Just like the last 15 years, newbies will enter the game, decide that only one of the top 10 titles are acceptable, and proclaim that it's a "a rich man's hobby!!!"

The amateurs will be gone and there will be 1 or 2 manufacturers of full-size arcade pinball machines

prices will keep up with inflation and the "bubble" will remain inflated.

Part of me believes that in 15+ years or so, a lot of the baby boomers (who make up the bulk of this hobby, I'd think) will start to really show their age. The bubble will continue to grow as more retire and have more spending money and time. Down the road, as time inevitably passes, they will become too old to sustain their role in the hobby. Maybe their collections will be passed down to their kids or grandchildren, who want nothing to do with it, or who might embrace it, maybe they'll just sell the collection off so that someone else can enjoy it, or maybe it'll be sold off in an estate sale. Who knows. That's when the bubble will pop, I believe.

Sorry for sounding so depressing and morbid, but kids my age hardly show interest in pinball anymore. It's all about the latest PlayStation or Xbox and how arguing over how many frames per second their game of Call of Duty will get using Ultra 4K settings on their latest PC gaming rig.

"celebrating the 10 year anniversary of you asking me that question!"
- mitch hedberg

I have a feeling the only new games that will be available will be made by small independent companies, if even that. Pinball has outlived it's relevance by about 15 years already.

I will predict pinball machines will not be made in the U.S. EMs will be even more plentiful and still worthless. The 90s machines will be priced way above everything else and the 2000s Stern machines will be the Data East/Sega machines of today. Manufacturers will balloon to double digits and then crash hard to 2 or 3. Stern will be publicly owned or have multiple owners at one point in the ten years.

Here's an outlandish prediction. Stern's name is bought by a conglomerate. They commission Homepin or a similar Chinese based company to make pins using the Stern name for the U.S.

^This.

Baby Boomers and GenX have been keeping it on life support since 1999 and the predominant manufacturer isn't evolving the product sufficiently technology wise to make it appealing enough to GenY and beyond.

In 2026 there might be two or three boutiques doing small runs of less than 1000 units between them.

This. In 20 years or so, once baby boomers start dying off or are packed off into nursing homes the market will be flooded with pins being sold by their gen x,y and millenial kids who have no desire to hold on their dad's strange hobby. Even the "highest rated" pins will be worth a small fraction of their peak prices since no one will be making replacement parts for them anymore.

This won't be true. The top titles will still be worth a premium especially in top shape. There will be less of them because some have been used as parts machines. No matter how small the buyer base. Collector's will keep the 90s titles at a very high price.

I was born in between the baby boomers and the gen x ers, and even now I don't find much to get excited about the world of new pinball today. It's all been watered down IMO. The writing is on the walls so to speak.

in ten years I will just be able to 3d print any machine I want

How do "barcades" fit into the equation?

Will they fail? Will they flourish? Will they introduce the next generation into the hobby?

Since arcades don't really exist like they did in the 80's and 90's, "barcades" seem to be the venues that have the greatest ability to keep pinball alive and infuse the hobby with new collectors.

As long as operators continue to operate and these places exist in a profitable way then I don't see why it can't live on.

Hopefully Stern doesn't price out the ops and continue to sell pros (unlike with the Batman 66, you wont see many of those on location)

Also, no telling what technology will be like in 10 years, pinball will most likely need to evolve some to be relevant

I'm just glad I was around for it.

We are at a unique point in history, having witnessed the dawn of digital computing. Things are changing fast and, aside from major calamity, there's no going back.

This seems like a crappy world to be a kid in, compared to what I had in the 70s and 80s.

LOL

People have been saying this for almost TWENTY YEARS. All of the pinball fans are supposed to be dead or senile now, and games are supposed to be plentiful and cheap because nobody cares anymore. You know, "just like jukeboxes."

Meanwhile there's a whole new generation of affluent young dads looking for a hobby to distract them from the daily misery of life, and they've stepped up and are buying insanely expensive games for their homes. What makes you think a new generation won't step up in the coming years?

I buy and sell a shit-ton of games, and I can tell you that the MAJORITY of people I deal with these days aren't baby boomers, they are in their 30s and 40s - the same supposed "Gen Xers" who are gonna be the death of the hobby.

Pinball is too cool to die, it continues to flourish, and the MIllenials will step up when it's their turn.

There will be whispers of an AFM remake

I think pinball has some stuff going for it. Playing a pinball machine is kind of unique, I don't know how else you get that experience. It's fun owning your own devices and it's a lot of fun to tinker. I see a lot of parallels to old timer autos. I seem to recall seeing that the sales of new tables has increased significantly in the last 5 years, I don't think that can be explained by nostalgia alone. I can't say, though, that I have heard an explanation for the increase. Let us hope that the manucturers and vendors or replacement parts continue to adjust their business model to stay profitable.

