There won't be a premium, who would buy it?

People would rather get (insert anything currently in production or proven recent title) for the same or less.

Besides, Stern cannot fix hardware, just code.

I'm sure you learned to never preorder sight unseen/unplayed.

Heck don't even buy unfinished code. As of now Tron & ACDC can be had NIB with complete code! X-Men & TF on the other hand...

The hardware is fine.

Who knows? It is possible they knew about the "quirks" with the Aux board. It is possible they thought the code and voices were poop.

It is possible the X-Men theme was thought to resonate incredibly poorly with overseas buyers?

All I know is it help them push all of the games out for sale, and now the owners are left hanging in the wind for them to release something resembling a decent game code-wise.

Your best bet at this point is the unscrew up a bunch of the bugs in the most recent release. I cannot see things like improving Storm and Beast's voice being at all a priority for a team that cannot even muster up the mental capacity to play a few test games and see how horrible their current code is.

"Because F*ck You, That's Why!" - Gary Stern

Honestly, I think they are just trying different marketing/release strategies to see what works. They don't have this whole 'home' market thing figured out yet. For instance, "The Pin".

There is a significant difference in cost. If you're making 550 of a pin, you buy 550 of all of the parts that you need for it. If you're making a Premium, do you risk that on buying 1000 sets, 500 sets, or 2500 sets? Pick wrong, and you're stuck with extras or you need to go back and make a small and quite costly order for extras.

X-Men doesn't have a premium because it allowed them to sell a known quantity of a game that they did not think was going to justify the risk of pre-ordering all of the parts. ACDC and Avengers were a popular theme long asked for and one of the hottest movies ever. Has nothing to do with the games.

They experiment around with each theme, but at the end of the day you have to go with your gut. Why isn't there a Premium of Tron, even though it clearly was popular enough that it could have supported one? They didn't think it was worth the risk at the time.

...after you make sure they shaved of Wolvies elbow and reposition him.

I disagree with this. ver 1.22 had more potential to work from than 1.23. The only thing added good to 1.23 from 1.22 was the stronger magnets. The number of things that 1.23 screwed up is many.

Better question, why no Tron Premium? Tron has appreciated, X-men depreciated. I realize the toys are gone, and they can't do a 3d translite, but those things being gone would make it a Premium and not a LE. The lighted ramps, extra modes, and moving Recognizer would differentiate it from the Pro model.

As to the X-men question, thinking that they would have more sales with the Avengers as it is the hotter property, the concentrated everything into that pin. X-men just seems like a filler between AC/DC and Avengers. Unfinished code and less models seems to justify that assessment.

I bet they were surprised by the hype generated on the forums for X-men.

Sounds a bit too consipiracy theorish to me. Just coincidence. Both X-men and AC/DC were in the planning/design stages at the same time. My guess is they wanted to try out the LE/Premium/Pro strategy on one machine first, and chose AC/DC.

It's hard to say at this point. They could be choosing every other pin to keep from saturating the market, or as someone suggested earlier, X-Men might have been a filler pin between ACDC and Avengers. In one of Borg's promotional videos for X-Men he said something that makes me think it was a filler pin. He seemed to indicate that he had to start work on the mechanical parts himself because everyone else was busy, or something to that effect.

If Stern had a X Men Premium , I would have bought one. I just didnt want to spend the extra to get a LE.

While it looks odd to have a Premium->No Premium->Premium model, fact is based on their designer rotation X-Men was actually scheduled to release before ACDC but due to circumstances they went with ACDC first. I heard X-Men was simply never designed with Premium in mind.

As someone mentioned before it they have been trying different marketing strategies, and "The Pin" is just another example.

At this point in it's life, Tron LE wasn't worth much more if any more than when they went on sale.

No Tron Premium for exactly the reason that I said. They bought 350 parts for Tron LEs or whatever the number was. Doing a run of 100 for Premiums or whatever would be a significantly higher cost, and everyone who bought an LE because of the limited nature and the fact that they did not talk about a Premium version would be angered / disappointed by that move.

It's bad business to anger the early adopters.

And...that brings us full circle back to the X-men code and cloudy AC/DC windows on their LE.

I think you are really giving Stern too much credit for this, I would venture your suggestion that lack of parts and cost of retooling to be the reason.

