Quoted from Rarehero:False equivalency. Hanging out with friends together is different than a machine doing nothing while people online do things.
Not only that, but no two machines play the same! Can you imagine playing against strangers and their machine is set up entirely different than yours? Pitch, settings, outlane posts, fresh rubbers/old rubbers, etc.
With the way people in this hobby get super competitive, I have no doubt it will cross over into the online world and people will look for any kind of unfair advantage they can give their machine. People will might as well take the glass off and troll-play on other players.
Video games work well with online capabilities because they are basically programs, so everyone is on the same level. The most it could benefit in pinball is maybe updating code or features.
If I want to play pinball against friends, I wanna do so on the same machine, with neutral settings, drinking the same beer and having a conversation. I want to play pinball on my pinball machine, not watch TV with a fucking conference call. There are plenty of other things that allow you to do that.