Star Wars Pinball Home Edition Discussion

Cary Hardy·video·16m 28s·analyzed·Jul 19, 2019

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.022

TL;DR

Star Wars Home Edition underpriced at $4,500; needs $3K-$3.5K to justify feature reduction.

Summary

Cary Hardy reviews Stern's new Star Wars Home Edition pinball machine, criticizing the $4,500 MSRP as too high relative to full-size Pro models (which sell for $4,500-$5,200), while acknowledging the product's value in introducing pinball to new audiences. Hardy argues the price should be $3,000-$3,500 to justify the stripped-down feature set and predicts the machine will appeal primarily to uninformed consumers, potentially flooding the secondary market as buyers upgrade to full-size machines.

Key Claims

Star Wars Home Edition recommended MSRP is $4,500, with some distributors offering $4,000
high confidence · Hardy cites multiple price points observed on Pinside and distributor postings
Full-size Star Wars Pro machines sell for $4,500-$5,200 on the secondary market
high confidence · Hardy states current Pinside market pricing for Star Wars Pro models
Stern built anticipation for the reveal through social media advance notice, creating expectations for an A-list licensed game
high confidence · Hardy describes the reveal strategy and community reaction in YouTube chat
Home Edition features steel ramps and wire form rails (not plastic) and includes a novel ball lock mechanism using the Death Star toy
medium confidence · Hardy analyzes visible features in the reveal video; acknowledges limited information from same-day announcement
Optimal pricing for Home Edition should be $3,000-$3,500 to justify the simplified feature set relative to Pro pricing
medium confidence · Hardy's subjective pricing analysis based on feature comparison and market conditions

Notable Quotes

“Stern, you've done it. You've officially trolled your fans.”
Cary Hardy@ 0:00 — Opening framing of the reveal strategy as intentionally inflammatory while acknowledging it's not necessarily a bad product
“I think people built this up more than Stern did. But one thing that Stern definitely did was that they basically put out on social media, like, hey, new game premiere on YouTube this day and time.”
Cary Hardy@ 2:27 — Identifies the reveal strategy's role in setting unrealistic expectations for the announcement
“The objective of this pin is obviously to get pinball into more homes to those that can't afford it.”
Cary Hardy@ 4:40 — Articulates the product's intended market positioning
“You can pretty easily get you a nice pro for not that much different than this home edition and you're going to get a lot more bang for your buck.”
Cary Hardy@ 6:51 — Core criticism: pricing undercuts the value proposition
“I think this is going to do great for those that don't know any better.”
Cary Hardy@ 14:18 — Predicts strong adoption among uninformed consumers, implying limited appeal to informed buyers
“I think this would do better with a better price and I think a large part of the issue when it comes to getting these machines into homes is that a lot of people don't know where to even get these.”
Cary Hardy@ 13:18 — Identifies dual barriers to adoption: pricing and distribution/awareness challenges

Entities

Stern PinballcompanyCary Hardyperson Star Wars Home EditiongameStar Wars (Stern)gamePinsideorganization

Signals

~
sentiment_shift: Negative initial reception to Home Edition reveal despite product merit; community perceived announcement as intentionally provocative given pricing and feature set
high · YouTube chat described as 'blowing up'; downvotes outnumber upvotes; Hardy characterizes reaction as 'trolling' fans
?
business_signal: Home Edition accessibility limited by lack of retail presence (e.g., Walmart) and reliance on specialty distributors, reducing addressable market of uninformed consumers
medium · Hardy argues that casual buyers unfamiliar with distributors unlikely to discover product; hypothesizes retail availability would dramatically improve sales
$
market_signal: Star Wars Home Edition positioned as on-ramp product for entry-level consumers; expected to generate secondary market saturation as early adopters upgrade to full-size machines
medium · Hardy predicts buyers will resell Home Editions after experiencing pinball, driving secondary market supply; compares to typical collector behavior of purchasing multiple machines
$
market_signal: Stern's announcement strategy (advance social media teaser without explicit game reveal) generated community expectations mismatch, leading to negative YouTube reception (downvotes outnumber upvotes)
high · Hardy notes community anticipation for A-list license (Stranger Things, Jaws, Jurassic World); YouTube video shows 4,863 views with downvote dominance at time of recording
$
market_signal: Home Edition MSRP ($4,500) undercuts value proposition relative to full-size Pro models ($4,500-$5,200 secondary market), creating poor price-to-feature ratio

