Convenient for you argument.

Have a great weekend!

you need a new distributor and need to negotiate more! ESP if you have been buying all these games!!!!

Gold art package looks the best to me, except for the... gold.

I'm waiting for what Stern says. From the horse's mouth, so to speak. The rest all falls into press release category, IMO.

Right, and on the other hand if Sinestro and others are actually getting games for less than whatever Stern's price floor is, that's good info to have for people buying NIB.

So far the only person I've seen claim to have actually pulled this off is @whysnow. Anyone considering a NIB purchase should probably shoot him a PM to get a list of distributors he advises working with.

Let me sum up my perspective and probably others.

1) love the Beatles but more so the rock stuff whatever is gritty or experimental not that much the bubblegum pop stuff. I realize that the early stuff was great as well but not something I’m jacked up about.

2) the old recycled design is meh. I’m not one to buy anything that old fashioned, I did buy TNA so maybe I could appreciate the gameplay but likely not my type of pin. I didn't bother with WNBJM and such because I thought they’d be fun for $4K ish but certainly not full pro price or more.

3)the Beatles pin would interest me at $4K maybe $4400 but not really like I’m a Beatles super fan so I’m not paying a ‘Beatles tax’ to get the theme.

3b) I would probably buy one at $4K but I’m not that into it and I’d rather get an Avatar or WH2o or RBION for anything close to $4K. Basically $7k plus is insane to me for a pro game.

4) If there was a Pinside ‘group buy’ where I could get one for $7200 with a 30% chance of getting a Diamond or Platinum, I wouldn’t do it because I’m not that interested.

5) MB remake and TNA starts at $6K and imo are better c

My spidey sense is tingling and that tells me something is up at Stern. There has been plenty of public discourse on pricing and my bet is Stern has reconsidered and will be changing their policy on Beatles from a week ago. On Tues, expect them to set MSRP on all models at 7.6k / 8.8k / 10k. This will establish price levels that are reasonable and alleviate bad feelings from price gouging, while keeping their pin under $10k, as claimed by Joe K.

Stern will still require a 10 game block purchase in order to receive 2 platinum and 1 diamond editions. Buy 10 pins for $70k and sell them for $80k. $1k per pin is good margin for a distributor, but chances of them being stuck with golds in the warehouse, collecting dust remains high. These margins seem too low for the risk of this bulk purchase model.

Continue expecting Beatles to be the same pin for all models except for artwork and trim. With all three packages being similar, why buy anything other than gold? This is a missed opportunity by Stern. There should be visible differences and upgrades to differentiate models. With four days to go, pricing details could still evolve, but Stern will define pricing and show us their final pins at reveal.

These refinements are a good idea, as they increase Stern’s chances of selling pins and eliminate unknowns for distributors. They also introduce a unique problem. Let’s say sales are luke warm and 1000 games are bulk sold to distributors. That is 100 units of 10 games - 100 diamonds plus 200 platinum plus 700 gold. It would leave unmanufactured 50 platinum plus 914 gold. If there are no more orders, there are no more made. What if all 1964 games sold in 196 full pallets plus one misc pallet of 4 games. But wait ... 196 people can’t get a diamond edition if only 100 diamonds are being made. Likewise 392 people can’t get a platinum edition if only 200 are being made, right?

The dirty little secret of this bulk buy model is that Stern only plans to make/sell 1000 pins and then call it quits. Sad that they won’t be making 1964, but that was just marketing gimmick. At 50 pins a day this might take Stern one month to run. If The games were cheaper they could have sold these out quickly and been able to make one run. Current plan may start off slowly.

Remember our pricing above? Stern will be making 1000 pins - grossing 100 pallets x $70k = $7M. On a unit basis a game may cost Stern $2.5k to manufacture plus $2.5k for engineering / procurement / support / marketing / OH & Profit = $5k per game or $5M. Licensing cost of $1M and Kaminkow fee of $1M if all goes well = $UCCE$$

Man he was mean, but he's changing his scene.

No topper on "Diamond" edition?? ..........oh come on!!

Sources tell me their will be a topper whether included or accessory purchase remains to be seen.

Bobble head topper offered as accessory purchase for $899

There is so much Beatles garbage that people can clop on top of their games, why limit yourself to Stern toppers?

beatlesbeanbearset (resized).jpg

lego-beatles1 (resized).jpg

mug020015b771ef104f8b_720x600 (resized).jpg

This would be my topper choice. I was going to do this to my Beat Time...

pasted_image (resized).png

This is even uglier:

Beatles-Ringo-Starr-Bubble-Bath-Doll-Colgate-1965 (resized).jpg

Add a few LED's and charge $500 for it, done, lol.

I work in a building full of older people, I just don't see a pin like this being of interest to them. The window for the generation that grew up with the Beatles and having that much disposable income.. has shrunk pretty hard in the last few years.

Guess we will find out when the pin is released how well the sales are. Personally I played Seawitch several months ago and it was fun, I'd rather see it re-released at some modest price point and buy that over the Beatles offering...

