I'm not going to argue your opinion, but I think seeing a more varied collection is much more appealing to the eye, and to the fun.

You guys would freak out collecting arcade games .

I have arcades and I don't like it LOL

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But they are height ascending like your pinball evolution mat. That has some charm .

In the Gomez interview you can see how sensitive he is on the Costco deal… He brought it up unprompted repeatedly… He says they are “selling well…” They were originally supposed to only be in 200 stores with a few in each and 200 for the entire country online but they haven’t been selling... Our local store wasn’t supposed to get any but they just got a single unit in last week. No display, just one box stuck behind the Arcade1up’s. They are still available online. All sold by Christmas? That will probably happen because Costco doesn’t let things sit for 4 month’s taking up space. That is probably normal for a typical Stern dealer but for Costco this is a slow moving product and they will cut their losses if it sits too long. The issue is obviously price. They are priced at essentially the same level that they weren’t selling for through dealers… (It’s not an entirely new game as Gomez tries to paint it… There are some minor tweaks so they can present it to Costco as a new model…) The price is Probably $1k/unit above fair given Costco’s order size and where they should have been to help Costco move them to “expand the market.” They burned Costco on the deal and did nothing to expand pinball... All they did was keep their production line busy for a few weeks. If that’s not because their order book was slow, then what was the point? It definitely wasn’t to “expand pinball…”

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With Costco's ubiquity, I am sure this will create some NIB pinball buyers. Don't see the downside to Stern.

but what's the upside? money? pfft

Even if they only made $500-600 a machine it's not nothing. All the development work on these is done so it's purely manufacturing costs for more units.

I tend to believe George on this vs the slew of armchair detractors. Costco is not a charity for struggling pinball companies. They only stock what they believe they will sell, they know their customers well and $4800 is not crazy money for a good chunk of Costco shoppers.

Side note - Someone on an Arcade1up FB page posted his purchase picture of a JP home and said "Arcade1up really is a gateway drug". These home games are just another gateway drug.

but my pinball machine says winners don't use drugs

a bit harsh to call home game buyers "losers"

Totally fitting - winners play and buy “ real “ pinball machines !

Stern should do a packed super pin

OMFG the LED signs are in the wrong position, you can't leave it like that the Williams sign has to be above Defender. (I have a Williams logo tattoo, I'm a bit of a fan boy)

I have an original Defender, love the game, it took me a couple of years of practice but I finally got there and clocked the game on default settings. Now I have backed off and only play casually and infrequently and only score about 500k.

The next day after I posted here about having no interest in collecting badges I got a message from Stern on Facebook and a notification from Stern IC app on my phone. Both urging me to collect badges I know it's just a co-incidence, the Top Fan one surprised me. I hardly ever post on their facebook page, they turned me off when their moderation went way overboard a couple of years back. Nice to see that they allow constructive criticism now without blocking people for it, but I still don't risk it.

I don't collect badges, but I do seem to collect badge notifications still

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Bally Gottlieb Williams all in a row.... living in harmony.

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I miss my Black Hole - loved having that next to Haunted House. (I had a Bally Fathom and Williams Pharoah at that time too)

Hubba hubba !

Defender is a tuff game.

I actually have the sign from when I had a STTNG. I probably should move it lol. Arcades always a mess so whatever.

Burned Costco?! Is Stern not supposed to try and get their machines out there? Is Costco not supposed to sell new products? I just don’t understand this take. I would say the fact that machines are in Costco, it’s expanding pinball.

Honestly I don't see what difference it makes what Costco, or stern does in how they decide to sell?
Are we still getting 3 cornerstone pins a year? Yup
Are they expanding designers, and bringing fun games to the market? Yup
Is the market full of choices, brands, companies, options? Yup
Is the secondary market now becoming half way affordable for more people to get in the hobby? Yup
Pinball is alive and well, the market is full of pins, they are available, and it's thriving for now.

As Gomez said "you're rolling the dice"... I didn't roll, I bought pins to keep, have fun with, enjoy, and share with my friends.
So no matter what your take is on stern, the market, or whatever, I personally won, am having fun, and love that I can have multiple cool pinball machines in my home.
Any view, opinion, or criticism beyond that is just over thinking it, and detracts from what it was intended for... fun!

This all reminds me of people who go to a movie expecting exactly what they want to see, and the movie doesn't give them that.
So they get mad, or hate the movie, and say how bad it was, when in fact it was a great movie, and was a fun watch had you gone in without those expectations.
My expectations aren't theme, how many blinks lights, or how many mechs they can pile in.
Mine are extremely simple... did I walk away from that machine, and have fun? The rest is just bonus after that

I think my OCD would swap Pac-Man and defender.
Defender is crowding the pinball machine and also blocking your stern neon. You could just move the stern neon above Pac-Man but that's too far away from your pinball machines. Move Williams neon above defender if you want after you swap the games position, whichmakes sense but I wouldn't want the neons at different heights either so there's that.
I would prefer to see all your spike 2 right to left and then start ascending in size with the video games.

Truth be told (I don't have a picture) but I recently got a GCG Arcade Legends so Defender did get moved to the end. 4 full size arcades now.

Arcade machines (like pinball machines) should always be arranged chronologically.

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The only arcade cab I have in that entire line up is Carnevil. "When the moon is full and trees are bare..."

It's a shame it never got a console release.

It really surprises me as popular as it is that never happened. Probably why the arcade machine is still so desirable.

Nice.