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.049

0:00

All right Stern, you've done it. You've done it. You did it. You've officially trolled your fans. What's up guys and welcome back to my channel where I talk and do everything pinball. So if sounds interesting to you then hit that subscribe button down below you uh officially trolled your fans and i say that in a nice but also funny way because you've got a lot of these people that are completely blowing this up like this is just a horrible product that you have put out and I disagree. I'm not saying that this is a great decision, but I will say that I think it's a step in the right direction. So the new game got revealed today. For those of you that are a little more on the internet and in touch with what's going on in the pinball industry, then you were aware of what game it was going to be before the actual premiere slash reveal, which I will discuss further in a moment. First of all, for those of you who have not even seen the game, let's watch the game teaser right now.

1:52

And that's it. That's what they revealed. This is what they showed to essentially YouTube slash world. And this is what they built up. This, I believe, is why everyone is upset. And that is because Stern, I don't even want to say they built up. I think people built this up more than Stern did. But one thing that Stern definitely did was that they basically put out on social media, like, hey, new game premiere on YouTube this day and time. So they kind of put it out there days in advance to kind of let the hype build up. and there's good and there's bad to that um the bad obviously is that everyone's anticipating it to be an a-list game meaning that it's going to be a big license games that people have already heard rumors about whether it be stranger things jaws jurassic world i mean the list goes on and on for the the rumors and what people believe or was expecting it to be so you got to imagine that you have those individuals that are building this up in their mind and they're just anticipatingly waiting to be shown a very cool game and to those of us in the know i literally just kind of sat back and was just laughing because i could not wait for the the the the basically everyone in the YouTube chat to just start blowing up. And as you can see on the YouTube video itself, you have currently 4,863 views and the down votes outweigh the up votes. So here's what we're going to do first of all I going to give you a thumbs up You got your thumbs up for me So this is like I said it was built up and people were anticipating something else so obviously with anything if someone building something up so much and expecting something and they get shown something that essentially they've already seen or something that they don't want then obviously you're going to get a lot of flack and that's what we're getting right now um so that is my first issue as is is that that they shouldn't have made it such a big deal because the objective of this pin is obviously to get pinball into more homes to those that can't afford it and that's another note that i'm going to pinpoint on here a little bit later is that this is obviously for those that don't want to pay that higher price tag for a full-size pinball machine. And basically, this is kind of like a starter pin. It's a machine to get people into this hobby at a lower price tag and less mechanical, you know, things to have to worry about dealing with. So with all these things in place, the price tag is obviously going to be lower than your standard pro. Pro being their lower tier model and the cheapest of the three tiers. So here's where my next problem comes into play, is that I've seen multiple prices on this machine, but the recommended MSRP for this machine is $4,500. Now, I want to say I saw a distributor post up that you could get it into your home for $4,000. that's obviously better but when you start pricing up even like new in boxes or just like new star wars pro machines where you get the i'd say full experience except for the premium and limited edition tiers it's not that big of a difference in price and that's also subjective you know some people look at you know 500 to 800 dollars being a drastic amount of difference whereas a lot of us that are already in this industry look at five or eight hundred dollars is like that's not that big of a difference and look how much more you can get and currently on the pin side market is where i got most of my information from you can typically find a star wars pro anywhere between 4500 to 5200 in that range obviously certain ones are going to sell higher because they have mods or it was just you know something about that particular machine or where it was located that caused the price to go up but you can pretty easily get you a nice pro for not that much different than this home edition and you're going to get a lot more bang for your buck so let's go over some of the visuals of this game just to point out certain features and mechanically it looks if you ever seen a home edition stern then you kind of know what to expect from this uh basically being little to no actual you know mechs i mean you're going to get a lot of um and the key word to the home editions guys is simplicity but i think that this is done really well for a home edition pin. I think this offers a good amount. You still got your wire form rails, steel ramps, not plastic. So they didn't cheap out that way and go the plastic route. Let's see here.

