Pokemon, gotta catch them all, it's you and me, I know it's my destiny, Pokemon, you're my best friend. I'll send, I'll send, I'll send, I'll send, I'll send, I'll send, I'll send, I'll send, I'll send. Welcome everybody to Kaneda's Pinball Podcast. The Patriots are back in the Super Bowl. What? It snowed like two feet here. And this is going to be what I think is maybe the most important month in the last 10 years over at Stern Pinball. It's now or never. This is the biggest IP that's ever been put in a pinball machine. Pokemon. You heard the theme song, right? Now, be honest with me right now. How many of you, when you heard that, how many of you felt absolutely nothing? Nothing. And look, I know it's going to be colorful. I know it's going to be, in quotations, fun. But are you really going to put it next to your Kiss and your Guns and Roses and your Harry Potter and all of the more adult themes that you grew up with? And now it's Pokemon. Got to catch them all. Stern's got to catch all those dollars. What's going to happen? Are we on Friday, the 30th of this month, going to finally get the reveal of the theme, the teaser from Stern Pinball. It seems to be serendipitous that it's the 30th of the month. It is the 30th anniversary of Pokemon in February, and I think it's going to happen. I think the stars are going to align. Does that mean we're going to see Pokemon at Pinball by the beach? I don't know. It's going to be cutting it kind of close. They sort of have like a usually a two week between games going on the line and the reveal of the product. If they were smart, absolutely. Bring it, bring it, bring it. It's the game everybody wants to see. I don't think you're going to be selling many more Star Wars machines or any more Walking Dead machines. By the way, Walking Dead, if you look at the owner's club, has to be maybe one of the worst selling Stern machines of all time. It was a terrible business decision that just did not work out. And as I think about Pokemon, and I think about what this game means to Stern, we got to unpack this a little bit. This is a really big moment. This game really needs to hit. Now, what I think is going to happen is this. I think the game is going to win over the casual pinball person. The person that doesn't want an intimidating game, that doesn't want a theme that's too mature for the household. It's going to be very inviting to everybody. I think the layout is going to be very, very safe. I think George Gomez is going to want people to walk up to this game and be able to jump on it and hit things and have smooth flow and not have a lot of complexity to the design. That does not mean it's not going to be fun, but I don't think it's going to be clunky, and I don't think there's going to be like an ambitious design here. I don't think they're going to take any risks whatsoever on the design of Pokemon. If I were a betting man, I think the majority of the game's layout will be somewhat of a fan layout, but then I heard reports that Jack's basic design, Jack Danger's basic design, was maintained and George just went a little bit safer on the rest of the elements. So we shall see. I'm totally expecting at least a three flipper game, maybe a fourth flipper. There might be an upper left play field. Maybe I think it would make sense to have some sort of Pokemon stadium happening somewhere as an upper play field, maybe a lower play field. So we shall see. And I'm also hearing a rumor that there might be two LEs of this game, a Pikachu version and a Charizard. Is that how you say his name? See, I don't know these guys. I never grew up playing any Pokemon. I'm being transparent. I never played the Pokemon games on Game Boy. I never played any of the video games. I might have dabbled using Pikachu on like a Super Smash Brothers game here and there, But for the most part, I've never sat through Pokemon cartoons. I've never read any like comic books or anime with Pokemon. It's just everywhere though, right? It's like Pokemon's one of these things. It's like the sky is blue. You don't really know maybe even what makes the sky blue. You don't even know what the molecules are that create a blue sky. You just know it's there. And that's kind of like Pokemon. It's just there. It's just been part of culture for the last 30 years. It's been omnipresent and some people dive in deep. I have a friend at work. He goes to Pokemon card tournaments and he signs up with like thousands of other people and he tries to make his way through the tournaments. I know people that collect Pokemon cards. I know people that love the video games. But the real question is, it doesn't matter any of that. What really matters is this. Will Stern Pinball be able to translate Pokemon into a pinball game experience that at these prices will deliver value And that really it It not just Stern who has to achieve this now with every new pinball machine It every single company Everything is so expensive and everything now is starting to look a little bit maybe overpriced or unoriginal. The boutique companies are in a really nice position. You're seeing what you can get for 10 Gs over at Spooky. Barrels is giving people Winchester at 11.6. And then you go over to Stern And Stern