There's some truth to this, and I have a real life example.

I am deeply involved with the collector car hobby as well. In recent years, the brass era car prices have plummeted-- some cars are fetching 1/4 of what they used to sell for. Survivor cars from the late 20's-40's are being turned into hot rods (a criminal act IMO). Why? Because nobody wants to learn the eccentricities of the really early cars. Few have the skills to work on them. Even fewer have the money to pay the handful of specialist mechanics who command huge premiums for their services. Plus, the market is aging out-- the folks who have the deepest pockets in the hobby now are interested in the cars of their youth-- the muscle cars of the late 60s. The rest of the collector car market is literally dying out.

Sure, there are some exceptions-- London to Brighton run eligible cars (http://www.veterancarrun.com/) still command a premium because their numbers are incredibly limited-- there are probably no more than a few thousand cars on the planet that would qualify. Likewise, the exotic art deco cars of the 20s and 30s (the Bugatti's, Delahaye's, Talbot-Lago's, and Hispano Suiza's) still draw huge money, but those are mostly status symbols for the fabulously wealthy, not a toy for someone of modest affluence.

Interesting to look at the 1950's woodrail market. Peaked around a decade ago, crashed but has been picking up again last few years as people of all ages realize that they are rare, desirable, iconic americana, look great and are superb players, especially pre 1955 Gottliebs.

Cargument!!!

Cars aren't pinball machines. Apples and oranges.

They don 't, that is the problem. They are just the latest fad and will die a slow death like discos and any number of other businesses. It is the cycle of life.....nothing against them, they will just be replaced by something newer and more hip.

But it's not apples and oranges. Both are somewhat eccentric hobbies that require disposable income. Both have a very limited market for sales. Both have "barn finds" fed into the hobby stream by non-collectors. Both have limited parts availability and require significant knowledge to maintain. Neither appeals to very many young people.

Why is it that every time someone draws a parallel to cars, they get beat down? There are differences yes, but there are also very similar trends in play here.

I hosted a 16 year golf team party at my house on Friday. Was very interesting to watch these kids. They walked in the basement and ran to the pinball machines. I have a MM, WoZ, and CV. Within 30 minutes only the WoZ was being played. Within 60 minutes, they were all on the XBox.

Gen Y & Z are very social in nature. They were around the Xbox, but checking their phones every five minutes. Even though they text with each other 90% of the time.

I would say pinball prices may hold for the next decade, but will drop fast once the boomers pull back. X'rs can't sustain it. Y's and Z's don't know how to turn a screw driver.

Look what happened to Juke Boxes. They were destroyed by other entertainment technology and frankly they broke all of the time. Sound familiar?

I love pinball like the rest of you guys, but its days are numbered. At least the older pins for sure. If companies like JJP can reinvent the pinball and keep the innovation engine going, maybe you can buy another decade. Time will tell.

It will be right here....on pinside. Forever n ever n evers.

There's a lot of people 10 years older, and 10 years younger than me. So I don;t know how much will really change.

Hardly any of the peeps in my league are baby boomers ( younger) and we are all big-time into pinball.

Pinball is playable art and will live forever

The player base is going to continue to grow. There are plenty of us who play and buy pinball machines not because of nostalgia or as collectibles but because they are fun to play.

As to what manufacturers are still around, that will be interesting to see. Even Stern is a small company by business standards and any of the manufacturers could fail quickly due to bad business decisions, mishap, or just bad luck.

I'd imagine it'll be much harder to find components and possibly also consumable parts making repair more difficult and expensive.
Pinball will be a niche hobby, just like it is today in the grand scheme of things. Also, at the rate Stern is pumping out new machines today we could potentially have an oversupply of machines relative to the market size

In 15 years We will all be playing with no Theeths !

The baby boomers may be supporting the EM market, but I think it's the Gen-Xers and older millenials that are dumping a majority of the money into the hobby these days. They are the people that have the most passionate and nostalgic connection to the solid state era. They are the ones that basically lived in the arcades when pinball made its glorious comeback in the 80's and 90's.

Hmmmmm 10 years....Lets see...

My Predictions:

Kiss will finally get a code update along with RCT in year nine.
The last GB playfield swap gets completed with Stern.
Stern, JJP, and Spooky merge to create "Jacks Spooky Stern"
Nostalgia sets in and we get a Dancing with the Stars, Pin
China discovers Pinball, and we start exporting our B/W for 6 times more than we paid.
Pinside still argues over Flipper Gap.
I get a new heart, and start making new LEDs
My wife still wont let me get another Pin
Vid releases his full series of help info, available instantly.
Hitler videos get worse.

I don't follow the jukebox market at all, but I'm curious to know if the resurgence of vinyl over the last few years has had a large effect on prices.

