I honestly can't remember the last time I looked at a Stern release and said to myself "WOW that's a full featured, loaded out game". Perhaps Godzilla. and you know what? GZ is one of the best games released in the last decade. This is what happens when careful consideration and effort goes into a fully featured game IMO. But we all know that fully featured doesn't mean it will be a good game.. and hence, that's where most people that defend fully featured games hang their hat on to defend stripped out games. And of course, because pinball is fun, then stripped out can be fun too. Yep, it's all good to overpay for a stripped out game now to some.

Unfortunately, there's a comfortable sales level that Stern is willing to go with that includes not putting much into the games. Think of it this way- the massive price hikes over the past 2 years were to pump more profit into the company because it could. Well, stripped out games are cheaper to produce and also create more money, which is the ONLY objective at this point.. just look at the threads, no matter what pinball enthusiasts don't like, there's a steady bunch of defenders, people calling them whiners, etc., that displace any potential for those concerns to be more visible and/or valid. I've often wondered, to what benefit is there for someone to defend stripped out games instead of wanting more in a game? Are these fake accounts or people that are gaslighting those that think these games are stripped (especially when they are paying $10,000 for one). I'm not sure.. but if you look at the comment section of anything that's open to the public (youtube, news articles to mention a few), you will indeed see extremely disturbing opinions, posts, whacky support for things that make no sense. This is what the internet is.

I now vote with my wallet, but I know that will never be enough.... The reason these pinball companies are the way they are is they don't need my money anymore, they have new buyers that are willing to snap everything up and as we see here, defend EVERYTHING they do. We are not allowed to be critical or talk about what any of the pinball companies (mostly Stern) didn't do, because, again, pinball is fun and how dare you not like something Stern did!!

There you go again, someone talking about their observation on a pinball forum, talking about pinball, IS "GRIPING".

How about just talking about a subject instead of being critical of the person talking about the subject?

Or how little they really put into "premium" mechs. Lets face it, if they really designed cool mechs, they WOULD make a difference and you should want them for the price.

the phrase "stripped down" and a "pinball machine produced in 2024" should not even be a thing. But here we are.