

Same reason there are no Sterns in my house. Same rationales too.

I love to play them but I wont participate in this hobby as a Stern owner, based on what I've read at Pinside with owner issues. Have also taken non pinhead friends to York and Allentown and their comments on "look and feel" compared to playing other non Stern titles, mirrors most comments here.

Just my 2 cents.

LOL says the fanboy

who_designed-tech_support_3_laughing_man (resized).jpg

By that point JJP CE will be $25,000 and there LE will be $15,000

Rotten QA
No Chas
Same old clear coat problems.
Poor coding always on the game you buy, and not the others.
No Chas

Price increase makes perfect sense to me.

Jack showed in 2011 you could sell 1000 games sight unseen for $6500 prices went up from there. The flippers buying LE games and selling them on Pinside for a $1000 to $2000 doller markup did not help either

You're Not Stern Material!

Both those assertions are true, though neither has anything to do with the other.

Lumber Prices are high due to supply and demand, not inflationary action.

Oddly enough, even though the Fed has been flooding the market with Dollars, Inflation has not been running rampant. Yet.

THEN STOP BUYING FROM THEM! THEY WILL JUST KEEP RAISING PRICES AS LONG AS THEY SELL. IT IS SIMPLE FOLKS.

THIS!
Unfortunately this is the path us operators are going to have to take.

I'm Spain Avengers price is the same of the rest pinballs.

5500€ Pro
7500€ Premium
8500€ LE

+21% Taxes.