Episode 850: "Your 2024 Pinball Wishes"

Kaneda's Pinball Podcast (Patreon feed)·podcast_episode·35m 27s·analyzed·Sep 26, 2023

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.036

TL;DR

Kaneda discusses 2024 pinball wishes, warns of manufacturer collapse, criticizes pricing, predicts Jaws success.

Summary

Kaneda celebrates his birthday by reading listener wishes for pinball in 2024, focusing on recurring themes: demand for better mechanical integration with premium themes, pricing concerns and fears of manufacturer collapse, code update quality and reliability, and desires for peace within the community. Kaneda offers his own wish for a AAA-licensed theme with proper mechanical magic, critiques current pricing strategy as greedy, warns American Pinball faces extinction due to oversaturation and lack of market-fit games, and predicts Jaws will be a major sales success while Mark Ritchie's Elton John game will underperform due to weaker theme appeal.

Key Claims

Current pinball pricing is unsustainably high; buying even one LE machine requires earning $80,000+ before taxes with no other expenses
high confidence · Kaneda, calculating cost-of-living impact of $40,000/year pinball spending
American Pinball is in the biggest jeopardy of collapsing due to lack of hit games and market saturation
medium confidence · Kaneda's assessment of American Pinball's viability after 4-5 games without success
Jaws will sell out day one due to Keith Elwin design and strong IP appeal
medium confidence · Kaneda predicting Jaws sales trajectory; stated as personal expectation based on market dynamics
Mark Ritchie's Elton John game will not sell out day one despite mechanical improvements over Godfather and Toy Story 4
medium confidence · Kaneda contrasting Elton John theme appeal with Jaws; acknowledges mechanical magic but notes weak theme
Stern has not yet sold out 30th Anniversary Edition Jurassic Park LEs as of September 25, 2024
high confidence · Kaneda reporting on current sales status on his birthday (Sept 25)
Stern's Foo Fighters has received multiple code updates while Guns N' Roses owners have waited 715+ days without updates
high confidence · Kaneda comparing update frequency between Jersey Jack and Stern titles
Jersey Jack Pinball Godfather Collector's Edition ornaments cost $500 but cost the manufacturer ~$100 to produce
medium confidence · Kaneda speculating on manufacturing costs of Godfather leg ornaments
Pulp Fiction succeeded without DMD or LCD screens, proving that mechanical features matter more than digital displays
medium confidence · Kaneda defending simpler game design after hearing industry claim that 'shots are the new toys'
Dutch Pinball is the only boutique manufacturer currently delivering value equivalent to premium pricing; Spooky Pinball has not reached Big Lebowski's quality level despite 10 years of operation

Notable Quotes

“I want to get a triple A theme that is integrated properly with mechanical magic under glass. That is what I want from pinball.”
Kaneda @ Early in episode — Establishes Kaneda's core industry wish; frames the tension between licensed IP and mechanical gameplay
“Why can't they sync up the artwork with the theme? I'm so tired of all of these Stern machines looking the same with the overly bright colors.”
Kaneda (citing Jeffrey S.) @ Mid-episode — Repeats community concern about Stern's visual design consistency and artwork quality
“For this much money, when we are looking at these games and we should be expecting more in these games than games like Medieval Madness. There should be more in these games than Pirates of the Caribbean.”
Kaneda (citing Edwin P.) @ Mid-episode — Expresses widespread frustration that modern premium games lack mechanical depth of classic games despite higher prices
“They've been around for like seven years and they haven't had a single hit game yet. I mean four or five games into their portfolio and they still don't know what the market wants. You are labeled for extinction.”
Kaneda (discussing American Pinball) @ Mid-episode — Harsh assessment of American Pinball's survival prospects; reflects concern about market consolidation
“If someone made either of those, Akira or G1 Transformer the movie, I would never buy another pinball machine again.”
Kaneda @ Late mid-episode — Reveals Kaneda's personal ultimate theme wishlist; Akira and Gen1 Transformers are his 'retire from pinball' games
“Stern has the most robust coding department in all of pinball, so I think if anyone's gonna figure it out, it's gonna be Stern.”
Kaneda (responding to Anyong's reset issue wish) @ Late mid-episode — Acknowledges Stern's technical strength in code development relative to competitors
“We need boutique pinball like Dutch. We need boutique pinball that is like the Bugatti of pinball. They need to show us what can be done when they don't try to sell volume.”

