It would be lame. What would be the point of showing the same thing?

That will be really lame. But Sterns has a history of trying to keep the code as close as possible between its Pro and PreLe models. Historically they don’t invest a lot in extra coding for the extra PreLe features. Doesn’t bode well for the PreLe screen. But hey, we might be pleasantly surprised this time.

This is why I thought the projector on the pro with no LCD would be interesting. Can Stern deliver enough content for both or will it just be redundant. I know that thought is as popular as my thoughts on DLC

I'm beginning to think that is EXACTLY what we're going to see, which will be a major letdown.

In most cases it should be different - even from what little the video showed.

It will be projecting the building most of the time I think - the LCD screen will be projecting clips. Obviously the ramps and targets will have their own images based on the mode as well. For some reason, I think the rotating arcade image will pretty much be static.

I won’t necessarily care, because you’re still getting the drops and standups and spinner to help with the experience. But it would be cool if the projector did some stuff the Pro LCD didn’t have.

So three things I've noticed for future owners after one day....

1). My right inner loop shot was returning to my right flipper sometimes instead of left. Thought it was leveling BUT I realized that damn E Target to the left was hitting the ball on return. I adjusted that left guard rail a little to point more right and now it's working perfect as the ball slips that Target and returns left flipper like it should for continuous looping

2) drop targets are def risky but in the beginning they are so stiff the ball was bouncing more than expected. Just one day in and they are def more broken in and work better. It makes hitting Central less risky but still risky!

3) posts are set at the highest point for outlanes. Usually Stern games are middle so it's set up super hard by default.

We seem pretty happy knowing the best pinball game of all time is Medival Madness from 25 years ago...

Yes I have. I’ve repeated myself enough times. If you chose to ignore the very real & logical reasons why it will never happen, that’s on you and your selective reading.

Outer right orbit shot - when it returns where should they return the ball? Sometimes it goes left and sometimes right.... Maybe both?

Also I continue having no issue hitting that hole shot.

You know you are post #3,492 right?? That's a fair amount of chatter for 10 days.

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It's been said before. Pinball isnt video games. Stop trying to act like they are the same market. If I spend thousands on a video game they'd better never have the nerve to release more content and expect my money. It's part of the initial price point. Some of your dlc gameplay ideas may be good. Maybe they will release multiple code types one day but all code better be included in the thousands of dollars I give my distributor

If you mean repeating crap like your last list... yes, you haven’t made any real arguments

“ No one wants to pay for pinball code updates when the game already cost $6k-$15k. At that price, you’ve paid for all future support”
— this is an opinion where you are projecting your brief onto everyone without looking at the realities of the market. People paid full price for other things, and still buy upgrades. They still pay full price for their games, and still pay stern for cosmetic upgrades like art blades, armor, etc. this “they already paid and wont pay again” has been debunked by actual practice over and over again... both inside and outside of pinball.

“Jesus, they can barely finish games within 2-3 years of release”
— you’re comparing a mindset for SUPPORT to how they would address creating content to SELL. They are different things and you’d staff them differently when its a direct revenue generator. You’re look at an apple and projecting how the orange would taste.

“There’s no market logic in pinball that makes any sense to introduce paid upgrades.”
— except the market that exists today and is EXPLODING right now... where people are paying stern and every tom dick n harry for even cosmetic upgrades.. let alone functional, game play adding ones.

“They don’t have the resources”
— they didn’t have the resources to do high res art and video before either. And know what... it changed when they wanted it to! Again, don’t pigeon hole yourself because of how they are now verse where they could be if they wanted to be.

“The user base isn’t there to justify it”
— there is a question of attach rates and how much pricing needs to be to make it worth your while.. but the user base is there. As proven everyday as mod makers are falling outta trees left and right because the market IS there. Pinball people are paying for their games, their apps, their digital rentals, their streaming, their table packs, their mods... heck even podcasts and twitch streams. This idea of a coal->diamond tightass is not the center of the market anymore.

