Been discussed a million times but again a large bom doesn’t make a decent game
2 examples
Indy jones stern - massive bom - ****
Iron man - sparse - classic
Pinball info
Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!
John Wick by Stern
- Thread starter Silverpaolo
- Start date
Been discussed a million times but again a large bom doesn’t make a decent game
2 examples
Indy jones stern - massive bom - ****
Iron man - sparse - classic
That might very well be, but sales (so far) have been a disaster. Why do you think Gomez has been hitting all the podcasts in crisis management mode?
Venom was their worst for more than a decade, Jaws likely was okay but didn't hit the heights they expected for an Elwin release, and now JW currently sitting in a worse position than venom. When they've just moved to a double sized premises.
Price rises have taken their toll on the NIB market, second hand has tanked globally, noones buying LEs anymore due to rarity dilution, and people know major licenses are just around the corner. They're not going to go bust obv but the pressure is well and truly on.
The wake up call I'm referring to is a NIB price point review.
I really hope that the penny drops and they realise that NIB pricing is the problem here.
LEs used to sell out because they weren’t that much more than the Premium and the odd one would go up in value. Now they’re thousands more and a guaranteed loss - and Stern have repeatedly ****ed off the people who did buy them by releasing other limited variants down the line.
Premiums and Pros used to be decent value - but Pros now cost more than Premiums used to, and Premiums cost more than LEs did. Both feel like a rip off when you look at what you get.
They pushed prices too far, and if they want to see increased sales then they have to walk them back down.
To be fair to stern it's not entirely them in the UK, exchange rate, inflation and the cost of parts is a problem.
They could however stop the requirements regarding purchases that a distributor has to do. It's ridiculous they insist on mass volume sales, making electrocoin the only ones who do it, creating a pointless middle man, the distro needs to make a profit, then the seller, this I would think adds at least a couple of grand to the bill. Although as others have pointed out there are shipping and other factors that electro coin take on.
Sure, those factors all have an impact - but they don’t explain how Jurassic Park LE cost me £10k just under five years ago, whereas John Wick LE would cost me £15.7k today.
Yeh 100 percent agree, it can't help the insistence of releasing 4 games a year, there costs to develop they have to get back some how, the easiest but stupid way is to keep squeezing customers with price increases. They have definitely pushed it over, £16k has now stopped even there best customers from purchasing
No one likes feeling mugged.
Not buying into the “parts are more expensive” BS
For the price of an LE you could get
10 x 65 inch top LG OLED TVs
The pins needs to be fantastic for the asking price.
Hazard a guess, much of the annoyance is peeps not seeing the value. Pins with poor assets/innovation/silly decisions - I:e JW gun-gate
The tanking second hand prices don’t help.
Market saturation is real.
Not buying into the “parts are more expensive” BS
For the price of an LE you could get
10 x 65 inch top LG OLED TVs
The pins needs to be fantastic for the asking price.
Hazard a guess, much of the annoyance is peeps not seeing the value. Pins with poor assets/innovation/silly decisions - I:e JW gun-gate
The tanking second hand prices don’t help.
Market saturation is real.
I’ve said it before, they’re releasing too many games a year. This niche hobby is saturated.
But they’ve kinda made a rod for their own back by moving into a bigger premises.
I honestly believe Stern are going to be in big trouble. Who knows where they’ll be in 2 years time.
But they’ve kinda made a rod for their own back by moving into a bigger premises.
I honestly believe Stern are going to be in big trouble. Who knows where they’ll be in 2 years time.
It’s a kind of a classic business cliche isn’t it. Expand too quickly and get left high and dry..
having been to the factory tours you can see the model changing from Garry sterns keep it real approach
I wouldn’t be surprised if they are ****ed. And they only have greed to blame
Competition is also an issue. JJP, Spooky, CGC, Dutch Pinball and - now - Barrels of Fun are producing pins that are better than Stern’s worst titles and, in a couple of cases, better than their better titles.
They’ve already lost a NIB sale (with me) to JJP in a hard market. They’re also competing with themselves - I’d buy Deadpool and James Bond before their latest titles.
Their business model needs to shift to selling cheap pins to bars. There are a lot more craft beer venues with a retro vibe than collectors and, on both price and vibe, I’d buy Pulp Fiction over the newer Sterns right now if I owned such a bar.
Thing is, for that type of venue, I’m not sure the Pro isn’t overpriced right now for what you get (even in the States) given it’s a heavily cut-down Prem.
Last edited:
Definitely, there thinking they are the only player in town, there only such much money available in the customer base
In reality all the other companies lumped together don’t dent Stern
I think their pricing has got out of control and it has nothing to do with cost of building and more to do with cost of their overheads and expansion and also greed.
Not cheap to move, employ a lot more talent and so on.
People forgot pinballs used to be produced to played to death in the arcades and scrapped afrerwards
Wasn’t until people started saving them and it’s turn into a whole other beast of home use only and driven the price hikes
I think their pricing has got out of control and it has nothing to do with cost of building and more to do with cost of their overheads and expansion and also greed.
Not cheap to move, employ a lot more talent and so on.
People forgot pinballs used to be produced to played to death in the arcades and scrapped afrerwards
Wasn’t until people started saving them and it’s turn into a whole other beast of home use only and driven the price hikes
Not a
in hells chanceAs you say, it has nothing whatsoever to do with BOM or anything else - it's what they think they can sell them for. They'll keep raising the price as long as people still buy them. That may well mean that it prices the vast majority out in the UK, but we are a tiny proportion of their sales and I don't see why they would care. As long as they continue to be bought in the US they'll be happy making a larger profit margin.
(This isn't me knocking Stern, they're a business and in it to make as much money as possible - they have no obligation to keep the machines cheap to allow 'the masses' to buy them.)
