Into a wake in the morning and I step outside and I take a dip and I can't feel high and I scream from the top of my lungs, what's going on? Sit-a, sit-a, sit-a, sit-a, sit-a, sit-a, sit-a! Oh, what's going on in the pinball world? Welcome to Kaneda's Pinball Podcast. Here we are Monday after Easter. Keith Elwin's latest game is out, King Kong. The LEs are not sold out yet. What does that mean in the pinball world? What's going on? What do these LEs actually stand for? Once the most coveted items in all of pinball, we used to fight to get our hands on an LE. Now times have changed. We're going to talk about that. I want to talk about King Kong. I've been watching more of the streams. Gosh, Stern invited like 30 influencers, it feels like, to make content for free to help Stern Pinball sell games. Here's the funny part about all the pinball content creators. None of them are making any money. So they took money out of their own pockets to go to Stern Pinball to help Stern Pinball make content, to help Stern make money. And nobody in the pinball media is making a dime off of anything they're making. It's much different, ladies and gentlemen, in other categories where it's real media. So when an automaker invites you to test drive a car, those outlets make money. When a tech journalist goes to see the new Nintendo Switch 2, those tech outlets are making money. So it is funny to me that all these pinball content creators opened up their wallets and went to Stern Pinball on their own dime. Now look, I got invited. I did not go. I'm not bitter. I just couldn't go. I had too much work. I will be going, and I already got a text message invite to go to Jersey Jack Pinball when they are ready to showcase Harry Potter. I will go on that trip, and I fully expect Jersey Jack Pinball to do the right thing and to not invite too many media to offer to pay for the media's trip, which is the right thing to do. Now, I also want to be the first media outlet to say this. I think all of us should agree that we will not visit another pinball manufacturer ever again. If we fly into Chicago on Jersey Jack's dime, many of us did last time. And I think collectively, nobody should go down the block. If we're going there to see Harry Potter, let's only go see Harry Potter and then go home. All right, so here we are, the week after the big launch week. Isn't it interesting? If you didn't buy anything last week, how liberated do you feel? You didn't commit to buying anything. And as I look at both of these game launches, both Dune and King Kong, obviously Kong had the much better launch last week. I still have a lot of question marks about why Dune launched when it did. Let's just start there real quickly because I know my friends over there, or used to be friends over there listen to this show. I just don't get now what's next for people who they are targeting for this game because basically they said they are making two games. They are sending them on location. The next games that go on the line, they're not going to go out to customers quickly because they said they want to do extensive testing on those early builds. I don't know what that means. I kind of think they're stalling because they want the code to be further along. And that makes sense because they're still waiting on license or approval. When we see the game right now, there's like zero clips from the movie in the code right now. So they're waiting on approval. But the real question I have is, well, how long? How long are people going to wait? Nobody knows. And I still don't get why they showed their game when they did. It didn't have everything in it that showed this game in the best possible light. You know, it's different if you have like a triple A theme and all the mechs are in it and all the sculpts are in it. It'd be different if they showed Goonies and they were waiting on license or approval of the clips and they showed us the pirate ship and all the Goonies stuff. They would have sold out instantly. But to show Dune a theme that most people don't really want without any of the clips, I think they were banking on the Sandworm Mech being enough to really get those orders coming in. And I don't know how many orders they got. I can't even pretend to guess a number. But if I were to guess, I can't imagine like hundreds and hundreds of games were sold last week when this game officially launched. Now, if you are a boutique, you do have to sell a decent amount of your allotment in the first two weeks. That's just the way pinball sales work. Usually about like 60 to 70% of games will probably be sold in the first week if you're a boutique company and you only have to make like a thousand games. I don't know, man. I don't know how many orders they got and launching on top of King Kong did not help. Knowing that Harry Potter is around the corner did not help. And if anyone over there at Barrels wants to email me, when can we expect the first games on the line to go to customers? That would be nice to know. And when are you expecting the licensor to