7:58

So you got your Death Star and the way they do the ball lock on this one is kind of interesting because the ball lock, I'm not sure if you can see my mouse right here, but essentially the ball lock falls down in place right here and from there not much video that been revealed on this guys and this is literally announced today so the information i got currently is a little bit limited so i'm going off what has been i have seen today um so with that being said the ball locking i think for the simplistic nature of it i think it's pretty clever i like it i mean it's ball can fall down here and you can easily you know newton ball hit that thing out of there which usually i've seen at least in the video where it hits this target back here um let's see here let me scroll through here again in this portion right here i thought the ball moved a little slow but that could be on purpose the ball didn't seem to like the game didn't seem to move like horribly slow and that can obviously be adjusted by the tilt of your game so we've got what two pop bumpers that's what it looks like no we got three okay we got three pop bumpers and the ball locking mechanism that I talked about earlier so it falls down in place right here and then you can hit it from down bam and knock it out of place so once it hits this then it hits the target right here which evidently means add a ball so then i guess you can just build up your multi ball that way so they hit that and then i've seen another video we're still recording at comic-con and they had like four ball four or five balls going so it's got a multiple things and then you've got this little bitty screen right here it's kind of adorable actually now that i take a look at it further um it's it's pretty cute and i kind of wonder i can't tell from this image right here that way it pans over but i'm kind of curious on how cheap they went and i'm only seeing one circle right here for a speaker so i wonder if they went the ultra cheaper route and only gave you one speaker right here from mono sound i really am curious i can't like i said i can't really tell but from right here in this angle it looks like they've only got one speaker and this is what maybe a five or six inch display the artwork is essentially i want to say nothing different on that um the game is obviously going to be smaller in size if you've ever played a home machine then you kind of know what to expect from that but i think bottom line verdict stern you're doing good when it comes to getting more people into this hobby and giving them a chance to buy a machine at a cheaper price than your top tier models or even your pro the downside i see to this is that it's not as big of a price cut as it needs to be and i'm and i'm sure you've gone through and you've stripped as much as you can to still be able to turn a profit and i'm thinking that you're you're better off for a machine like this and to get people into the hobby, you're looking more at about a $3,000 to $3,500 price mark to where I think that would be a little bit more suitable for what you're getting out of this pen. And that's also based upon what Star Wars pros are currently selling for. So, I mean, that's my two cents on it. I mean, I like the idea of getting pinball into more homes and getting people more interested into of this hobby and it growing obviously. I don wanna stunt it but I mean just showing this machine to some people I like hey you can get you a Star Wars Home Edition They like oh what is that And so for those of us that know better can say it basically you know a stripped down more simplistic version of a Star Wars for about maybe cheaper than a full one And a lot of people would probably say I'd rather just spend the extra $600 to get the full experience than this more simple one. but i'm i'm pretty sure and you're gonna find out guys and i say guys meaning i'm talking to you stern that i'm hope i wrong i hope i am but i don't know if this is gonna do well because yes it's star wars and yeah that people eat this stuff up like it's you know cookies and milk but it's only going to do well to those that don't know any better and that sounds bad but i'm thinking that's what i'm leaning towards right now i'm thinking that this would do better with a better price and i think a large part of the issue when it comes to getting these machines into homes is that a lot of people don't know where to even get these now if you were to have these machines and i'm not this is not going to happen but let's just say for instance you walk into walmart and you go to the game section you see full-fledged pinball machines that you could buy right then and there for i want to say let's say three thousand dollars the chances of you selling it right there are a lot higher than someone having to research find a distributor and deal with all that um that's not a guarantee I mean, and as a thing is that this is I'm just judging by the regular people, the people that don't know pinball at all, that don't know about distributors, that don't know the regular price tag and stuff like that. I think this is going to do great for those that don't know any better. So when they get this, this is going to get them hopefully a taste of what pinball is and what it can be. so this is basically kind of dipping people's feet into the water to get a feel of it and i think once they enjoy this you're like hey you know what we should get more like the any typical any of us guys that have bought a machine we never usually just tend to get one we get more and why because it's fun and so i think this is definitely going to get people the that taste and it's going to tease them enough to where they're going to want more and chances are you're probably going to see a lot of these on the second-hand market because people are going to buy them and then they're going to play it and then they're going to start shopping for other machines and seeing what else they could get and then people are going to be reselling this and so you're going to be seeing these on the second-hand market i'd say it shouldn't take too long but like i said i hope i'm wrong and stern i hope this does well and i'm hoping it does exactly what you want it to do and that is to put pinball in more homes but and this is you know completely unscripted unnoticed so it's going to be scattered all over the place but i wanted to give my thoughts and opinions on this and uh so let me know guys i mean do you agree with what i'm saying do you disagree i mean it's it's this is a discussion so i'm all up for it hit me with what you got let me know how you feel in the comments section down below and if you like what you've seen here do not forget to give me that thumbs up and if you haven't already do not forget to hit that subscribe button down below that way you can be notified of whenever i upload new content for your viewing pleasure until next time peace out