Entities

Kanedaperson Keith Elwinperson Mark Ritchieperson Jack GuarnieripersonDerek StutzmanpersonDave SanderspersonStern Pinballcompany

Signals

$
market_signal: Multiple listeners express pricing as unsustainable barrier to entry; Kaneda predicts manufacturer collapse if prices remain high; secondary market expected to soften as older LEs flood market
high · 37 listener wishes dominated by pricing concerns; Kaneda explicitly predicts company closures; Jurassic Park 30th Anniversary LE not sold out as of Sept 25, 2024; older Jurassic Park LEs flooding secondary market
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product_concern: Jersey Jack Pinball's code update frequency inconsistent; Guns N' Roses owners report 715+ days without updates while Foo Fighters receives regular updates; Stern has superior update track record
high · Kaneda citing Foo Fighters updates vs. Guns N' Roses drought; Anyong wishing for Stern to fix reboot issues; Kaneda praising Stern's coding department robustness
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design_philosophy: Community consensus that modern games prioritize LCD/DMD screens over mechanical features; Pulp Fiction's success without screens cited as counterexample; Kaneda criticizes digital displays as expensive but invisible during gameplay
high · Multiple listener wishes for mechanical magic over LCD; Kaneda's core wish for mechanical integration; Peter G wishing for return to DMD era; Kaneda's criticism of 'shots are the new toys' philosophy
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business_signal: American Pinball at critical risk of collapse; Dutch Pinball positioned as only boutique successfully delivering premium value; Spooky Pinball prices rising without proportional quality gains
medium · Kaneda predicting American Pinball extinction after 4-5 games without success; praising Dutch Pinball as 'Bugatti of pinball'; criticizing Spooky's 10-year stagnation since Big Lebowski
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Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.106