approve all of those assets? I would have waited for all of that to have been approved before you show your game to the world You only get one chance to make a first impression And if you were working on this game for a year I just don know why you come out of the gates like this And I taken a lot of arrows for talking about this launch like this. People are upset with me, like is this me being unfair? Like I'm not attacking these guys. I've made a few broad stroke statements. One of which is, I don't think they did any market research to land on this title. They didn't. The second is, I don't think you should launch on top of a Keith Elwin game. They did. The third is, I don't think you should take money on your game or show your game to the world until it's ready to be shown. They did. The game is not ready to be shown. And if you're mad at me for saying those three things, then I think you should just cancel your membership right now. There are plenty of other shows out there that will celebrate this game and call it epic and magical. I mean, I'm seeing other content creators saying this game is epic and it's got no assets in it. You know, that's the difference between Kaneda and everybody else. I'm not a cheerleader on the sidelines going nuts every time a new pinball machine comes out in the world, especially when these games fully loaded are costing $13,000. I know that everybody is thinking more like me and saying, is this a theme I really want? Do I really need this in my home? And is it really worth the money? That's where we all are at in pinball right now. It was much different gang when these boutiques were launching games around six, seven, $8,000 times have changed everybody. and you need to drop bangers into the pinball world or you're not gonna be successful. So I think it's gonna be a slow, long few months in the desert for the team over at Barrels of Fun as they try to drum up new excitement for this game because now it's gonna be a long wait and they're gonna crash into Harry Potter's launch and then what? Then what? So not how I would have done it. So King Kong L.E., let's talk about the big gorilla L.E. as its own entity. Now, the game has not sold out yet. It doesn't mean it's not going to sell out. And it's definitely sold through. So distributors have it. But at $13,000, how do we think King Kong L.E. is going to do? Now, King Kong as a game is still very early on. I understand that the game shoots amazingly well. And I don't think there's anybody in the pinball world that doesn't believe that. That's what a Keith Elwin game is. It's a super satisfying shooter. Every single one of his games is super satisfying to shoot. There is not a Keith Elwin game that you walk up to and are frustrated by the gameplay. So we know that the game is super fun to shoot. From an artistic standpoint, think about what separates the LE from the other games. Really, the only thing different on this LE, and this was lazy on Stern's part, only the trans light is different. Now, I do think it is the nicest trans light with the damsel who's apparently not in distress because the license holder wouldn't let the woman be a damsel in distress. We'll talk a little bit about that. But that is definitely the nicest trans light. But the cabinet artwork is the same artwork that is found on the other models. When was the last time Stern did this? I think Foo Fighters did this where they just changed the colors, but I don't even think they changed the colors. So when you think about what you're getting in the LE package of this game, there's not a lot that's different. And I think it's going to be really easy for premium owners who are saving almost $3,000. No, they're saving more than $3,000 to add some armor to the game, some inner art blades, and voila, everyone's having the same exact experience. Everybody's basically playing the same exact looking game even, like almost the same exact looking game. Here's the other thing that's unavoidable. Even the great Keith Elwin can't move 1,000 units or less than 1,000 units, 932 at $13,000 So if you're Banger, if you're greatest designer in your arsenal, if he can't move units at this volume and at this price, how do you think you're going to move units when you get to designers that are not as coveted, when you get to themes that are not that great? And I think overall what we're witnessing, everybody, is really the death of the Stern LE. I mean it. And I'm not holding back. I think owning an LE now means nothing. I think anybody who's bought a new in-box LE over the last three years regrets it. The only people that don't regret buying a new in-box LE are Jaws LE owners because that game has held. It hasn't really gone up in value, but it's held. But every single other one has gone down $3,000 to $4,000. If you are looking at your D&D LE right now and you wrote a check for $13, you know by the time the code is done, you could get that game for $10 with very low plays on it. And heck, we know there are still distributors, many of which have D&D LEs in a