With Sterns distributor model, they know they will sell a set amount before they even release the teaser video, they are insulated to a certain extent if a game flops, apart from the 'don't take my guns' crowd the reception seems to have been positive, much more so than Led Zep and that didn't result in a change in direction, apart from a couple of games, reaction has been mixed for most of their releases.
I'm not sure how much of a problem the bigger premises is, wasn't there some sort of deal between Stern and the local authorities?
Space is cheap in the US, we're assuming Stern are desperate to fill the space with production, maybe they are happy just having the extra capacity should they ever need to scale up.
I'm not sure how much of a problem the bigger premises is, wasn't there some sort of deal between Stern and the local authorities?
Space is cheap in the US, we're assuming Stern are desperate to fill the space with production, maybe they are happy just having the extra capacity should they ever need to scale up.
There’s loads of cash rich pinheads in US.
They will keep buying no matter what.
They will keep buying no matter what.
There’s 70 Brewdog pubs in the UK alone. Every one I’ve been into in London has a pinball machine, often more than one, usually Stern Pros. I’ve also been into retro-themed bars and entertainment venues, which sometimes - but not often - have a pin. There are also loads of seaside arcades with one, per town, typically having one or two pins - again, usually a Stern Pro.Not a
Definitely space for market growth there - just by selling a pin to every retro bar without one.
TWIP ran some numbers on this. Making some rough extrapolations (which I’m sure TWIP would be unhappy with) it looks like there are about ~5,000 Godzillas, and about ~2,000 of the other good sellers (e.g. Foo Fighters).
They also ran numbers on how many of each title the boutiques are running. Broadly speaking, depending on manufacturer, it’s about 30-800/900 per title. You can guess at the manufacturer who is selling 20-50 of each title and the manufacturer who is selling nearly 1,000 (more for some titles). Collectively, there are now so many small manufacturers, if they all put out a pin simultaneously, they’re collectively selling ~2900 per title. Adjusting for different release schedules, about a third of the market, probably more, is now in the boutiques…
Not a
Agreed
Said it 100 times pinball doesn’t make enough money to be a viable business
Tilt has always and will be a craft beer bar first and pinball as a side hustle
Biggest compliment I ever got was when Martin said Tilt had brought pinball back into mainstream in the UK
We are still the only public pinball bar in the UK, open every day to the public!
You have some amazing private club driven places but they are subsidised by their owners and members.
And other venues like Retriods and Level that are a mix of pinballs and videos games.
NIB makes it impossible without a massive backer to open this type of business. I was lucky to have had @philpalmer to support me from day one and still supports me now!
You got to be a little bit tapped to want to do this for a living
Yes, but I’m not talking about dedicated pinball bars. Or the UK market.Agreed
Said it 100 times pinball doesn’t make enough money to be a viable business
Tilt has always and will be a craft beer bar first and pinball as a side hustle
Biggest compliment I ever got was when Martin said Tilt had brought pinball back into mainstream in the UK
We are still the only public pinball bar in the UK, open every day to the public!
You have some amazing private club driven places but they are subsidised by their owners and members.
And other venues like Retriods and Level that are a mix of pinballs and videos games.
NIB makes it impossible without a massive backer to open this type of business. I was lucky to have had @philpalmer to support me from day one and still supports me now!
You got to be a little bit tapped to want to do this for a living
I’m talking about whether Stern is competing in a capped/fixed-size market.
During the pandemic, people switched their purchasing habits from services to goods - they couldn’t go out. Demand for pinball soared in the States because people with games rooms bought pinball machines. We bought our first pin, Fish Tales, at the end of the lockdown. Lockdown finished, and people slowly went back to spending money on dining, holidays, etc.
Some people got into pinball during the pandemic, such as @MadMonzer and I, and bought additional pins, including two NIB Sterns. But, we now have a pretty mature collection, and - in order for us to buy a new pin - we pretty much have to sell an existing one. We are no longer an active market for Stern UNLESS they can convince us that a new title is better than JP2 or Godzilla (or our vintage/boutique pins).
The question is whether the average buyer is more like us (a collector who has to sell to buy) or whether there is an untapped market among retro-themed bars/entertainment centres capitalising on 80s nostalgia and ‘analogue renaissance’ in the States (and elsewhere) who might want a pin (or two) to go with their arcade cabs/neon Pac-Man’s/board games/jukebox.
I’m talking about a venue that has a small shelf of board games, a jukebox, a vintage arcade cab or a row of neon Pac-Man lights. That includes the minority of venues who already have a pin, but it’s an EM or a battered Addam’s Family, which is becoming costly and annoying to repair.
If I was targeting that market as Stern, I’d cut the price by $2k, at least, for each title. And go for retro themes…
The problem is, if most of the new sales were to people like @MadMonzer and I, then it’s unclear where Stern’s four titles a year are going to go. Or why you’d expect to sell a huge number of JW pins outside die-hard film fans.
Last edited:
Isn't that because @Matt Vince puts them there? I don't think Brewdog are buying any pins themselves.
He doesnt do all the Brew Dogs does he, I though it was just Shepherds Bush he had pins in?
D
Deleted member 5505
That will still be an operator (I'm sure?). Same as what London Pinball is to the UK brewdogs.
I don't think any of these venues are buying their pins
D
Deleted member 5505
no doubt, just posted as a joke really that Matt was supplying Vegas
I was there last month and you are correct - all the machines had the same operator info card on them.
Yes, but - presumably - the person running the bar has to want a pinball machine for one to get requested from an operator.
Matt doesn’t just turn up with a pinball machine and sit on the wildly-protesting bartender until it’s up on its legs and plugged in next to the snug and the toilets!
Well yes, but I thought you said bars are buying games or should be.