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Welcome everybody to Kaneda's Pinball Podcast. I'm your host Kaneda. It is my birthday today. I'm super excited. Had a great weekend with my best buddy in pinball, Mr. Derrick. I'm a fan of the pinball fanbase and all of pinball media history. I want to give a special shout out to Neil J. who increased his membership Neal, thank you so much. And let's welcome some of our newest members to the Kaneda Club. Let's welcome some new members to the Kaneda Club. We've got Joe Kay. We've got Corey Kane. We've got Pincheese. We've got Tommy. And let's do a little moment of silence for Colin over at the Kaneticist after he banned Kaneda from the Media Mixer. He took his ball and went home and unsubscribed from Kaneda's Pinball Podcast. Cool. I lost three club members and I gained 7 more. We're still at 610 club members on Kaneda's Pinball Podcast. And here's what I want to talk about on this episode of Kaneda's Pinball Podcast. I want to talk about our pinball wishes for 2024 and I want to read out what your wishes are. Now before I say what your wishes are, on my birthday in which I get one wish, if I could have one wish and blow out a proverbial pinball candle and just wish for one thing in this In this industry it is so simple what I would wish for and no it's not prices to come down because I don't think that's ever going to happen. The one thing I want to get in pinball, I want to get AAA theme that is integrated properly with mechanical magic under glass. That is what I want from pinball. I feel like we've been waiting for years. It's like they don't even understand who the target audience is. Just give us a triple A theme from the 80s and the 90s and put that triple A theme under glass in a mechanical magical world in which the ball interacts with toys. Why is that so hard to get for this much money in pinball? I don't mind spending these prices if all games were like the Big Lebowski. And we've been spending the last few years convincing ourselves that these games are worth the money simply because they give you nice artwork and put a lot of stuff on an LCD screen that you can't even see while you're playing the freaking game. So that is my one pinball wish ladies and gentlemen. Will it happen? Now here are your pinball wishes. Now I'm going to try to get through all of your wishes because there were 37 of them but let's do it. Let's jump into it real quick. From Jeffrey S. He said, For Stern not to eff up Jaws by tie dyeing the playfield with rainbow colors and have a fun, impressive game, prices to not increase at all. Well, Jeffrey, look, I'm on the same page as you, brother. I really hope Stern Pinball does not give us a rainbow bright, Skittles-inspired Jaws artwork package on the game. I'm so tired of all of these Stern machines looking the same with the overly bright colors. I get it. Why can't they sync up the artwork with the theme? So, Jeffrey, I hope we get that and I hope your wish comes true. I think the prices are not going to go down at all, but I don't think they're going to increase. Eric Jackson said, for Stern Kapow Back to the Future with Dwight on code, don't care who designs it. Wow, Eric, look, I think everybody is hoping we get a Back to the Future game, but I think if we did a poll, most people would not want Dwight on the code of that game and you don't care who designs it. I mean, come on, Eric, really, the one everybody would wish to design back to the future is no other than Keith Elwin. I wouldn't want to hand this game to just any designer. Why not have the best theme for pinball with the best designer in the pinball world right now? So, Eric, I hope some of your wish comes true, but I hope it's Keith Elwin and I also hope it is not Dwight on Code. So, Rick V said that I feel compelled to buy only one game in 2024. Well, Rick, I agree with that wish. I think a lot of us out there as we look at these prices, we almost don't want there to be too many great games that we want to buy because then we're going to go broke. I don't think people want to spend like $30,000, $40,000 a year on pinball machines. Let's just say $40,000 a year. You have to make $80,000 before taxes and have absolutely no other expenses. You don't have expensive family vacations you got to go on. I mean, it's a lot of money, people. 80K before taxes just to buy like three LE pinball machines. How did it come to this? And I don't know about the rest of you, but even though I have a good salary in the real world, my salary has not increased with the inflated prices of pinball. So I also hope there's only one game I really, really want to buy. The only thing is in 2024, Rick, I think we're going to see more than one game that's going to entice us to pull the trigger, which is good, though, because over the last couple of years, I really haven't been enticed to buy much. All right, Edwin P said, he said that all companies make pins that the value exceeds the price. Need more mechs, callouts and better themes, etc. Edwin, I could not agree more. For this much money, we are looking at these games and we should be expecting more in these games than games like Medieval Madness. There should be more in these games than Pirates of the Caribbean. If Jersey