continues to be, out of all the companies, the one company now where people feel like they're just not getting the value, it's at Stern Pinball. So this is definitely a valuable license. It's the biggest IP in the world. But it doesn't really connect with the majority of the age group of people that buy machines at these prices. It is absolutely going to crush it on location. Tournament players and league night players galore. You guys are going to have a lot of fun. But in the end, it's really going to need to do more than that. And I think Stern Pinball is at a period now where they need a machine to just do more than that. They need their next Godzilla. They got close with Jaws. They didn't go all the way. Everything else since then has been somewhat of a sales disappointment and a little bit of a cultural flop. If you ask me, D&D never really caught on. You didn't really see people catch on with King Kong. You didn't really see Star Wars take off. The Walking Dead didn't take off. John Wick didn't take off. Venom didn't take off. It used to be like for every Stern flop, there were always like two good Stern machines ready to go. Now it's like the opposite. It's like for every great Stern machine now, there's like four machines that have you scratching your head. So Pokemon, if I were to guess, and again, we're going to see this game in about a week. If I were to guess, I think this game is going to be more like a Star Wars and not like a Godzilla. And I think they're going to sell just fine right away. I think the sales on this game is going to be interesting. I think the LEs are going to move simply because it's Pokemon. I also think if there's any game that the speculators, and there's a lot of pinball speculators out there that would love to make a buck or two on flipping a game or just having something that's not going to lose value. Do I think Pokemon LEs are going to lose value? It's hard to tell. It really is hard to tell because nothing is held. Jaws hasn't held. Now, Pokemon is way bigger than Jaws, but again, it's not big with this audience. And that's a big thing that everybody needs to be like honest about that people who buy Pokemon memorabilia and Pokemon items, they're not really going to just like, oh, yeah, man, no brainer. I'm going to drop sixty five hundred to thirteen thousand dollars on a pinball machine. It just doesn't work like that. And if you open the door to any Pokemon collectors room like our bedroom or collecting room, it's not like there's always room for a pinball machine. You know what I'm saying? It's like it's easy to collect playing cards and toys and action figures and video games. But to put a pinball machine in your home is like inviting in a major, major piece of furniture that actually requires you to rearrange what's going on in the room. And so, yeah, what I've heard from people over at Stern is this. I heard the casuals will get into it. It will sell because of that. But I heard that the diehard pinball audience, which is basically you and me, the people that are in this hobby every single day that have been following every single game coming out. I hear that it's going to be very underwhelming for the pinheads out there. And so when I hear that, I'm like, well, if they don't hook the pinball collector with this thing, because think about it. Is Neil McRae with a straight face going to tell us he's into Pokemon or Iceman or any of like the hyper users on Pinside that buy everything? Are they really going to tell us they're now into Pokemon? Do you think Bill Brandis is into Pokemon or Ed Ed Robertson is into Pokemon? No, right? So it's going to be funny watching these dudes who buy everything try to justify Pokemon. And I don't know. I think the Stern army out there has been very, very eager to show their support to Stern. They're basically saying to Stern, Stern, just give us an LE that actually gives the value. Like they want to buy Stern LEs. They do. And then they usher out Star Wars. Trash. They usher out The Walking Dead. Trash. Like this stuff is not worth anywhere near $13,000. And these guys know it. And they're tired of getting burned every single release. They went in early, man. A lot of these guys, they were on the 13K choo-choo train way back in the Foo Fighter day, and they got all those machines. And now if they're trying to move any of those things out, they're losing $3,000 to $4,000 a pop. And the thing is this, nobody's telling you that you shouldn't eventually end up with a Stern LE. But man, the smart dude out there is buying every single new Stern LE six months after they come out for the price of a premium. And that's just been the way it's been going. The other big test for Stern right now is going to be the Costco orders of this game. This is it. Like I heard Costco put in an order for 3000 Pokemon machines like that's incredible. There will be 3000 of these That three times the amount of Beetlejuice machines in Pokemon form Now it not going to be a pro It going to be like the home version of the game but 3 of them I think those are like what like five grand or 5 Will those units move? As people are going through Costco and they see a Pokemon pinball machine, hey, man, it's not like out