And so what do you think the Tron "Premium" should have and not have in terms of features?

I'd rather they moved on and just made more new games instead. Eli's ramp kit is out, Tron Pros are still out there if you want one, I don't see the point. It would set up a bad precedent to duplicate the LEs.

Apparently the license ran out, not that they couldn't get it again but they would need to expect to sell quite a few to do it. Just a guess based on LOTR LE but I would go with a minimum of 500 orders. JJ was the one who got these remade. So distributors would have to be clamoring for them and there are still NIB Pros out there for sale. Granted, a number of people would want to upgrade but with Eli's ramp mod that number would likely be lower than you think.

Probably because it would give many of their regular customers heart attacks or strokes.

...then put me on the list for Ironman

They didn't release one because they are somewhat foolish and out of touch with the market place. Their consumer base is divided and they are slow to acknowledge the Home Use market. They could easily increase revenue by 15-25% by offering custom translites, armor, headphone jacks and other upgrades..............but they don't. In fact, Gary still refers to customizing a pin as "Tricked out".................Who the #@$! has ever used that term??? We have seen a little progress as the designers have slowly been able to influence the company, i.e. Star Trek LE with all it's bling. Give the customer what they want and they will pay, we are out of the recession! If Stern and it's investors had a clue, they would have bought the rights to the Williams games................They were not smart enough..............In walks Rick, a man who has vision and understands the market place. The money is in Licensing and we will be seeing a lot of mods for our favorite Bally Williams games......................

They are waiting for Tron 3 to be announced?

Well I just bought a pro and put around $1,500 in mods into it. So I would say, chances a pretty good now. You're welcome.

Heh - rumors state 2015, so who knows.

I love TRON, but I don't know if I'd want them to make another TRON game.

That's in the rear view mirror now. I think they are just looking forward.

I don't think that is the case. AFAIK, they don't manufacture their own translites, armor, headphone jacks, they order from third parties. To do what you are suggesting they would have to either setup engineering/manufacturing to create them (high up front costs), or just become a warehouse/order center, which means their profit is a fraction of the sell price.

Then they would have to setup an entire business to customer sales channel, with a website, warehousing, shipping, etc. Way different than their current business model and sales channel.

Then, even if doing all this would generate 15-25% extra revenue, revenue numbers can be misleading. The only thing that keeps a business afloat is profit. If it added 15-25% revenue, but ended up not being profitable, then that would be foolish.

as said above, there's something better to do (before), as an IM LE (like 400 or 500 pieces)... and there, be sure they will sell these in few days only

Pinside isn't the center of the pinball universe, as much as we might like to think we are. A remake of Iron Man would be a flop, sorry. They'd sell maybe 50 to the people here who really love it but don't have it, and then the rest would sit with people wondering why they were trying to sell some old game again for so much more money. It's time for Stern to look forward, and not remake pins from their stripped down past. Remember the reaction to Iron Man when it came out? Trying to put it up against modern full-featured pins would be a joke. It gets the love it does because there's a certain kind of hardcore player that likes the basic adrenalin run it provides, but it's not representative of the mass market.

I'm actually amazed there's more than one version of a pinball machine. It's just a stupid trick to make one a bit more special and charge more money on it.

Hey everybody!!! They are beating dead horses in here!!!! Everybody come look at this!!!!

No,Yes, shit you got me.

I seriously hate these threads, but then I go play my LE and reconsider selling it because seriously I will never get it back.

Tron was made before the Premium concept. Avatar, Stones, Tron, and Transformers were only Pro & LE. Premium started with AC/DC, dropped for X-Men, came back for all games after that.

Tron LE is already essentially what would be a Premium today. It had the same cab & translite art...LEs now have custom cab art and mirrored backglasses.

Anyway...Tron licenses is expired, it's over. If it was renewed they'd just make more Pros.

Isn't JJP doing exactly this with WoZ though?

Except they'd come with Mustangs instead of lightcycles

Seems like Stern is moving to the stripped down future. At least IM had a Monger that would rise out of the PF you can bash. What does ST have? What does Mustang have? Yet they are charging a fortune for the LEs which still have no interactive toy. Maybe they will learn one day.

Stern already released Tron Premium, see?:

tron-premium.jpg

The above is a picture of a sticker under my Tron LE that states that it is a Tron Premium.