Interest in Beatles pinball s highly correlated to pricing. See my edited post above for the economics but all things aside, if Stern announced golds were $5k and platinum $7.5k and diamond $10k, they would have sold out 1964 pins much faster than with the current pricing model where gold starts at $7.6k. That is too damn much! I don’t think Stern likes that model anyways. Much better to have a higher MSRP and only make 1000. but worse for buyers!!

if this exact pin came out when LOTR came out, I wonder what its cost would be?

several thousand more than LOTR? same? Less?

A friend of mine is in the target market for this game (unlike any of us here). He has disposable cash, around 60 years old, likes tech stuff, never even thought about buying a new pinball machine in his life, has worked in the music industry and loves retro stuff. He saw the promo video for the Beatles pin linked on some music website and was immediately 100% sold. He called out of the blue the other day to ask where to get one. I gave him the names of a couple of pinball sellers and the only question now is which trim level to get and which of his two houses to send it to. Actually two questions, he mentioned that the BM66 looks bad ass too. Maybe a Beatles for one house and BM66 for the other?

$3600

Could Stern be whipping people up into a frenzy over a rumored high price, then announce a lower one and look like heroes as you all line up to buy a game that looks like a teenage girl's Trapper Keeper?

Stern announcing a lower price now would cause even more chaos. It would further infuriate distributors who took the risk on the 10 pack, make people who already paid more than the new price feel like fools and the distributors are only charging crazy prices for diamond and platinums because that's where they interpret the secondary market to be. Distros aren't asking 25K for diamonds because they think the game is worth that but they don't want to sell one for 10 just to watch it get flipped on ebay for 30.

If stern wanted to lower the price they shouldn't have built so few. It's that simple. Whether the distributor gets paid 10 or 25 will make little difference to the secondary market.

Got a second call from my favorite Distro wanting to discuss Platinum and Diamond.

Call him back and he's gone for the day. Let's see what Monday has to offer.

Are you getting 1 or 2, that is the main question that they need an answer to.

I'm saving them all for you JG. And Crazy because i know he wants one too!

I would think a gentleman of your caliber would have your distro’s cell number stored in your phone.

You think Stern will do the right thing and do a late Beatles or a S. Pepper/other album in a year or two? No way we will ever know ahead of time but we might luck out someday.

I sort of think like you do but the problem is that if Stern issued a pin at some modest price point then we would continue to expect it for the next one. And the next one and..............

It is kind of like why we are all a bunch of fat f**cks. McDonalds wants to "supersize me" so it can get deeper into my pockets. But I need an "undersize me" size, however, McDonalds can't live on that small money. Yeah, yeah, I know about the dollar menu but you get my point.

100000% Agree!!!

At least make it less dark?

It just don't do well with the mint green in my opinion.

Nope!

IF ........i was going to buy a Beatles it would be from ASOA

I'm not getting Beatles but many more NIB's coming

I would not expect that for the simple reason Seawitch is by modern standards a simple pin hence no fancy gizmos, ramps, toys, lcd display etc.

Hell, they don't even have to pay for a license. Most of the hardware is off the shelf stuff.

I'm sure it would be easy to program in some new modes and you could switch back and forth between the "classic programming" and the new stuff.

I was told prices are starting from 10k us,
is that wright?

Completely disagree. Pinside is only about 30% of typical LE buyers and much less on the pro side at about 20%. For Beatles I bet it is even less.

Dude, he said it was “obvious.” That alone should make you reconsider.

I imagine that stat is closer to the truth.
My pal in military is not on Pinside and will hit a show or read fb when he can. At times he will make a deposit and ship one home to play when he returns.
He certainly doesn’t consult me or a poll.

Sorry, you missed it

(I'm suppressing your vote)

Maybe this.

So much clueless *** in this thread.

Usually I scoff when people get their panties in a bunch about how *** Pinside has become. Not this time.

Pretty sad that this supposedly ships next week and there's ZERO information about it on Kapow's website. Hasn't been updated for 2 years.

http://www.kapowpinball.com/home.html

Premium prices demand premium promotion (ask Supreme). This is not in the same universe.

Not sure why anybody would care about this.

Is Kapow's web site a popular source for pinball news and information? I didn't even think to wonder if Kapow had a web site.

Anybody interested in this product will be going to Stern or the Beatles.

People have plenty of legit things to question or criticize about this release but I think this might fall under the jurisdiction of “trying to hard too find things to complain about.”

It's just weird that supposedly the official website of the company that's the REASON for the inflated Stern pricing on the Beatles hasn't bothered to update any of the information on their site for 2 years. It wasn't very hard. I remembered it from the BM'66 con.

Weird or not I doubt anybody besides you cares or even noticed.

Man the official release of this thing can’t come soon enough.

I wish more companies were releasing more games more often so we’d have more to talk about and less downtime.

I think many have run out of made up things to complain about so their hunting for New misinformation. Lol

Pinball News has a decent write up on the machine.

And yet on KaPow.com or whatever...nothing! It’s so sad!!!!

For some reason.

Lol! My sentiments are buy it or don’t buy it, who gives a shit already? I’m buying one.

Someone needs to start the club thread already so we can have substantive discussion.

All in favor of Psw757 starting the Beatlemania Pinball club thread?