Ive been converting a lot of my Arcade games by trading for pinball machines as I think the pinball following will continue to grow and the vids will slowly start to die off. Shorter attention spans are certainly a cause for arcades to decrease... and to this point there really isnt a "great" way to virtualize pinball machines.

In regards to car collecting, I think the other factor is safety. More and more our culture values safety, and there is a growing subset of people like myself who are increasingly risk-averse. I rode motorcycles all my life. But I don't anymore. Why? I'm a young family man. I drive a Chevy Malibu (one of the safest cars on the road.) Those brass-era cars, and really any vehicle made outside of the last 20 years are deathtraps when compared to the technology of today.

I'm curious what will happen to Stern once Gary dies. Will his children continue the biz? Will a minority owner step up and continue on the same path? Maybe he retires before that happens.

It's amazing to think Gary's been the driving force of that company for 30 years, through good times and bad.

I would actually challenge that notion because of the distractions that new cars provide and the false sense of security that leads to driver mistakes. I'm a more attentive driver when I drive a car with manual steering and manual brakes.

Imagine Gomez will be running it for awhile doing pretty much the same thing

Because it's a total fallacy.

When was the last time you saw Carcades springing up around the country?

How many classic car leagues are in your cities, filled with young people who attend on a weekly basis?

How many people do you know with mancaves in their basement filled with classic cars?

How many older millenials and younger Gen Xers do you know with big classic car collections?

None. The cargument is almost ALWAYS a bad analogy and a fallacy because cars are cars and everything is everything else.

Cars aren't like guns.

Cars aren't like cigarettes.

Cars aren't like pinball machines.

They are like cars.

The cargument sucks ass and anybody with a grip on logic hates it.

The lure of the silver ball is ingrained in the human psyche, and still will be in 10 years. There may be more forms of expression in the future which may cause a reduction of interest in the hobby, but it's not gonna die.

I don't think they will even be able to...They aren't walking out of college into great paying jobs like past generations did with ease.

They walk out with a buttload of debt & won't have the same inheritance ratios as previous generations. They have been conditioned to live within the means of their fico scores which will wreck havoc on their long term net worth.

They will live in smaller homes & drive smaller cars as inflation takes hold from our white hot printing presses.

Millenials = Minimalists

You can't compare the last 25 years to the next 25...its a whole new musical chair era of quick cycle boom/bust

I hope i'm wrong though...just think how cool it would be to watch 6-7 pinball companies flourish over the next couple decades.

I agree totally with Levi here. I'm 34 and loved games all my life. I started with magic:the gathering as a teenager and turned to lots of strategy board games in my twenties. I fell in love with pinball in college playing Monster Bash, AFM, LOTR, and MM in my college game room and dreamed of maybe one day owning a single machine. Now I make some good money and I've bought my first four machines, all modern Sterns, in the last 18 months. I have a number of buds who discovered pinball through my machines and we've started taking day trips to Modern Pinball, Pinball Wizard, Sunshine Laundromat, etc. Wouldn't be at all surprised if one or more of them gets their own machine(s) someday. Pinball is awesome but expensive, and each subsequent generation will continue to buy in as they are able, as long as great games are still being made.

It's funny how some people always complain about kids not being into pinball.

Well guess what? It's our job to expose it to them. Once kids see and actually play pinball, they generally like it, because from their perspective, it is new and different.

I've watched many kids come into the local pinball arcade and their eyes just light up. You can tell they've never seen a pinball game before.

As more of us buy them for home use, the potential is there to pass it on to our kids and their friends. My 4 year old like video games, and guess what? He likes pinball too!

I'm constantly exposing everything I have to kids anytime I can get them in my basement.

Lots of other people keep saying "oh my 7 year old doesn't care about pinball" and proclaim that as some kind of death sentence for the hobby.

Guess what...I didn't like Pinball when I was 7 either. Just because your elementary school kids would rather play with an iphone than a pinball machine doesn't mean they won't like pinball later on.

I'll bet you do......

Kid's aren't going to give a crap about pinball if they keep on doing grandaddy themes that's for sure. That is where pinball has lost it's relevance to ever interesting a new generation. Sure they might play their grandpas machines, but there is no way they are going to take it seriously.

This sentiment makes up about 75 percent of your total posting output, and it's always wrong.

These superhero themes are timeless. The movies are timeless. The rock bands are timeless. If they put out a Justin Beiber game it wouldn't sell and it wouldn't attract a young crowd to pinball. They don't NEED to desperately try to cater to children to create a new group of people who like pinball in the future - in case you haven't noticed people age into it on their own. And when they have money they buy themes THEY like, not stuff that would interest a 10-year old.

everybody is a friggin' expert around here. Meanwhile Stern is more successful than ever and pinball - both the hobby and the business - are healthier than they've been in 20 years.

My 4 year old loves Ghostbusters. He would love Batman 66 as well.