I believe that the Stern boxes that the LE came in were also labeled Tron Premium. It was also referred to as Tron Premium in some of Stern's documentation that came with the game.

So essentially, Tron LE is Tron Premium (Finkle is Einhorn).

I finally got a chance to play a pro. It played slightly faster than the LE, the gem shot seemed easier, and overall i had a good time on it. Now that ELI's mod is out, the only con between the 2 versions is Daft Punk MB. Not a game changer in my book, but daft punk certainly is awesome when you get it.

What are you basing your figures on? How do we know that they'd raise revenue at all? They sell largely to an operator market (who would never buy an extra translite) and to the home market, which will already have a perfect translite. And then you want to make them custom?! That would be prohibitively expensive for anybody to make, a nightmare to license (each individual one would need to be approved by the licensor), and a major disruption to their supply chain. Custom anything is extremely disruptive.

Stern didn't want the Williams license. They want to build Stern Pinball. And guess what? They make a whole heck of a lot more on Stern Pinball than anybody else does on Bally/Williams licensing.

There are a thousand more reasons why what you said was totally off base, but I don't have the time nor the desire to list them out. Bottom line, you have no clue about how business in pinball, or business in general for that matter, works.

Right now it appears that the factory is running at full steam with multiple popular titles in production. No need to go back and make a Tron Premium at this point.

It's always bugged me - Tron is a fantastic pin, but why didn't they go with metal habitrails over the plastic return ramps? Anyone know?

Well in the case of the LE, you need them to attach the fiber optic tubes.

I like metal ramps, but never quite understood the outcry over full plastic ramps. Easier to service if it's segmented, I guess?

Well played, sir.

If licensing is the issue, they should make NORT with the same playfields, different art, awesome music by David Thiel.

Because they look badass lit up. I can't imagine it any other way.

Ah that makes sense. Honestly I wasn't sure the reasoning (I sort of assumed cost). The fiber optic stuff is neat, though I like me metal ramps. I didn't think about the service issue, though. Makes sense since the habitrails on STTNG require quite a bit of work to get setup right.

Since what we call the Tron LE is really the Tron Premium, they could make a real Tron LE at $8600 retail, and put the metal habitrails, a real backglass, and other LE type of stuff like color changing LED's. This would make all the people who like to buy LE's happy since they could not finally buy a Tron LE that the box and playfield would be stamped LE and not Premium. I have a Tron Premium/LE, I would sell mine and upgrade - why not.

I would be happy if they just made another large batch of Pros.

Fun fact (which probably most of you already knew), the 3D translite was meant to be ONLY for the LE model, but they couldn't get the Pro translite art green-lit by Disney in time for production.

Plastic ramps are faster than metal.

Note that many metal habitrails have unnecessary curves added to them to further slow the ball's return to the flippers.

Because they ran out of blue ink. Blue ink supplies worldwide are still recovering from the LE's. China opened a new blue ink factory recently, which is helping, but supplies are still depressed. Could take another 2 years for supplies to completely recover. No more blue games for a while.

True story: The new $100 bills have way more gold ink than blue ink. All because of you Tron owners. Hope y'all are happy.

I've always assumed ramp style is left to the whim of the designer. I enjoy both molded plastic & metal, so I'm glad Stern continues to use both. Clear plastic looks great with Tron ramp lights, metal works on Metallica because METAL! Sticking with just one would make the games more samey & boring.

That said, I could do without the tinkertoy flat plastic ramps on Transformers & the Avengers.

This I have noticed. Except for some reason the metal ones on the Shadow seem lightning fast some times.

There are interviews with Dennis Nordman where he talks about when he chooses plastic over metal and the difference in play.

This is why earlier games 90s,80s and before are great. Usually just one version!

Unfortunately, I fear that that Tron has come and gone from a Stern business perspective. This is similar to how much I would like a shot at an IM LE, the option for which has also passed. Stern seems to have learned a lesson on this in recent releases, but I don't think we're going to see them back in time in the near future on this. I also fear that their best licenses are also behind them and we might be in the era of Muppets and ancient rock bands. Good luck to those caught in a time warp who are happy with that but I'm looking forward to pins a little fresher. Of course, I'm also one of the dozen or so crazies with a pre-order in on The Big Lebowski, so maybe I'm just full is s--t.