From a BOM standpoint, RGBs are a minor bump in cost, betting less than $200, and they probably reduce assembly time. The coding, to really leverage them, is a more significant cost in adding them, but then you put that effort in for only a percentage of the games, and so you then have to boost the price to recover that cost. It has not seen to me that Stern had really done a whole lot with the RGB, but, I have not really looked that closely at it since I don't play a ton on the latest Sterns. So, a part of LE cost is not the BOM, but recovering the additional cost of the engineering. This will also be an issue of a move to a color display, which from a BOM standpoint would likely have minimal impact (an LCD is cheaper than a plasma DMD) but the development of that is a big jump from today's dots and if you don't do color on all, you sort of end up doing the dots twice.

There are plenty of opinions here and plenty of folks with insight, but don't think anyone here as a crystal ball that can predict what will happen and even the best economists are often wrong. What I do know, it is a great time in pinball, and certainly we are in a better place than where we were in 2000, so right now I just plan to enjoy it.

I can list stuff like . .

Saudi-Iran sabre rattling
N Korea Nuclear threats
Global Terrorism
Oil prices keep falling
Fed raising rates
Election year uncertainty
Potentially shaky 4th q earnings
Uncertainty about China growth

And it certainly creates concern about how these things can impact the world, but we can certainly go back in time and find similar lists where the world did not implode (of course it could, but pinball won't really matter very much if that happens). Regardless, while the economy (both US and world), can impact pinball, the reality is we haven not seen that to be the major driver in pinball, so I think the conversation of Stern and other pinball manufactures is more tied to the economics within the sub-culture.

There is general agreement that we have seen growth due to new players/collectors joining our community over the last several years, and the question is "will that continue?". If we don't see new enthusiasts continue to join us, then prices for used machines will go down (yes, supply and demand) which will then impact NIB purchases, which will shrink that market. Right now Stern pretty much owns the market, and while they have lost a small bit of market share to JJP, Spooky, Heighway, etc. The growth of the market has more than made up for the share lost. However, if we don't see continued growth of players, that will change and as the market gets smaller, we will certainly see these manufacturers respond to that. Stern has not seen a drop in sales, yet, but if they do, then things could get interesting.

Ultimately there is only so much money in the marketplace, getting new players/collectors is key to the long term survivability, regardless of the economy. We have seen that over the last dozen years, the question is will that continue.

Also, each collector has only so much space for machines, so even if you have the money and the economy is good, does not mean a collector will buy more machines. I could afford more machines, but I'm only willing to dedicate X amount of space for pins.

Yes, a lot of folks dumping collections would have that impact, but I don't agree that is the only thing to make prices go down. Even if all collections remained the same size, if they are not expanding or new buyers coming into the market, and the supply continues to grow, at some point prices will start to slip. But I certainly agree, seeing tons of collectors liquidate in a short window of time, and prices dropping off a cliff, seems very unlikely. Even if folks needed to reduce their 'investment', I suspect rather than liquidate, it is more likely they sell expensive titles for less expensive ones.

I was your age when by daughter came in to the world, and starting families later in life is certainly become far more common. My brother started his family in his mid 20s (and has four kids) and I anticipate he will pay off his mortgage 10 years after he is dead. I paid mine off a few years ago, but I know very, very few people who don't have a mortgage and since most buy their first home in the mid to late 20s, and most have a thirty year mortgage there are very few folks under the age of 55 who don't have one. I used the 'pay next month principle' method to speed up paying it off, it is not hard to do financially, especially early on, and has a big impact

By 2000 the majority of local arcades were gone. I think most really develop their love of pinball when they are 12 years old and up, so to me that raises the question of how many guys around here were born in the 90s and how many more guys from that generation are going to join this hobby, that is the next generation that needs to be able to keep this going and that is the generation that did not have the same level of exposure to pins that those who were born in the 60s, 70s and early 80s.

I guess we need a poll somewhere to get the ages of the pinsiders, I'm sure that has been done before, but would be interesting to do that every year or two to track the trends. Obviously this is not the whole of the pinball universe, but would think it was pretty representative of the whole, if there were a large enough participants in the poll, maybe not 100% statistically valid, but would still be interesting.

Went back and found three polls from over the last four years, unfortunately each used slightly different buckets. The basic trend shows that the 40+ group has grown the fastest here on pinside (as a percentage) and the 20 somethings have decreased. The 30s group declined slightly and the over 50 crowd has remained pretty much the same. If this was statistically accurate, which obviously is not, this would support the belief of the aging of the community. it could however be impacted by guys who were on RGP slowly moving over to Pinside. Sample sizes are too small to really draw any real conclusions. Would be nice if pinside required your year of birth, not displayed, and then Robin could be providing some data over time, but, I don't see that happening.

In Chicago there are a few barcades and the guys who own two of them just opened one up, a week or two ago, pretty far out in the northern suburbs. It will be interesting to see if it can survive there where you certainly don't have the same demographic as in the city. My understanding it has 9 pins, I hope to go check it out next week.

Is there more info someplace on what these modes, etc. were?

I think the whole point of the P3 vs virtual pin, is that it is physical. It is has real balls (14 of them I believe), physical flippers and slings and other interactive physical toys. While it may be too revolutionary for many, I think it is a very interesting combination of the two. While I would never even consider a virtual pin, the P3 intrigues me. It also could be a great machine for someone with limited space, since it can be many games and changed in a matter of minutes to a different game, in a way that is not that different than heighway, but even easier and quicker. I suspect that once they enter production and start shipping games, a lot more folks are going to give it a closer look.

I agree whitewater is not deep and has a fun playfield design, but to me the goal is getting the vacation bonus, and that requires you to be balanced in how you move towards that, especially given how hard it is to start multiball the third time. There is also strategy around how/when you pick up the awards, and not just for the 5X. Yes, getting 5X right before staring MB is great, but there is more to strategize on than that.

getting 'hold bonus' is pretty key to get to class VI without having to do that. Also, during big foot you can typically move up one or two classes. I agree, if that is all I need, a little annoying to just do that a dozen times to finish it up, but most of the time I can just get to it by being focused on always adding a letter anytime it comes down either ramp, getting hold bonus, and by doing bigfoot (which I typically don't try to get, but eventually it just happens)

I know someone who is thinking of p-roc'ing the game to 'fix' some of the issues and to expand it, such as adding new modes, letting you pick a start city, letting you pick the next city you want to go to, etc. So, was curious what ideas were originally thought of that were not included.

Normally I would say 'blame Canada, but in this case I think we have to blame the europeans for the "italian bottom"

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