I would love to have all the nintendo cabs lined up neatly if I had a ton of space but I'd rather buy more pinball at this point for the room left.

Back on track shall we....Bring It!!

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We have a new dream theme!!!

Brand THEN chronology. Groupings.

.

I'll allow it.

They overcharged Costco for these by convincing them that this was a $6,000 MSRP machine not the same $5,000 albatross that they haven’t been able to sell previously. Does anyone seriously think someone is going to hop on Stern.com and order one of these things for $6k? For $6,500 you can get a pro from most dealers delivered to your door.

Costco buyers are pretty savvy when it comes to their usual supply chains but apparently Stern convinced them that they were getting something better than the pro. It’s a free market and the buyer should always beware but this was a very one sided deal. Stern got to move 1,000 units of a stale product with 99% of the development cost already sunk… (they added a faux coin door and IC. (Wood vs MDF playfield is no extra R&D and the material cost difference is minimal.)

If Stern wanted to expand the market for Pinball they would have given Costco the deal that their 1,000 unit purchase should have entitled them to. ~$3,500/machine instead of the $4,500 they charged them. Costco would have sold these for $3,799 and gotten closer to the $3k sweet spot that people have been interested in. @~$5k they are the same price that the home editions have been not selling for everywhere already. By dumping a stale, slow moving, overpriced product on Costco they aren’t going to get repeat business and their “gateway” drug dealer is going to cut its losses and that bridge is burned. This will be a one off deal for Stern because they were greedy or desperate. Sustainable business relationships have to work for both sides.

There is no downside to Stern other than burning a bridge with potentially the only company that could actually help them expand pinball at scale… If they had worked with Costco on price instead of screwing them over by charging them more on their 1,000 unit order than Stern dealers pay for a 1-2 machines they could have had a sustainable pipeline to bring more people in.

These 1,000 units will sell eventually because Costco will take the loss to move them. It does sounds like a fair number of them are falling apart in store and Costco will RTV those to get their money back in full so don’t expect the demo models to go for a discount. If there is anything broken on them they will get RTV’d rather than be sold at a loss. That is one thing that Stern may not have been counting on. Every year Arcade1up has to eat the cost of a bunch of broken demo machines but they are doing many orders of magnitude the volume of the pins.

So you guys literally believe that after Costco went to stern on their own to make this deal that they didn't have marketing guys scouring the web, and past sales to see if this was viable?

You homestly believe that some scmuck guy named Steve, just overstepped Costcos whole marketing team, then blindly bought a 1000 machines, and then later told the ceo, "hey I made a deal with stern, hope it works out."?

Costco is huge, they have a big footprint, they have been in business a long time, and they didn't go to stern with an idea blindly. They knew what these cost, they knew the difference in a home pin, and a pro, and they knew there was a risk.

Stern pitched an idea, Costco went back, had meetings, did the math, did marketing research, checked boxes, then came back and said yay or nay.
To get on here and act like Costco was some sucker or sterns court jester, may be one of the top ten dumbest things I've seen written on pinside, and really shows just how biased, or mind numb people on here are.
If individuals are as scrutinizing as they are on here, I'm pretty sure an entire team at Costco to approach stern for a deal, did some research, and thought this out a tad more carefully then just "sure Steve were gonna let stern screw you, go back and tell the ceo you made the deal".
Unbelievable!

I can't wait to see your new pinball company that takes a chunk of sterns market share. How's it working for the other 15 guys??

I think people don't realize the labor involved in building pinball machines. Stern has 500 people. They can make 500 machines a week. That's pretty easy math. After FICA, etc, it's probably nearly $1000 a machine in labor alone to make a machine.
But sure let's sell em for $3500.

Most people have NO CLUE the challenges faced in manufacturing these days. Nothing is easy.

You seem to know a lot about the inner workings of both of these companies.

It doesn't take a lot of effort if you've been in any manufacturing, or sales to understand how business works, and the costs involved.
Being over maintenance in 2 large aluminum smelting plants, just the cost to keep the lights on, equipment maintained, and how quickly people can break stuff is extremely expensive on its own.

I like that with the pinball industry struggling we are suddenly super worried about poor little Costco.

Who cares. Doesn't affect us. Not our business

Your experience in smelting aluminum told you that a "fair number" of jp home machines are "falling apart" or do you have a source on that?

Costco is a 400 billion dollar corporation… I’m guessing they know what they’re doing

Literally one of the best performing retailers of all time but obviously they do charity work for "struggling" pinball companies.

This is not a statement about Costco - but anyone in here defending 6k home pins is an idiot .

Is anyone?

In a round about way - “ it must be a smart move at a fly off the shelves price because Costco wouldn’t do it unless they had formed a committee to run terabytes of data on the feasibility of selling TWO machines per store in only some stores ! “ .

What if sterns strategy is just to remind people that pinball machines are still being made, and you can get one for your house. Maybe someone goes home and googles it and realizes "oh for $1000 more I can get a 'pro' version of this that they have in arcades!" They win either way.

This.

I think it’s a smart move for stern to get their products out there to find new markets. Obviously both sides agreed on the deal. I don’t see what the problem is. Suggesting that stern fooled Costco because they list the home edition msrp as $6000 on their website is ridiculous.

I don't know where people are getting 6k from.

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The stern website

https://shop.sternpinball.com/collections/games/products/jurassic-park-home-edition-plus

I think it’s a pretty common practice. Not saying I like it but stern didn’t invent this kind of marketing.