To answer the original question of the thread....Stern will be online if another company implements it successfully and demand is proven to be there. But even then, probably long after that.

I personally don't see the appeal. But then again, I still play my Xbox offline and never play multiplayer games. I prefer to be in my own imagination and world when playing any game and don't want another person fucking up my experience.

What could be cool playing head to head would be not a full game, but timed goals. Both machines auto launch a ball at the same time, each player has X amount of time to score a number of points; # of ramp shots; hit various targets, etc. Flippers go dead and balls drain when time expires. All objectives can be configured and agreed upon before starting a game.

Maybe a pinball golf type of game. First "hole" is the completion of an objective within an amount of shots (par), 2nd hole starts another objective, etc.

Those are the cool online features I'd expect to see instead of just both games being link for a full, normal game of pinball.

Re-read my post. The word "fun" is not in there. I have no idea if it would be fun or not or if I would even care about those type of online features. I didn't start the topic, I'm just participating in it and tossing out some other ideas if online play was a thing.

Let the conversation breathe a little before shutting down every single post on the topic.

LOL @ both sides arguing over something that doesn't even exist yet.