Let's not forget the surfboards Stern was producing before JJP became a competitor. Their creativity had completely disappeared and their games for the most part sucked. Like WOZ or not Jack revived pinball and woke Gary stern up. Now both companies have to produce a great game or people won't buy it. Without JJP we would being playing rethemed Avatars, Rolling Stones and Indy jones style pinz until Stern went under. I don't agree or disagree 100% of the time with either company but I am very glad they both build great games now. Think back to the Stern days when Pat Lawlor, Steve Ritchie designed games at Stern... games were better, not great but better. Now look at what these two are doing. Think back to the days when you could call Joe Blackwell up at Stern and get fast expert advise on tech issues. How about LOTR.... Stern did that with KJ doing the programming. I remember they fired a whole bunch of high powered people at that same time (was KJ amount them?) their games started sucking pretty bad at the same time, seems like when Rolling Stones was being designed (IF I REMEMBER CORRECTLY).
Pinball is WAYYYYYYYY better off today with JJP, Plantary, and Stern are building games. When Stern was the only game in town there was no choice and no reason for them to spend money on innovation. Today Stern is building better games than before JJP and JJP will build better games than WOZ as time goes on. Jack has said it many times that WOZ will be their worst game..... Now that is setting the bar pretty high in my opinion!
Chris Kruger