Jack Pinball could make Pirates of the Caribbean and sell an Ellie of that loaded game for like 9 grand, how are we getting Ellie's now that are 12 grand with half as much in them? And I think that is where everybody is at, Edwin, and I couldn't agree more with your wish. All right, Krups4 said, I like to make a purchase where I don't feel ripped off by the manufacturer. In other words, I like to go back to the days where it was exciting and fun to buy a pinball machine. Well, Krups, look, I think those days are gone. I think everybody wishing it was four years ago, right, pre-COVID when you could actually buy a new in box game for what seemed like a good price, right? And those games were also really limited because there was only 500 LEs. Now it feels like the games are overpriced. There's so many of them and we're never going to go back to those old pricing models. And I think that's the biggest risk in all the pinball right now, Krups. I think people are going to start to say no more. They're not going to buy as many pins. And if people I'm going to be the distributors and if they keep saying, hey, Stern, I'm not going to order these games at this much money. We can't sustain it at this much money. Hey, Jersey Jack, I'm not going to buy all these new games at this much money. I'm sitting on all these unsold toy stories and godfathers and now you want me to go in on Elton John, a game that's probably not going to fly off the shelf. I just can't do it. So we will see what happens, but I think they got too greedy. I think we're going to see real All right, Peter G says, I wish we could go back to normal prices and more mechanical wow in machines, truly immersive machines. If we need to make a sacrifice, I would get rid of the LCD screens and just go back to dots. A man can wish. Have a great birthday with your family. Well, Peter, thank you for the birthday wish. I don't think we're going to go back to DMD era, but it's interesting when you think about Pulp Fiction and how well Pulp Fiction sold and it doesn't have anything, right? No DMDs, no I still can't believe we heard that. I still can't believe we had one of the most prominent members in the pinball media tell everybody that shots are the new toys in pinball. That if you just have flow in a game, that constitutes engineering marvel. Get out of here. Like we are not gonna count diverters as toys in pinball ever. All right, Royal Jack said, happy birthday. Thanks for all the content Thank you Royal Jack He said first I like pricing to step back towards normalcy I gotten a few friends and coworkers into the hobby lately and these prices immediately turn them off on the idea of investing in personal machines And second I hope all of the people who made up their mind about Kaneda before getting to know him or listening will give him a chance Well look Royal thank you so much You know when I was hanging with Derek this weekend he said I wish everybody could go out to dinner with you spend a weekend with Kaneda and Number 9. I don't like guy that is not that horrible human being but I know why people don't like me. I have done stuff that make people not think of me favorably and it is what it is. I don't have to like everybody and they don't have to like me. Now in terms of pricing, taking a step backwards or towards normalcy. Royal Jack, here is the reality. To 99.9% of Americans, nothing about pinball is normal. None of these prices are normal. People would think $7,500 for an LE is stupid, let alone $6,000 or $5,000 for a pinball machine. If you grab the average person off the street, they probably think a pinball machine is like $2,000. I saw today that the Jersey Jack Pinball Collector's Edition ornaments that go on the legs of the Godfather, just two cheap plastic things that stick to the legs of the machine. If you want to buy those two ornaments for your game, $500 Static sculpted plastic? How much money do you think it costs Jersey Jack Pinball to press two of those ornaments? What $100 bucks at most. How are those two things? $500. And that's the problem with all of the pinball pricing right now. It was always pretty stupid. We kind of always complained about pinball prices. But now we're just seeing pure greed every time a manufacturer puts a price tag on something, It's almost like challenging our intelligence and our integrity as the pinball buying community. And again, the easiest thing to do is just don't buy it. Don't buy it. Let these distributors stock up their shelves with these Jersey Jack accessories and guess what's going to happen in three months? They'll sell you those damn things for 250 bucks when nobody's buying them. And that's what's got all these distributors nervous is they don't want people listening to Kaneda I'm gonna get you better deals than they ever will give you. Chase Rudd says Stern put better cooling fans in pins and even better real speakers in the pin. Yes, there is no excuse why we should have these louder-than-life cooling fans that are disrupting people's experiences with the pins. It's like a $10 part at most, probably $5 part. And to put better speakers into the pinball machines, this is a great wish, I must agree with this. Pinball machines for this much money should have banging olives and speakers