box sitting in a room. So it's just over. It's absolutely over. the FOMO to get these LEs is not there Like you can go and get a Kong LE today without having a special relationship with the distro without having to pay over sticker And for those who are getting your Kong LEs I really mean this I'm happy for you. It's not what I would have done. But if you've seen enough already to want this game in $13,000 trim form, I'm happy for you. But I also think the people buying them now, You're not buying them anymore as collectibles. You're not. You're just buying the nicest version of the game. That's it. You don't care about the resale value. The people who are buying LEs now have money. They don't care if they lose $3,000. They just want the shiniest version of the game in their home. And I understand that. I absolutely understand that. The thing is, there's just not a thousand of those people out there that want to buy like that. Because here's the thing, the wealthy people I know, they also are patient and they don't want to lose money on anything. It would be different if we didn't have so much data that shows the reality of what will most likely happen to you if you buy a new in box Stern LE. Now let's talk about this game versus Jaws. do we feel that King Kong Ellie will hold and have as much excitement as Jaws Ellie does now I'm just here to tell you right now while I think King Kong is a better shooter than Jaws I do it looks a lot more interesting to shoot but what King Kong does not have is a fan base that is as excited as the Jaws fan base is around Jaws. Because remember, Jaws Pinball is giving a Jaws fan everything that they want in terms of theme integration. You are getting the iconic Steven Spielberg movie fed back to you in pinball form. If you are a King Kong fan who loves everything about King Kong, They're not feeding back to you anything that you grew up with in terms of King Kong. It has none of the assets that you absolutely love. And think about it. If you're a King Kong fanatic and you go watch like the Netflix animated King Kong show, do you really feel like that's what a King Kong fan wants to go watch? I mean, everything that's been iconic when it comes to King Kong has been live action. Everything. There was never anything animated that was a classic King Kong thing. I think on that level alone, you're just never going to see, you're never going to see the emotional attachment to this King Kong game that Jaws fans have for their Jaws pinball machine. And also, I would argue that Jaws Ellie is so uniquely different from the other Jaws games that that is why people do not want to let it go. The other thing about King Kong that I just find funny, after just a week, right, some influencers spend a little bit of time on the game and all of a sudden they're saying it's going to be a top five game of all time. And then I'm watching the stream and I'm still confused. I'm absolutely confused about who are you as the player in King Kong? Now, apparently you are the damsel. You're the woman in the King Kong storyline. Okay, so that doesn't make any sense to me whatsoever. If you're playing as the woman in the storyline, how does that make any sense? So when you enter into a battle where it's King Kong battling a big lizard on the island, what role do you have in that battle? In Godzilla, you played as Godzilla and it made total sense. And Godzilla in all of his different movies and storylines went around to different cities and battled other big creatures. So that storyline and the cohesiveness of it made total sense and worked so well in pinball format. And as I watch this King Kong stream, I mean it. It's all over the place. It makes no sense to me because within just a few seconds of gameplay, it's got clips where you're in the jungle. Five seconds later, he's climbing the building. Five seconds later, he's battling a lizard. Ten seconds later, he's back at the top of the building. this is all happening at the same time. How does any of this make any sense? I don't get it. I really feel like this game should have had more of like a duality to it that worked. Where like, you could choose. I mean, imagine if you could choose. Do you want to start with King Kong on the island? Or do you want to play as King Kong in the city? Sort of like the way Spooky Pinball allows you to pick Evil Dead 1 or Evil Dead 2. I just think throwing King Kong, both Jungle Storyline Kong and Cityscape Kong into a blender like this and both things are happening simultaneously as you're hitting shots. How are you going to explain to me how that makes any sense? How that's a lot of fun. And so yeah, while I think the game shoots well, my prediction on Kong is that this mashup of the narrative is gonna wear thin over time. And it's not gonna excite people the way Godzilla did. It's not gonna keep people's interest the same way that Jaws has. I think this game might go down a little bit more like Avengers And remember Avengers was animated They didn want to pony up the money and get the Avengers clips