Lol, what "research"?
Sorry, but I feel like these games will last and not all just die at the 10 year mark.
But there is only really one thing that will show who is right, 10 years.
My Game of Thrones pin is holding up fine 3+ years into operating, but for some reason in 7 years it's trash?
Also, the transistors are NOT surface mount on Node boards, and that is what usually fails on pinball machines, so they are somewhat serviceable.

Nah, I'll pass on the heavy reading from 1990 and just take your word.
I guess all my games are doomed, better keep them earning so I can throw them away in a few years and get new ones.

11 Iron Maiden on location in CO, not sure how many home owners, but probly less than half that.
Also, many home guys are dabbling with routing their machines, what does that count as?

If stern priced the CPU and node boards as cheaply as everyone here thinks they should, the parts for a pinball would probly be less than the cost of a whole machine.
That wouldn't make sense.
I operate several spike and spike2 games, and have never had to buy any of this.
Not sure why the big concern about it. Fear of what "might" happen keeping you from buying awesome machines?
Oh well, please come play mine on location!

Well, replacement for the board doesn't cost as much as the whole package.
Not sure on the cost of a populated PF, or a wired cabinet, but if you could add those and the board cost and it equaled less than a new game....
You know guys would be building their own.

Love all the fortune-telling in this thread!
But if you can throw some good tech-talk behind it, you might win!
How does anyone know what technology will be like in the future? They dont.
How does anyone know how long a board will last? They don't.
How does anyone think they look smart acting like they know these things? They...
Well, you get the picture. How many games, over all the years of pinball (electronic era, for discussion) have become obsolete, especially one from a major manufacturer?
Personally, I ran into an Atari Middle Earth that compenents and boards were too hard to get working well, and made it go away. Other than that, Everything has been fixed!
I find it impossible to think that all these Sterns are self-destructing in an irreparable way in 10, 20, or whatever number makes you scared, years.

I must have misunderstood...

Nicely said, hocus
Much better than the gloom and doom some speculate of

WOW!
From the sounds of it, Stern has at least pulled in 5-10k gross off this node board scheme...
Well played...

....Thats with thousands of games made, possibly 100's of thousands of light boards, seems like an OK fail rate.
I will chime in the update from a couple years ago,... NO new failures, reliable as hell really. LESS problems than I've had with most games in the past.
Stern must be upping the game on playfields if we are back around to bitching about SPIKE.
Where is @dr. frightener to tell us all we have worthless machines within 10 years of production?

If Spike and the nodes were a real issue, this thread would be 10,00 posts long.
(They have made TONS of Spike games)
Fact is, they are just not failing very often.
So, it’s 500-ish posts, mostly complaints of replacement cost, serviceability, and speculation and fear of failure.
And mostly fueled by the typical Stern-bash guys.
And that video is just annoying.