inside them. It's crazy for $13,000. We're spending $3,000 over the price of a premium for an LE. They should be putting $500 speakers into the game that blow you away. We shouldn't have to invest in pin sound upgrades for the CEs or the LE versions of pinball machines. Chase, do I think Do you think they're going to do it? No. Is your wish valid? Absolutely. Pinball Drew said, good theme integration on a theme worth integrating. PinballDrew, that's exactly what my wish is. We need better themes. They need to be better integrated. You know, I heard someone say on Pinside the other day that they think Willy Wonka is one of the greatest theme integrated pinball machines of all time. And after reading that, I'm like, this is the problem with this community. How is that one of the greatest theme integrated pins of all time? It has absolutely none of the musical songs from the movie itself. They do not synchronize the clips from the movie with the voice actors in the movie. They don't have all the callouts from the film in the game. And then we have people, these must be newbies or something, we have people saying that's the best theme integrated pinball machine of all time. And for anyone to say that, it's like go play a Lord of the Rings, go play a Tron, go play a Guns and Roses, go play something where there's real integration. Matt M. said, His wish is the collapse of the new in box market and maybe a manufacturer closing their doors for good to hopefully bring pricing down a few notches and increase value. These things should not cost as much as a car. Wow, Matt M. I mean, Matt, you're wishing for a little bit of doom and gloom. You're wishing for some consequences for these manufacturers who have really taken prices through the roof. I'm going to say this, Matt, right now. I think your wish is going to come true. I think we're going to see a couple pinball companies collapse if everything stays where it is at. There are too many games. We are oversaturated. I think the company in biggest jeopardy of collapsing right now is American Pinball because if this new mystery company comes out and shows us a great theme integrated licensed pinball machine that we can have and it's built well and that factory looks really nice, it looks like they're going to screw together a nice machine and if they give us something that looks like it's something we really want, How many people are going to want to cancel their Galactic Tank Force orders? Heck, people are not even ordering Galactic TankForce. And we know that Ryan McQuaid's game is not ready. It's not right around the corner. And so how is American Pinball going to stay viable? They've been around for like seven years and they haven't had a single hit game yet. I mean four or five games into their portfolio and they still don't know what the market wants. You are labeled for extinction. If you don't know how to give this community what they want and you're going to go through the effort to make a game, you're going to be out of business in 2024. Cuz again, at these prices, people are not going to buy two or three games. They're going to buy one only. And so then you're competing with the best from Stern, the best of Keith Elwin. You're competing with Steve Richie and Jersey Jack Pinball. You're competing with Dutch Pinball. You're competing with everybody. You're competing with Pulp Fiction. And then you're going to come out with Galactic Tank Force and think there's going to be a room in someone's collection for that. And the other thing I'm hearing, Matt, is like people are out of space. So they gotta get rid of stuff. People are not gonna just run at every single new in box game. I think we're gonna see a company or two close in 2024. All right, Ken Chalada says, I want to see just one new game packed with impressive mechanical features that is worth its sticker price. I want to finish restoring a few games and sell before the used market completely tanks. I want my pin side ignore list to stop growing. All right, Ken Chalada, I hear what you're saying. Look, we're seeing a common theme here. A lot of people just want more mechanical magic I think we're all on the same page. I think we're going to see some mechanical magic in Jaws. If Steve Ritchie and Jack Guarneri are to be believed, I think we're going to see a lot more mechanical magic in Steve Ritchie's jersey Jack Elton John than we did see in Godfather. I think we're going to see way more in it than we saw in Toy Story 4. So we shall see. Alright, my good friend Derek Stutzman chimed in. His number one wish is peace and harmony among pinball creators. Derek, I can tell you right now, your wish is to see a pinball pinball. Now, your wish is never gonna come true. There are just certain people in this industry that do not like me. And hey, maybe I don't like them. And every time I try to reach out and bury the hatchet, guess what? They don't wanna bury the hatchet and they wanna hold on to their anger. And so my point of view is just let them stew. We're having a good time here. Nobody's disrupting this show. We're just growing in popularity. And meanwhile, we've got more subscribers than all of them combined, Derek. They're never gonna wanna get along with me. Most of the pinball creators