of bounds. And, you know, George Gomez is always telling us that the Costco games are selling out. But then we get people on Pinside showing us like the clearance sale of these games. So I don't know who to believe. Nobody knows the real sales numbers of anything. I don't trust anybody. I don't trust dealers. I don't trust distros. I don't trust the manufacturers because none of these companies are publicly traded. None of the numbers are vetted. None of these companies have to be held accountable. And they always talk in these like loosey goosey terms like, yeah, we sold 700 dunes now. Really exactly 700. I want to know how many dune orders did you get? Everybody probably is rounding up. They never want to round down, but it's always like a very specific number with a zero at the end of it. It's never a random number. Like I would believe it if David David Van Es was like, yeah, we sold 687 dune machines. That's how many we're going to make no more. Okay. I believe it. But and you're like, 700 were sold. Yeah, sure, sure. Exactly at 700, the orders have stopped. So here we are. It is January 26. I think we're going to get the Pokemon, the trailer on Friday, revealing the theme. And then the next week, we may get the full game reveal. That is like what I am hearing. It is going to be sometime in February. We see this game. It is also going to be a period now where Beetlejuice machines make their way out the door. Seeing more of these games lined up. The more I see of these games, the more beautiful they look. I can't wait for people to get these games. There's going to be 10 of these games at Pinball at the Beach. What's going to be fun about that is really the feedback. Because up to this point, remember, the people making the content up to this point were selling you the game. Or they were like fanboys of Spooky. Or they worked at Spooky. So the real moment is now. What happens when you put the game out there and people with no agenda get a chance to play it and give their feedback? See, I'm really curious for Beetlejuice's feedback from unbiased or seemingly unbiased fans of the hobby. I'm also curious to see what Winchester gets when more unbiased people play the game. A lot of you who ordered the game, who were at Expo, you know, you have stars in your eyes. You're going to see the game you want because you ordered it. You've got like a $12,000 item about to come to you. And so, yeah, it's great. The shots are awesome. Yeah, yeah, we'll see. We'll see. The verdict is way too early on all of these games. The good news is this. It is an amazing time to be in this hobby. It is a buyer's market and then some. You know what's funny? Go on Pinside's Marketplace. Look how many Pirates of the Caribbean games are up for sale right now. You know why? because Harry Potter is so much better of a game. It's not as rare and it never will be, but playing Potter, and I'm looking at you, Bill Brandes, everyone will admit this, playing Harry Potter as just a pinball going experience is way more fun than Pirates of the Caribbean. And so when you've got these guys trying to sell a Pirates LE for like 25,000 and 40,000 for the CE, the problem with all of that now is nobody cares what jersey jack is doing now is they're blowing up even giving any value to having a ce it doesn't matter anymore they're going to make unlimited ces on potter on sonic the hedgehog and whatever else is coming down the road so you know the days of like i have one of the rare like jersey jack machines people just don't care their strategy as a company isn't that anymore it's not to win you over via scarcity. It's not to win you over via exclusivity. They want to just win you over because it's a masterpiece, because it's a great game and they're going to make as many as people want. And what I love about that strategy is it absolutely blows up all the parts of this hobby that people hate, which is like you have to be in with a distro or a dealer or you're going to get locked out. Nope, that's gone now. Jersey Jack blew that up. They also blew up the notion that you could spend $12,500 on their product and feel like you got the second fiddle game because you were locked out of the CE. Like nobody's disappointed now. Nobody. If you want the arcade version, you spend 10. If you want the wizard edition, 12.5. And if you want all the bells and whistles, 15 and we'll make it for you. And we'll send it to your house and we're going to warranty it and we've blown up all that other stuff. I love it. And now the only place in pinball where like the scarcity and the exclusivity lives is with the boutique companies. Now their things are exclusive and scarce because that's all they can make. You know, spooky pinball is saying we're only making 999 Beetlejuices. Yeah, they can kind of only do that unless they increase the size of their company. They don't want to be making it for two years because they've got next year's game ready to go by the end of this year. And as anyone who works in a creative field will tell you, you don want to work on the same thing forever It gets boring You want your creative team to move on to the next project You don want to be like executing the same campaign for four years Or if you