Bottom line is profitability - especially earnings per square foot.

Pinball machines are a big investment and they take up a fair number of square feet. That's OK as long as they pull in a lot of coins, but most locations aren't seeing the coin drop.

Maintenance is an issue. Broken games don't earn money and too much labor spent on maintenance cuts into returns. Reading Eddie's log from Modern Pinball shows how much effort it takes to keep these games running and earning. As we've read from others, it seems unless the location operator is a pinhead, they eventually get sick of the maintenance costs and the "out of order" signs and replace the pin with something more reliable.

Then there is the issue where people have seen machines sitting there and no one one is playing them:
-We have novices who look at the modern games with deep rules sets, scratch their head, play it once, and too often it leaves them confused and frustrated. They aren't going to keep pumping in coins trying to learn it.
-Meanwhile too many of our own community won't play pinball on location because they can play in homes or they don't like location machines.

If there is to be a future for pinball, we should look at what those other games are doing to get put in there instead. At a minimum, they are more reliable and are more approachable for novice players. Maybe they also have features and themes that attract a wider audience.

But it would also help if we got out there and supported pinball on location. Guys - if we won't play them, why should anyone else?

ROI is the big factor, but another one is in that current thread about the Stern KISS arriving DOA.

Some in the community say "that's pinball" and just accept it. But is this another reason operators are dropping pinball? Ops want to get a machine and start making money, they don't want to spend time trying to get it working. If they look at trends and see a pattern of x% pins defective out of the box, while Big Buck Hunter vids are 0% doa, at a certain point they're likely to say "eff pins" and stop ordering them.

You can't ignore that reliability is important. Downtime costs money.

No doubt there are "out of box" issues. We see it with all kinds of things including computers and home electronics. That's why burn in periods are important.

I remember a batch of monitors where some would fail in the first week, but if it survived the burn-in, they ran like a tank forever.

So that's the real test: how did the BBH or Pacman do later? Did it settle down or did they still need a lot of attention?