It's an interesting discussion, but predicting the future is harder than making pinball. I remember the overwhelming feeling back in the early - mid 2000s was that pinball was on it's last legs and would soon be done for good, and it wasn't hard to believe that was the case with some of the machines Stern was putting out at the time. I don't think anyone then would have predicted that people would be spending £16k on NIB LE machines in 2023 but here we are.
I'm 36 for a few more weeks and I guess that puts me on the younger side of the hobby. I caught the very tail end of common location pinball in the early / mid 90s and my dad would always try to get me playing the pins whenever we were at an arcade or bowling alley. Years later when I was 18 we'd had a few beers one evening and somehow got onto the topic of those arcade visits. That in turn led us to wondering what had happened to pinball, which led us to eBay, and before we knew it a TZ arrived and an obsession was born. My dad is now in his 70s and my parents have downsized so he no longer has room for pins, but I live relatively close to him and have given his last two games a home along with mine. I hope similar stories repeat amongst the younger generations who are ending up playing on location nowadays. I'm fairly confident it will in the States and Europe, but over here we'll have to see.
Anecdotally, outside of the hobby I have one mate with his own machine, and another who enjoys playing when he comes here. The rest of them really aren't that interested - they might play the odd game when I get something new but it's not something they come back to or have any interest in owning. One common theme is a preference for the 90s games which are easier to understand. We're all late 30s to early 40s and none of them really do social media, but a good number of them seem to be semi-permanently online on PS5.
One thing I will say though is that if some of the more pessimistic predictions in this thread turn out to be correct then I'm going to need to find a lot more space for all these bargain games I'll be buying in 20 years time.
I'm 36 for a few more weeks and I guess that puts me on the younger side of the hobby. I caught the very tail end of common location pinball in the early / mid 90s and my dad would always try to get me playing the pins whenever we were at an arcade or bowling alley. Years later when I was 18 we'd had a few beers one evening and somehow got onto the topic of those arcade visits. That in turn led us to wondering what had happened to pinball, which led us to eBay, and before we knew it a TZ arrived and an obsession was born. My dad is now in his 70s and my parents have downsized so he no longer has room for pins, but I live relatively close to him and have given his last two games a home along with mine. I hope similar stories repeat amongst the younger generations who are ending up playing on location nowadays. I'm fairly confident it will in the States and Europe, but over here we'll have to see.
Anecdotally, outside of the hobby I have one mate with his own machine, and another who enjoys playing when he comes here. The rest of them really aren't that interested - they might play the odd game when I get something new but it's not something they come back to or have any interest in owning. One common theme is a preference for the 90s games which are easier to understand. We're all late 30s to early 40s and none of them really do social media, but a good number of them seem to be semi-permanently online on PS5.
One thing I will say though is that if some of the more pessimistic predictions in this thread turn out to be correct then I'm going to need to find a lot more space for all these bargain games I'll be buying in 20 years time.
. I teach about this stuff but here’s an interesting chart illustrating how out of wack unskilled pay to CEO pay / wage inequality is from country to country. USA is the largest outlier in the world. Wonder who’s buying all the Venom LE’s?