“The licenses will be expired by the time they could get around to it”
— the licenses agreements are whatever they chose to make them. How is pinball this magically industry that somehow Licensed constrained verse every other industry? Would it cost more? Maybe... but again, these are revenue generating projects... it’s a cost you account for.

You aren’t making sound arguments against it...

Personally I don’t see it on Stern’s near term roadmap not because it can’t be done, or because it wouldn’t work... but because Stern is too risk adverse and too set in their ways.

Literally... every new revenue stream or innovation Stern has gotten into in the last few years is something other people had already proven and stern was just catching up not to be a dinosaur. Merchandise, accessories, “fan clubs”, high def video, modular component architecture, off the shelf real time os, etc etc etc. stern still can get their online functionality to market while the rest of the arcade segment was doing it over a decade ago...

The only real risk they’ve taken is the repeated attempts at finding the pro-sumer pinball machine in ThePin.

DLC isn’t unachievable with pinball - Stern is just notbold enough to lead.

If this were 2004, when Stern shipped complete code (e.g. LOTR, TSPP), then I could see paying for expansion packs.

Over the past decade, Stern decided to ship alpha/beta code coincident with the hardware release. KISS had horribly incomplete code for ~3 years! If Stern would've asked us to pay for the 3yr update, it would have been really cheesy. From a time perspective, they would have been justified, but the fact is the initial software was half-baked.

That is a perception topic and one you can manage with your product strategies. For instance, to start off... pick a title people feel as complete and good.. and add to that. So people see it as an “value add” and not just “stuff that was missing”. Selling optional upgrades is very much a fluid thing... companies dont always get it right. So they discount, use promos, bundle, make changes, etc to get things dialed in.

Nothing says you have to set out to do it for every title either...

Especially something like a music based pin. I can definitely see people paying to have new modes and songs added to a game like KISS or another band-based theme

The last EA game I had was given to me a few years ago. I still got it in shrinkwrap. *plays the world's tiniest violin*

Man, no disrespect to those who are pushing for paid DLC for pinball, but that's literally one of the worst ideas I've heard in a looong time. If Stern released fully complete, deep, bug-free games at, or at least close-to, launch...then maybe.

But come-on...is there anyone here who really thinks Stern wouldn't abuse that system. I could easily see free updates, like the recent one that Ghostbusters got, suddenly costing money. And people are saying that they could charge $500 for that kind of thing! The fact that Stern will go back and continue to polish and update games, for free, years after initial release, is a big plus! That makes people want to keep buying Sterns, and generates good will. (Good will that they can spend on things like bad playfield clears!) What if Stern decides that routine bugfixes and code-completion updates are now deserving of a charge. Makes me sick to think of it.

Now I could support Stern charging for code-updates for much older games. Imagine if they ran kickstarters to pay for code updates for games like CSI, or Wheel of Fortune, or Avengers. I'd get behind something like that.

Played some today. A few things stood out. The display is significantly better than older machines. Seems to be higher res and better contrast. The display was right in the sunlight and night and day better than the Jurassic Park near by.

Not many people could hit the demegorgan. We all stopped going for it because of that and how much getting it was worth. They need to address the risk vs reward on that as it's much more lucrative to go after the upside down shots. I completely stopped shooting for the center targets and went for the modes.

All that said I enjoyed it. The ball flys around a lot due to the ramp and not one ball got stuck so hands off to the designers as it always came back to the flippers.

I was just at sunshine this last Saturday into Sunday - they did not have stranger things in rotation then... guess I just missed it.

Regarding DLC... the biggest issue for me is that most software only releases featuring DLC are very low entry cost (<$1 to <$100)... and offer pretty much a full gaming experience. Then when you add DLC you are adding new capabilities... almost like an entire new edition of the game... for a similar cost.

So if I pay $60 for a game... then with DLC can pay another $60 and it is like getting a sequel (with all new areas to explore, etc) that works.