like Dutch pinball building Lebowski's for like six years, it's boring. I mean, they've been building Lebowski's for 13 years in total, even though like five or six of those years, nothing happened. It's boring. And as I've been saying, you know, the Dutch team hasn't been improving with each game. So, you know, in a lot of ways they're still stuck in 12 years ago. They have not been innovating and learning through the process of making games. But Jersey Jack has. Look at their game. Like this is how you get to Harry Potter. All the mistakes they've made as a company have led them to Harry Potter. OK, and look how great the game is. All the mistakes that Spooky has made over the years has led them to Beetlejuice. Dutch Pinball, what have they learned from? You know, what are they going to pull on? Like what experiences are they going to like lean into to make back to the future the greatest game ever see I'm just a little nervous about that Stern Pinball is like the opposite like they were doing things better years ago that's what's weird about Stern see this is why people do blame Seth and they blame the new management over at Stern they blame the private equity pressure because Stern Pinball made better games years ago so you're telling me you can make Godzilla for 10.5 with everything in it and get every single asset imaginable. And then years later, we're ending up with an assetless King Kong without as much magic. And you're telling me your company's advancing. And Stern's big issue is like Spike 3 is embarrassing to them. It's like they're a new platform. And it's like the games on it are worse than the games on the older platforms. That is so embarrassing for them. It's not even funny. And that's why Pokemon needs to be the game that picks up the spike three baton and carries it to the finish line and gets everybody excited. So we shall see. Oh, man. So I'm excited, everybody. I'm excited. I think it's going to be a crazy month in pinball. I think it's going to be a lot of fun. I can't wait to see what happens if I were each and every one of you. I'm just going to say this. If you're a collector, don't sleep on Pokemon Ellie. I would just get on a list hearing rumors that certain distros are sold out. It's not sold out already. You'll be able to find one, but just, you know, get on a list. It never costs anything to get on a list. It's really easy to do it. If you want, just call me. I'll get you on a list. I mean, that's how easy it is. It's going to be a week dominated by what Stern does on Friday. There's nothing else happening this week in pinball. Trust me, there's like nothing else happening other than people continuing to lose money on these galactic tank forces. I need to set up a time with American pinball. Ronald, if you're listening, we'll get something going. I just like at this stage again, as I said on my Saturday morning show, I really think American pinball should have done it a little differently. And what I mean by that is I would have developed a new game and I would not have really started doing interviews until I had the new game that represents the new American pinball. See, it's okay that people know that you bought them. It's okay that you changed the logo. It's okay that you're hiring people, but that's it. That's it. Stop talking. Go find a designer. Go find a code team, But don't talk about remaking Legends of Valhalla. Don't talk about remaking 50 more barbecue challenges. Go out there in secrecy and say, look, we expect to have our game at Expo, our new game that's going to reveal what this new company is all about. Until then, we're not saying anything. And good luck guessing what it is. We think you're all going to want one. If they just said that, that's it. You don't need to do the whole like media tour taking credit for like absorbing the company that nobody in their right mind would have bought. You know what I'm saying? It's like who would buy American pinball? All the games they've made, the IP they've made, all of that is not of any value to anybody. And yeah, what happens is men who make a lot of money in other industries get stars in their eyes about manufacturing pinball and we'll see if it translates. It's different manufacturing LED road signs than it is pinball machines. I tend to believe there's a lot more parts that have to go into a pinball machine. Prima Donna designers and whatnot and artists. Like when you're making a road sign with LED lights, I tend to believe you're only talking about a handful of parts. A pinball machine, thousands of parts, vendors that have to supply things. You're at the mercy of a lot of the vendors. You got to hire an artist that's good. You got to make sure your game is as good or better than what's in the market or you're going to be dead on arrival. Look how many good options there are right now with no American pinball. So for them to come out, they need to come out with a banger. And I hope they do. But they also should just stop talking, develop the game and let the game do the talking. I'm about to make most of you not excited by playing the Pokemon theme song as we end the show right now. Our courage will pour us all up through You teach me and I'll teach you Pokémon Pokémon