All of these Stern/JJP doomsday scenarios assume that a.) all of the remake sales are cannibalized from other sales and b.) that Stern/JJP won't benefit from the remakes bringing net new purchasers into the hobby. The first of those points is TBD; certainly some percentage of MMR sales will be made with existing pinhead money that would have gone to other manufacturers, we just don't know how much.

I think the second of those points hasn't gotten enough consideration. I'd bet that right now, there is a not insignificant number of people who get into pinball via Pinball Arcade on their mobile device (on which MM/MB/AFM are catnip), get the thought that maybe they could own a MM, go to ebay, get their hair blown back by a 15K price, consider the difficulty of supporting an old machine, and decide it's not worth pursuing. Consequently, they never enter the hobby.

What'll happen when they instead see an 8K warrantied NIB MMR available instead? Some of them are going to buy. And we all know that once you get a machine in the house -- it's not alone for long. Some of them are then going to make a Stern or JJP their second purchase. It's hard to say how many, of course, but I wouldn't be too surprised if the new money that comes into the hobby as a whole as the result of the remakes balances out the cannibalized sales.