Used to be route, nowadays its the home collector barcade.

Stern Spiderman - Home Edition, I don't think it sold too well.

More of a hobby than a toy collection ... just like many analogies could be made. But could just be considered toys by some, I can see their point.

I've almost never seen a newer pin out in the wild.

It must just be where you reside. I am only one of dozens of locations within the SF Bay Area that has most of the new pins. You can literally drive within a 20 mile radius from my place and play every new pinball machine from almost every manufacturer. It is a densely populated area.

From what I understand, the home buyer's are currently out-weighing us operators.

This is primarily a collector forum so the results will lean that way.

I do think about how we're always seeing Gary Stern at industry shows all over the world, and he's not there for collectors, so the operators are still a big market.

There are a lot of places in NYC and Brooklyn that have tons of new pins on location. Unfortunately for me i live on the island and its about 45-1h drive for me. There are no places on the island that you can play pinball (that i have found).

According to Stern it is about 50-50.(George Gomez)

It was in a video here on Pinside. He was talking in front of a group of people about the creative process making a pinball machine.

They always say 50-50 collector/hobbyist and 50-50 NA/International, but I have a hard time believing either - especially that 50% go overseas. That would mean only 25% of machines are going to NA collectors. My guess is that they are generous with their rounding and/or the figures don't reflect increased Premium/LE sales in recent years.

What percentage made ships out of the US?

What does the scene look like in Europe for location Play?

Gary Stern mentioned that number in a Pinburgh presentation back in 2018. I think he said it was about 40% or so (Someone would have to search for it). NASCAR didn't sell well because it is not popular internationally, so they re-skinned it to be Grand Prix to try to sell some more internationally. Sports themes in general don't sell well.

Some interesting stuff in that presentation - like they will never do a wide body pin again.

Jack from Jersey Jack said in one of his presentations at one of the shows that international sales was a pretty significant chunk (if I remember right it was above 30%).

I started in this hobby at an early age (14) and back then, circa. 1978, nearly ALL pins sold were to the ops. When I would go to my local operator to buy new, he always thought I was nuts! I bought my 1st Space Invaders from him and since I wasn't old enough to drive, he had it delivered. He would actually call me to tell me when something new from Bally or Williams was coming out and he'd offer me HUGE discounts. Keep in mind, there was no other forum to find out what was coming up next. I think it was somewhere around mid-late 1980's that homeowners started buying from ops and probably well into the 2000's that it flipped more in the homeowners/ops favor.
Sadly, with that also come the loss of "commercial quality". Most pins today are really just big toys for the home arcade with the "quality" to match.

No option for me to pick, I do both.
Buy for home and location.
Pretty much LE's when I do.

If you click on the “Macines” tab at the top of the page it shows you the number of locations that have each machine VS pinside members that own the machine.

It’s prettty interesting.
By that data I would say the home market is bigger than the market for games on location. Especially so for higher end models.

I suppose you have to take that data with a grain of salt as not all home use models are sold to pinside users.
Then again I would think that most locations get listed that are route games. I know I pretty regularly update locations when I’m out and about.
Either way I think with newer games it seems like more are going to the home market.