It's funny that people complain about a 2-3% per year price increase, but at the same time sell their 90's Bally/Williams machine for a price 3 times as high as they were in 2005. Nobody says no when there's money to be made.

Also, if Stern had an easy time making huge profits, why aren't there more competitors in the market? Apparently it's not so easy running a profitable pinball company at these prices otherwise more competitors would line up to join the market.

Then with regard to product quality. It's guesswork really as to whether product quality has really deteriorated. You simply don't have the numbers to compare the relative amount of faults between different generations/manufacturers of machines. Most 1990's machines I've owned have had their share of problems as well. Stern will probably know what the failure rate of their machines within warranty is and maybe they're able to compare it to the Data East / Sega / Stern 2000's timeframe. I however doubt that they'll accept going backwards because fixing any kind of (structural) failure and dealing with angry customers takes up a lot of time.

Another thing which I notice with regard to quality is that people get angry about even the slightest imperfection nowadays. Take the playfield dimpling discussion for example. Every 1990's machine playfield I've owned looks like it came from planet Mars, people just need to realise that showroom condition and at the same time mashing a steel ball through the machine don't go together very well.