Eight Ball Deluxe raises his hand and says, "umm..."

You are right. Non-licensed cars sell just fine. Non-licensed pinballs should sell just as well.

As a matter of fact, "dino-rock" themed cars almost never sell. Case closed.

To be clear...I am NOT advocating for Stern to produce unlicensed titles (it's clear that they have found a business model that works for them).

I am wondering though, why the environment is different now than in the B/W '90s days. Williams did well with a combination of licensed (TAF, TZ, IJ, STTNG, etc.) and un-licensed themes (MM, AFM, WH20, FT, etc.).

Why was that a good business model then, and not a good business model now? I'd love to know the answer to this.

Back then, the vast majority of sales were for location use - while now a much larger portion is home use (I don't know what the actual split is now - I would think it must be close to 50/50).

For me, when buying a home machine, the gameplay is what matters (the theme just has to "not suck"). So, I would think with a now larger portion of games being purchased for the home, that the theme would matter less - not more.

On location, I can see that a popular theme would help to attract additional customers, but wouldn't that have been the case back in the '90s too?

Why did non-licensed themes do okay back then, but don't seem to work now?

Well, this is part of my statement above. To me, a theme just has to "not suck" - it doesn't have to be something I am particularly a fan of.

For example, the 3 machines I own are EBD (no, I'm not a billiards player), WH20 (no, I've never been rafting), and MB (not really a monster/horror fan). But none of these themes "suck" (like AC/DC does).

So, I'd probably never buy an AC/DC (even if it was awesome), but I'd certainly consider any non-licensed theme as long as it wasn't stupid (i.e. Dialed In).