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Part 1 of 2 Have a good day. Out in Studio At Use I think it's highly embarrassing if they lower the price. Even though Elon Musk will do it, even though Ford Motor Company will do it, Sony and Microsoft will do it, there's something about these pinball companies. It's like they can never admit they ever make a mistake. The only people in this industry that admit they make mistakes is yours truly Kaneda and I make a lot of them people. Rakeem Sanders says Happy B I like to see one of these titles to be made so I can retire from pinball machine purchasing since these pinball companies have killed my interest this year with their stupid pricing And then he lists He-Man, Masters of the Universe, Beavis and Butt-head, Megadeth, G.I. Joe, They Live, Lost Boys or The Goonies. Is it They Live or They Live? I don't know. Someone make one of these so I can peace out. Well, look, Rakeem, I understand what you're saying here, man. I think we all have that dream theme where if somebody makes it, we'd be good. Like, we would just get it and we'd be good. For me, it would be Akira or it would be Generation 1 Transformers the movie. If someone made either of those, Akira or G1 Transformer the movie, I would never buy another pinball machine again. I would simply own it and be happy and spend the rest of my days and the rest of my money taking my pinball friends out for amazing dinners like Derek I mean, omakase dinners left and right. Derek was getting chomi jazz. We went to Korean barbecue Michelin star restaurants. We had so much fun. In 48 hours, we went through New York City and you know what didn't cross our mind? How can we go play pinball right now? No, we live life the right way. There's a time and place for pinball, but it is not when you are trying to have a good time with your friend in a city like New York. All right. Stefan B said prices that are affordable for average earners. Stefan, that is not gonna happen. And number two, a new Rocky Pinball machine built by a decent pinball company. Well, Stefan, if we could get Rocky IV, I think that is a buy it now theme for many, many of us. I mean, if they get the soundtrack in that game, there's no easy way out. I hope someone like Dutch Pinball could look into something like that. I would much rather have Rocky IV than Elton John. I don't think your wish is gonna come true because it's probably an expensive license to get. But again, at these prices, go get it. Go get the expensive license because you're charging us so much money for these games. Alright, Anyong said Stern to fix their reset issues. I can deal with coil stops but hard reboots are really bad. Yeah, I've been hearing more and more whenever Stern does a code update, there's reboot issues. I don't know how many machines it's impacting but I do hope your wish comes true. Stern has the most robust coding department in all of pinball, so I think if anyone's gonna figure it out, it's gonna be Stern. I mean, let's talk about these Foo Fighter owners. They just got a new code update this week with a new wizard mode and a new song, and I was thinking to myself, can you imagine being a Guns N' Roses owner? And you've gone over 715 days without a code update, and Stern's been updating the code to Foo Fighters since the game came out in March. It's absolutely embarrassing what it's like to own a Jersey Jack machine and if you own a Stern machine you have to be feeling good that they're not going to stop until they make that game perfect. And nobody has a better track record of updating games than Stern Pinball. Alright, Kelly Daniels says that the pinball market sinks and leaves only Stern Pinball cranking them out at a lower price. Rest in peace boutiques. Damn it, Kelly! Throwing some mad shade on the boutique industry. I actually don't hope your wish comes true, Kelly. I'll tell you why. I think we need boutique pinball, but we need boutique pinball like Dutch. We need boutique pinball that does it right. We need boutique pinball that is like the Bugatti of pinball. They need to show us what can be done when they don't try to sell volume. They need to show us what can really be in a machine if you want to charge people $15,000. The only people that are really going to load up The machine for $13,000 to $15,000 is going to be a boutique company that actually has a talented team of designers and engineers. We haven't really seen that happen other than Dutch Pinball. Spooky Pinball has been making games all these years, but we don't see the talent in the design department and the mechanical engineering department. They keep getting better, but not a single spooky game is even at the same level as the Big Lebowski was 10 years ago. And they've been making money and been successful. They now need to invest in more mechanical engineers and more designers and more coders. But we're waiting and you know, and as we've been waiting for Spooky to get better and better, their prices have gone up and up and up. But I wouldn't say the product has gone up and up and up. I think they figured out if you just make the game sexy and you have a decent theme, you're going to sell enough of them to keep the line going for a year and a half. All right, Bev said his wishes Elvira's fourth pinball machine. Bev, that is a J.B. Sweet says, Happy Birthday Chris! Wishing for lower prices, better mechs, assets and toys, badass masculine themes, more love, less hate on pin side between members and peace between content creators. Ah, you know, we can all wish for that. And it can happen. You know, look, crazier things have happened in the world. Major world powers have settled their differences. If they can do it, we all can do it. I feel like this is like a Rocky IV speech. If I can change, you can change, we all can change. With Kaneda with the American flag draped around him. But JBSweets, thank you for your wishes. I think you're again mirroring everything everyone else is saying. We want more in the games. We want people to get along more in the hobby. And we just want to go back to having fun in pinball. It's