HOWEVER, if I'm paying $7k for a game... it better become (or be) fully realized and fully featured. Taking TWD as an example if you would have said you can only get the final Lyman code via DLC that would have pissed people off b/c it was never fully realized before that. However, if Lyman coded a 2.0 version (like BOP 2.0) where it completely changes the way you play the game... then that could be a good DLC... but I can't imagine they'd ever get close to the $7k for it again... so then it becomes a how much... maybe a $1000... and then even then they likely make more profit on releasing a new game with new software versus just the DLC.

So... I do think DLC could work... but there are a lot of things against it at this point... and if they want to make it profitable then the entry costs may need to be lowered so they can make it up on the software DLC, etc.

====

Also, if you really want to get into a pissing match, imagine if the game was sold with Software as a Service (SaaS). I.e. pay for each game... or pay a monthly or yearly subscription fee... and without an active subscription the game is a brick. Ugh!

My god...can you guys go and make a new DLC thread!!

Any other pics or reports in from new owners?

Cheers!

N/M Happy New Year!

played this yesterday, and let's all be honest. This game is terrible. The version I played I took 15 shots at the main target in the middle and none of them registered. Other than that's, it was literally the most boring layout one could imagine. There are two ramps and two outlanes. They somehow made a game more boring and more uninteristing than Munsters. Anyone who bought this sight unseen is going to lose thousands of dollars just like anyone who bought munsters and bk3000. There will be no secondary market for this game. It undoubtably sucks. And I'm a big fan of the TV show.

Stern produces many great games, this isn't one of them. Let's just all agree and hopefully save some poor saps their money if they were on the fence and also work towards roundly rejecting just crap games like this so they can focus on producing games like JP2.

Quit telling me what to do, man!

fair enough... that's just like my opinion...man

Can we all just understand that there are too many location games to make DLC relevant? No operator would ever pay for that.

Carry on.

Loved? Are you serious? EA has gotten so greedy that lootcrategate almost got national legislation to prevent it as gambling, which it essentially is. It's a very close relative of DLC and very manipulative of the customer. Nope. Can't get on board with it.

I'm heading over to the stranger things owners thread..... Can't deal with DLC nonsense. Cheers.

I think there are a couple factions here, on this topic. I belong to the one that doesn't think it's a good idea but it's inevitable.

Bk3000 is a fun. Is stranger things that bad?

Absolutely not. Shots feel great and lots of iconic elements from the show even at .75 code. One is on location near you in Nashville, I suggest you check it out!

I’ve put quite a few games on STh. Maybe 50+. I think it’s a great game. My only concern is that random location players won’t be able to get a mode started, much less get a shot at the demogorgan. I think they’ll give it a try because of the theme, and then walk away in frustration.

Anybody got one near n. East NC? I’m willing to travel I would to buy a pro, but want to play it first.

Played about a dozen games during our employee appreciation party. Seems like on the current code version the upside down is a very high scoring mode. Some of the shots were worth 15m. People were disappointed about the accuracy needed to get the demogorgen to swallow the ball. It was tough but I managed to do it most games I went for it. I do agree that the shot itself should award more points do to the fact that it is the most difficult shot to complete. I personally don't mind it being hard but I can see how others that come for casual play may get tired of the rejections on that particular shot. Also the game has 3 ramps and 2 returns. I saw a few people say that it has 2 ramps so I wanted to interject there.

Factory set the outlanes are in the most difficult position. I also think on location we should lower the sling shot power because with open outlanes this is almost impossible to stop from draining.

I like what I see so far. Shots are all makeable but some are certainly more difficult than others. I like the challenge the game provides and the shot stacking rules are cool especially with some of the variation we see in this early code version.

EA, the company that loves fucking their customers over. What the hell were you guys thinking over the past few years?!

I see you edited out thee :people love dlc." Good call. Nobody loves it, nor those god forsaken loot boxes.

I was wondering the same thing about the outlane posts. Have you kept them there? I think the challenge is pretty good with them set high; you can still get decent ball times...I just hit 450+mil for the first time. That 2x is big.

PS I'm loving this game; it's super Rad

+10000. Dumbest idea ever. People actually want to pay for software updates? Love to have money to burn like that. How about we just get a complete code game with a little polish and not take years to do so.