As Taz said, in the promo video, Borg started the pin without help from others as they were working on another project. It didn't get the attention the other pins in the queue were getting, which leaves me to believe it was a filler. They also gave it to the new hire as his first pin to do

waison did tf as well...... but xmen was his pos with kizivit. Xmen is prob the greatest game from Stern that software killed. Damn shame. If i where Borg i would be LIVID

XMEN will get a code boost. It's such a killer layout and beautiful game that Borg would NEVER leave it as is. This game will be amazing, you'll see. I agree the last software update was released prematurely, but more to come...

my guess is they wanted to guage the success of acdc premium before the proceeded with a second premium. they probably underestimated the success acdc premium would have.

At this point, we don't even know for certain if there even will be an Avengers premium. A lot of people I've talked to think it's unlikely.

They better at least fix it if not improve it. Betcha enough people hold their ground to make a point. I want a Zep pin bad but if Stern released it tommorrow I would not pull the trigger until I had fixed code on Xmen.

Borg is used to completing pins on his own. The man is a genius, an really underrated one at that.
There are not many, if any people, who can do these things on their own. Kudos!

But the only thing i found very strange, was in the promo video they said that the pin was first to be based on the movies. But lack of decent material made them change the theme to comic. Not that i'm complaining about the comics style, i love this, but no material in 3 movies? Really?? And what about Avengers then?
That's just one movie! The "flying" black widow everywhere on the pin, makes me believe that the material wasn't exactly much better then. Just my 2 cents.

The concept of a "Premium" did not exist at the time Tron was released.

Before Tron, there was only Limited Edition.

Tron Legacy was Stern's first attempt at releasing a Limited Edition version and a Pro Version at roughly the same time.

I do not have any inside information or solid "facts" to back up the following. It is just a possible reason.

Once Tron LE became a hit, Stern had painted itself into a corner. The Tron LE was marketed as 1 of 400. The significant hardware differences included a moving recognizer, drop targets and the colored fiber optic tubes framing the ramps. The software differences included DAFT PUNK Multiball, a way to earn an extra ball and an integrated light show using the fiber optic tubes. So Stern had to choose between possibly upsetting the 400 Tron LE owner by adding a new Tron Premium line that would bring joy to X new owners. Without knowing the value of X, Stern decided to play it safe.

Stern could have released a premium version that used a different backglass or cabinet armor and earned some additional sales. It also had the possibility of alienating the 400 buyers who bought Stern LE believing it would 1 of 400.

Rather than risk losing the collector market on future machines, Stern made the decision to learn from their mistake, sacrifice additional Tron Premium sales and focus on selling the Tron Pro.

Granted, its quite possible that Stern underestimated the popularity of the Tron Theme and simply failed to order enough parts to create a Tron Premium.

Marcus

I hope and do believe it will, but wouldn't it be nice if there was an official announcement?

I really think they make fun games. I have dealt with their customer service and it is awesome.

I really don't understand their public relations. There are a lot of people with inside connections that reassure people that things on TF and X-men will be fixed, but why can't there be an official announcement?

Exactly what I heard.

XM would never have had a premium even if it was best game ever.

Hope Borg insists on code getting done as it will do him no favors at all if stays as is.

I'm not able to quote things all of a sudden, sorry... but in response to whomever stated no good material in the three X-Men movies, the most recent X-Men movie was First Class (which, by the way, I thought was amazing) and it doesn't feature any of the actors from the first three movies. It didn't do so hot at the box office, and I totally get how a movie about them figuring out their powers wouldn't have a lot of interesting material to make a pin out of.

If you haven't seen X-Men First Class though, do it. I liked it more than the other three.

I missed this one when it was in the theaters. I really have to rent it. Of the three original X-Men movies, I thought the second was the best. It's probably my favorite comic book movie.

^^ I saw First Class and Avengers at home in the same week. Admitedly, I was doing some other stuff while I was watching them (Oh, MGC how I love/hate you...) but I was mostly paying attention.

I liked First Class more than Avengers. Could be that I expected nothing out of First Class and too much out of Avengers though, but I was really impressed by it.

First class was originally Orgins:Magneato movie is very jumbled.