from the movies You can tell me if you saw this King Kong game and it had clips from like the Peter Jackson movie or clips from the 1970s movie or clips from the original Black and White Kong that this game wouldn't be better. That they didn't any of those assets. And look, I get it. Stern will do its interviews and they will say, here were the challenges that we face with the licensor. And I don't really care to listen to these anymore because you know what, Stern, you passed on back to the future. instead of playing King Kong by Keith Elwin right now we would have Back to the Future with Joe Kay and Stern Pinball a Kapow Stern Pinball release would have been released to the world if Stern Pinball did not pass on Back to the Future so in conclusion I think the Stern LE model is kind of dead the people buying these games just have a lot of money and they don't care about losing three grand I don't think Kong LE holds value like Jaws. I don't. And I don't know if I'm right or wrong on this. We will see the way the market goes. Let's check this out in a year from now if Kong LE is selling for 13 or more or it's selling for less. My bet is that it's selling for less. You know, the code's not nearly done. And I think that's the other thing is people are getting a little fed up. All these companies continue to release games with software incomplete. We know that Harry Potter is going to be much more further along than Kong, but I think it's wearing on everybody. I'm tired of buying these games new in box when the game's not done. Most people are tired of it. There's no reason why we should continue to be the guinea pigs. I also think there's always going to be a lot of excitement for what's new from Keith Elwin. It's understandable. He's earned all of that. I'm not surprised that people went over to Stern. nobody got to see the LE. Do you know that? Notice how the LE wasn't in any of the footage. Why was that? Apparently there was like a mistake on the artwork they were printing for it. Do you think that was the reason why? Maybe. You think maybe they just didn't want people to see how similar it was to all the other Kongs that were on display. Keep it a little bit of a mystery. I'm just making stuff up here. You know, Kanae, I'm always going to make some stuff up, but I think it's still too early. We've got to see. For me, I want to see this game be more cohesive. It just feels like Kong in a blender. It really does. But it's going to be fun, right? It's absolutely going to be fun. And that's been my whole thing. It's like, yeah, all pinball is fun, but it's a lot more fun spending 10 over 13. It's a lot more fun waiting for these games to be done and then getting one for 30 to 40% cheaper. And now we wait for Harry Potter. That's the next thing now. Jersey Jack is in the driver's seat now because I don't think Dune or Kong sort of dropped a game into the world that was like, OMG, we haven't seen this before. Nope, none of them did it. We didn't even get Spike 3. What a disappointment, right? We still didn't even get the new platform from Stern. So think about this. You're still spending $13,000 on basically an unlicensed King Kong game with no assets in it. and it's $13,000. How much is spike three going to cost? They keep delaying this man, but I know once it happens and Stern raises the prices, I think it's all going to come crashing down. People are not going to keep buying. I mean, it terrifies me that Stern pinball needs to sell thousands of games a month, a month people to keep that big factory going. The future is going to be boutique. It is. But boutiques still need to be smart. You need to make a game people really want. And you need to put a lot in it. And the consumers will decide if they're getting their bang for the buck. Like Evil Dead is not a great theme. But it's a campy cult thing. And Spooky Pinball did the best. And it took them a few months to sell out. But they did. Will the same thing happen for Dune? I don't know. Barrels is not playing it as well as Spooky did when it comes to transparency and making friends with the community. It's just that simple. Spooky gets a lot of sales because of goodwill and people feeling good about supporting their company. If they had launched Evil Dead with no clips from those movies in the game when they launched it, that game might be dead on arrival. You got to be really careful about when you decide to show your game to the world for the first time. Everybody, thank you for being a subscriber. And thank you to those that have upped your subscription amount. I really appreciate it. You said not to mention your names, but you know who you are. If you guys ever want to raise the roof, absolutely. Thank you so much. I really appreciate all the support all of these years. And no one's ever going to be able to buy my opinion. It's never going to happen. I'm going to call it as I see it. All pinball is fun, but that's not enough. We need more. Later. 25 years and my life is still time to get up that great big hill of hope for a destination