For Competitive reasons.

Because they don't need to.

For the benefit of the pinball community one would think that production numbers from 10 years ago and older could be released. So IPDB could add those figures to their site.

If they told you they would have to kill you.

Odd they don't share...they are so good with all their other communication.

There’s no way to make a dollar from it.

For obvious reasons

They’ve cut everything back so far that they dont even have the pc the figures were stored on anymore. Or the pc was spike based and failed outside its 90minute warranty.

Didn’t Stern say recently they had 92% of the market. They make fun games but I’m almost positive that figure is no longer accurate. Lots of tough competition for them these days, which is great overall for pinball.

I think it falls under the “none of your business” model. Own the company and the numbers will appear.

I see no benefit to the pinball community just more to argue about

It adds to the mistique of not really knowing how many of any given title are out there lol

So that you can't say, "Is that all?"

If Stern sold a boat load and talked about it then competitors would spring from the wood work wanting a piece of the action. Misery loves company so if sales were weak suppliers might back away or anyone who was thinking of buying would start having 2nd thoughts and sales could fall off of a cliff.

And Stern is a private company. That is the "none of your business" model someone spoke about.

How many iWatches has Apple sold? Apple does not say except to say sales are "incredible". With no baseline, "incredible" is just a buzzword.

How many of you own an iWatch? Do you know any body who owns an iWatch? Do you even care?

All valid points, but I’d say it’s safe to release full numbers on models 20yrs old or older by now.

Stern makes their major suppliers sign an NDA regarding, among other things disclosure of components sold to them that could be used to determine quantities of games sold.

iWatch?

How would Stern know that I wonder? JJP doesn’t release exact numbers either. JJP sold a fair number of machines in 2017.

True fact. Or another variable people will get butt hurt over Assuming how much money they make (don’t make) to complain about pricing. A private company doesn’t get the benefits of investor shares but they are rewarded with the ability to be silent about Thier business successes and failures. The only share holders to report to and have accountability is making payroll!

Industrial espionage. Could be as simple as, oh, say an employee who left JJP went to work for or perhaps interviewed for a job at Stern and maybe let something slip.

Also remember there was someone counting cars in the JJP parking lot. They could also be counting 53' full-load semi-trailer as well as 28' LTL trailers at the shipping dock as well. Heck, the MAD Amusements guy could be doing it for extra scratch-off lottery ticket money.

Exactly. I’m almost positive I heard George Gomez give the 92% figure during a podcast interview, but that was over a year ago and things have changed since then. We have a pretty good idea of CGC’s production since Doug Skor is excellent with his communication here: since the end of May roughly 1000 AFMs and 300 MMrs. That is a pace to make over 2,000 games a year. Assuming JJP is similar or even higher then Stern would have to make roughly 50,000 games a year to have 92% market share, and that doesn’t include Spooky and the smaller producers.

You must know a lot about the iWatch. It’s called an Apple Watch.

Gary cant count that high.

Why does anyone really care? We know how many LEs there are and we know what games sell well as they keep running more of them. Why does it matter so much?

So? How can you confirm that statement if you don't know how many they shipped? I careless about how many they built.

Nailed it right there! Why limit yourself on a successful title.

It would be nice if they released numbers of games up until 2010 at least.

My wife has an ApplePhone.

I’m not sure what you’re asking. I think George Gomez gave the 92% market share figure when he was interviewed by Nate Shivers on Coast to Coast pinball podcast #221. My point was only that they have some competition now, which will help raise the bar for everyone and should be good for the hobby.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/ive-been-a-long-time-stern-pinball-fan-but-im-done-with-them/page/2

Apple Nazi in the house

And if there's one thing we know it's that GG always tells the truth!

It would be awesome if the term “nazi” disappeared from common language unless you’re talking about actual the actual Nazi party, etc.

Nazi definition Nazi coming through

My point is, Stern can throw out any numbers at us that none of can confirm. Gary keeps stating in his seminars that operators still buy more games than the home collectors. Why believe any numbers that throw out?

Don't need anyone telling us any numbers to know that competition is good for everyone. It is true for any industry.

George Gomez was telling the truth. I didn’t mean to imply that he wasn’t. Only that things have changed some since he gave that interview over a year ago.

Duplicate

I’m respectfully asking you to stop using that term. Please don’t. It’s not funny.

I meant to imply that he has "stretched the truth" before and I don't put it past him. That's the problem with a business, it only helps them to lie to people.

No soup for you!

I think it the community came together then we could figure out how many are made within a couple hundred range.
The playfields are labeled. You’d only need to know how many runs of games were made. Find a label from each run telling how may were in That run. Then add all the totals together.
GoT. 400LE. ~250Pre. ???Pro. = ~1000-15000 total.
D54C47EB-4940-42CF-9B34-215B23C300B9 (resized).jpeg

The only problem is that the numbers on these small stickers appear to be handed out randomly, not in order. Aside from that I have seen a playfield in the factory that was something like #480 of 400, so that last number doesn't indicate the total. Plus it includes spares as well.

I'm seeing a lot of "because they don't have to" responses. Did Williams/Bally etc all release this info back when in operation? or were those figures released after they closed or from designers/employees?

Bally, Williams, Data East etc were all public companies and were obliged by law to reveal their trading results.

As a public company, you are not required to have 100% disclosure, i.e. How many pins were produced. You only have to release the financials and financials don’t always tell you much. They don’t release the numbers because there is nothing to gain from it, if anything it would only be more difficult to negotiate licenses and more ammo for Pinsiders to bitch. “Profit up 100% in 2017 because we rethemed Kiss into Aerosmith and rereleased ACDC and saved us $1M in development costs.......Not to mention the new Spike system lowers BOM by 20%,generating an additional $500 per game.......Don’t forget we also suckered a large number of rich fools into dramatically over paying for BM66.” That would go over well.....

We don’t know know how many LEs there are, we only know the maximum number Stern said they would produce. I bet there are only a few games that they actually produced the full maximum number.

It can mean quite a lot in the collector market. Would a pin like Big Bang Bar be selling for around $15,000 if they had made 4,000 of them.

If you call it the iWatch we’ll kill you lol

If you can't figure out that Met or Acdc or Star Trek sold a lot of games then I'm not sure what to tell you. It's also pretty easy to know the games that tanked and not all of the LEs were made. Better rush to get your WrestleMania LE as it's a ton rarer then BBB. If the game is good or has a good theme the LEs eventually sell out. If it sucks it doesn't really matter how many they make because people do not want it. Almost all of the stern LEs have had full production.

Name one recent stern that production numbers are not known on that value would increase if they were known.

I’m convinced there are more GoT Limited then Premiums, making the Premium a more rare game. I doubt that it would affect price in any way. When GoT was announced there was lots of talk on how nice the Le’s looked (I bet they sold all 400) but once people started playing the Pro a lot of people gravitated toward it, leaving the Premium by the wayside. Even sales adds over the last 2 years have been mostly for le’s or pro’s it’s not very often you see a Premium for sale.

? That game got torched by the pinside art department and was considered a complete miss by all of the experts that hadn't played it yet. I think they made a lot more then 400 LEs, don't remember the number but I'm sure you are right, there are likely only a couple hundred premiums.

The simple answer is this. The sales figures are embarrassing. The only people that care about these machines anymore are on this site or Tilt Forum. Pin sales today compared to the 80's and early 90's are laughable. It just grew into a high end niche product now and not a ubiquitous amusement device found everywhere like in decades past. It's simply not the same market today.