Quoted from jcg9998:
The same could be said for Gottlieb. They did it for 45 years and were by far the dominant pinball company for most of those years.
I keep seeing apples and oranges fallacies in this thread, but at least yours is pinball-related so I'll take a bite:
Gottlieb lost their crown due to not only their incompetence in entering the Solid State era, but due to the competing efforts of two other companies, Bally and Williams, that had been around just as long as they had. PINBALL COMPANIES, with the same types of talent, experience, manufacturing and distribution infrastructure, and market share. This has almost zero to do with the flawed analogy you flippantly throw out there.
The premise of this thread is that "Gottlieb," (Stern), is in mortal danger of fading away due to the unproven efforts of tiny boutique companies, some of who do not actually exist yet, and none of whom have anywhere close to the talent, experience, infrastructure, or market share boasted by Stern. It's an absolutely LAUGHABLE analogy to try to make, to compare Gottlieb and its competitors in 1978 to Stern to and its competitors in 2019.
You guys so DESPERATELY want to believe that there's SOMEBODY out there who will make a pinball machine that isn't actually pinball, and is so innovative it will give people a reason who don't like pinball to like pinball, and will give you, who are obviously tired of pinball, a reason to like pinball again. I don't really understand it, but then this place gets weirder every day.
"My guests ALWAYS go to Star Wars Episode One first!" is a great rallying cry to get people at your Super Bowl party to check out your pinball collection for 5 minutes but it's not going to unseat Stern.