Videogames have only gone up 20% in price in the last 30 years. I know this because in 1990 I was having to buy games with my own money. NES and Genesis carts were $50, and many SNES games cost $70!

DLC/microtransactions/loot boxes help hide this inflation. When $30 Season Passes were popular it brought the total price to around where it should be inflation adjusted. That model is dead and now it's all about cosmetics and gun skins which are cheaper so they market them more aggressively.

The console market has also contracted since last generation when PS3/360/Wii all sold near or above 100m units each.

Meanwhile the cost of living has skyrocketed, regular inflation over that same time period is 75% and most games are developed in expensive cities that require high salaries. Some of the inflation is also hidden in the rough schedules and crunch the developers endure. You can't say games are too expensive and then want the employees to have a lower workload.

And just like toppers and power coated side armor nobody is making you buy this stuff. What if you could buy a house or car for 20% over its 1990 cost in exchange for a weekly flier offering you deals on new paint jobs? Would the annoyance of that junk mail exceed the deal you got on the house?

But that is an entirely different argument than what has been presented. The argument here has been it cant work for pinball... because it’s pinball! Pinball is expensive... people don’t pay for stuff after buying a full priced game... or stern can’t do it... blah blah blah.

But in that case... the best part about that scenario for customers is... stern would have already done the work. Meaning, if dlc doesn’t sell... it is the vendor, not the consumer, who is motivated to cave and discount, or do whatever to move the units. They already spent the cost to develop it... so they are motivated to recoup costs or something from the effort. And if their base game sucks... then the consumers will know that for the next time.

The big risk is when people buy before they try... and that same problem exists today... yet people keep doing it and look at others for the blame.

The reality is this is the real reason most don’t want a micro-transaction or DLC model in the hobby... no one wants the free ride to end. But instead of just being honest... they try to construct some halfbrain excuses that just don’t actually stick.

Today we have product today that can operate in isolation, and can do so in perpetuity. It is something that allows us to keep 70yr old games alive and playing. That is an example of a perfectly legit concern about new features that may require online connectivity. But this is also another area where the hobby has stepped up and addressed this in arcades... and companies like IGT have done “home” versions that relax those requirements etc.

From guys that buy a toy that costs as much as a car for most people?? This is comical now

Opening the demogorgan is trivial and can happen just from flailing. Low number of hits for first one. Modes are probably harder to figure out or get to consistently. The locks are easy to wualify and is pretty out in the open to see. They probably could have added something to draw more attention to the ramp to let them know to shoot there... presumably the projector version will address that some.

The game is simplier to figure out than JP was for rando players.

“Bash up the middle” will be easy to figure out.

I just wonder if they should put some really short balls saver option in for the center drops to help location/noob play. At least as an option for ops.

The sling drains are the toughest part... especially since several of the feeds go into the slings without some nudge assitance.

I agree, about it not making Sense.

As it sits right now it is fun enough to keep me pumping coins into it. By the time it's finished it it will probably make it on my wish-list for purchase. Really looking forward to the full permium/LE reveal.

I am currently waiting in limbo. It will be JP2 Premium or stranger premium.

This is the most batshit sentence I’ve ever seen from someone in this hobby. Free ride?!?!?

THESE. GAMES. COST. $6000-$15,000.

These are the most expensive games on the planet. There’s no “free ride”.

Unreal.

Ya know what, F it. Happy new year. I hope all of you that are content with buying unfinished untested games with cratering playfields get your paid DLC. I can’t wait to see you paying even more just for a $10k game to be a finished game. Enjoy.

True, but you're not figuring in the HUGE savings on the manufacturer side when media cost for games went from $18 roms to $1 CDs to $0 downloads. The media costs, which were a huge part of SNES/Genesis fell precipitously. Of course, the console manufacturers sucked up some of that savings in more in royalties, but the overall costs to the publishers went down, and the order requirements fell, too, reducing upfront costs and risk.

Well that explains a certain sticker in my NIP Stranger Things Pro. I thought someone had screwed up and revealed their next game.