Stern has marketing. Here's the thing, Jody isn't spending all day worrying about Pinside. He's working to get the pinball message out to the people who aren't spending all their time finding things out for themselves anyways. He's a smart guy, he knows the deal.

This cycle happens on every game, we're passionate and we run hold or cold at the drop of a hat. Stern doesn't need to worry about us.

I know it's hard to believe, but we're not the center of the universe here.

I mean, I don't know the real story, maybe the Blu-Ray thing was a F-up. Maybe it was rushed out the door. Maybe the code needed a few more weeks for even "first release" and they're scrambling. I dunno.

But that's not "marketing".

I talked with Jody the other day, and I asked him about the video thing. They know the community is going to shoot video and share it, and they're 100% cool with that. Yes, it's not controlling all the messaging, but they're not worried about it.

Here's the reality: these things are on the line before they're baked. That's just the nature of the business. I don't think delaying things for 8 months is an option. They need to keep the line running. So the model now is make the games, get them working, and then they get patched and updated over time to mature.

If you buy early you're basically a beta tester.

We're the hardest of the hardcore. We have short term memories apparently, but it's like this EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. With the games we love. AC/DC and Spider-Man and Metallica? Games people rave about? Same shit. See RGR's zombie thread about how boring AC/DC is from a couple years ago.

Jody needs to be expanding the market. Getting press with other non-pin places. Talking to the virtual pinball people about games. And yes, pushing The Pin. Which we laugh at here, but it sells to a different audience, and they may "grow up" to be real pinball collectors.

I'm sure they'll shoot an official video. Later, when the code is more mature and the initial frenzy has died down.

In the meantime we're going to be all RABBLE RABBLE RABBLE no matter what. The game is gonna be awesome! Oh wow, it sucks! Oh wait, maybe it's okay. etc etc

Well, it is a one man operation, how big do you think Stern is?

Video games? Really? Stern tries to sell a few thousand machines. Video game sales now are counted in the millions. You simply cannot compare them.

Let me ask you all this: do any of you not know TWD is out?

Anyone interested in this pinball is already someone who knows about it. They're not the people marketing needs to be reaching.

Remember how I shared high rez pics here when I put this story up?

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/09/got-bit-fever-hit-the-walking-dead-pinball-shambles-into-game-rooms/

Where exactly do you think I got those nice high rez photos from?

I'm just curious why you think they're not?

I mean, we crapped all over Mustang here, but they had lines of machines at autoshows. That's was brilliant. Think of the number of people who probably at least tried it who'd never played a pinball or hadn't seen one in years, let alone the foot traffic. That's some out of the box thinking.

Metallica was selling like hotcakes partially because they tapped the fan club, a whole new audience.

Think about the number of people here who say they got into the hobby from playing Pinball Arcade on their iPad or whatever. Stern gets that, they'd like to do more of their games there. What if when a game shipped the digital version also went for sale at the same time, and you could "test drive" it? That's a possibility Stern has looked at.

I think TBL looks absolutely amazing, best pin reveal in ages. But it's also $8500, and it would be suicide for Stern to try and price all their games like that. You think average people are going to spend that on a pin? Hard enough to pay for a Stern Pro ... We have to be careful where we compare things.

Well to that I'd say two things:

1) How do we know their base isn't expanding? This is the problem with this discussion, we don't have any data.

2) The elephant in the room is the price. It's more than marketing or appeal, it's $5000 toys. The solution to which, as much as Pinside scoffs at it, is The Pin. And guess what? They're selling them. Just not to us. See point 1.