not fun when pinball content creators are arguing with each other. It's not fun when these prices go through the roof. It's not fun when we feel like we're being ripped off. All right, SB says his wishes are to keep traveling to new locations to play new pins versus owning. I think that's great. For more under the glass and new machines at current prices. Unfortunately, Stern proved it doesn't have to. Example Jurassic Park Anniversary FOMO edition with only bling and a higher price versus making standard premiums. Oh well, still wishing folks will just say no but won't happen in 2024. You know, SB, you know, we'll see what happens SB. I think more and more people are gonna hit pause on this stuff, you know. And SB, here's the thing. Stern came out, right, with that FOMO edition of Jurassic Park. And Jurassic Park is one of the best games they've ever made. It's one of the most popular games they've ever made. And I'm happy to report, as of my birthday, September 25th, Stern has still not sold out those Jurassic Park 30th Anniversary Editions. And they probably were thinking, oh, we're just going to make 500 and they're going to sell out instantly. We're seeing people wait. We're seeing people wait it out. And we know those games are going to go down in price. And now we're seeing all these older L.E.s flood the market because people now want the new, shinier version of the game. Because if you love Jurassic Park, you're going to want this newer version of it. I think the whole move stinks. I don't like that they made more L.E.s like this. And I think, again, they don't really respect the collectors. And I think if the collectors start to turn away from these companies, they're going to be in big trouble because it's always been the pinball collector who buys every new in box game regardless of what the game is. That's what's kept pinball going all of these years and I think that community has really been abused by these pinball companies over the last couple of years. All right, Todd Tucky says, I wish to see the pinball community prosper with the enthusiasm and interest and camaraderie. I saw at the Massachusetts Pinfest a couple weeks ago. Everyone had so much fun simply enjoying pinball and a mix of people from all over the world. Todd, I think that's a great wish. World peace everybody! Come together! Kumbaya! We're all at a pinball event having a good time. And Todd, here's the thing. I've been to many events with Todd. I've been to many pinball shows. And when everyone just gets to the show, it doesn't matter if there's differences, everyone gets along. There's nobody fighting. vor sich mit SAW bei sattel was more spaghetti수� statistische N dictación de los Profesores in indonesia What do you think you're going to get? You think you're going to get an understanding Kaneda or are you going to get Kaneda upset? And then you get exactly what you wanted from him. And now he doesn't get to enjoy the greatest pinball podcast because he took his ball and he went home. All right. PJ Delay wishes for a price correction. PJ, you and everybody else wants prices to go down. Dave Sanders wishes for getting another big release game out. Unlikely end of 2024 and it depends on what IP I can get and who's on board with the project, It's something to at least aim for and all the criticisms about lack of magic are being taken on board. Alright, so Dave Sanders who's a designer, he designed Alien Pinball, he designed Full Throttle, I think he designed Pony Factory. Dave look we all hope you get that big IP and someone on board for it The thing is this Dave can show us what you truly capable of working with someone whose first name is not Andrew Okay We hope that for you brother Alright, a few more. This is fun. I haven't really read your stuff in a long time so it's really nice to give all of my listeners a chance to have their thoughts and share their thoughts in the comments. William Morris says, a Vault of Stranger Things LE. Well look William, I think you're going to get a Vault of Stranger Things Premium. I don't think they're going to make more LEs. A Matrix or an Akira pin, both well done with mechs and toys. William, I think we're going to get the Matrix. I don't think we're going to get Akira because the people who run these pinball companies are old curmudgeons who don't understand the power of the Japanese anime market and And they don't understand the overlap of Akira with the kind of people who buy pinball machines. And there's much more overlap with Akira than there is with Oktoberfest or Galactic Tank Force. Heck, I would say there's more Akira geeks out there than even Rush fans out there in the world. And for you Rush fans, please do not email me. I get it. You like Rush. You like going to a concert where it's all guys wearing khaki pants. Don't reach out to me. I get it. Richard Burnham says, a Jaws title will be a litmus test for price tolerance. Blow out your candles in hopes of an enthusiastic pause sending Stern a clear message. After Venom's failure, they feel it and need it. Well, look, Richard, Richard, I've been saying this for a while. Like all of this wait and see, there's going to be FOMO around Jaws. There's always going to be FOMO around a Keith Elwin title. So I fully expect people to be banging on the doors of distributors to get their hands on a Jaws LE or SLE machine. And I think that game has the power to override the wait-and-see philosophy. But I've been saying this there's only two things that you need to move quickly on. Right now in the pinball industry, a Keith Elwynn pin or a triple A theme that's a buy it now title. And I think Jaws has kind of both of that and that's why I fully expect this machine to sell out day one. Day 1. I don't think Steve Richie's Elton John is going to sell out Day 1 no matter what's in it because the theme just isn't there. Resonate said a widebody game that allows room for more mechs and layout innovation. Well, wow, Rez, thank you for this wish. This is the first time we've heard someone say they want widebody games back in the pinball world. I don't think we're going to get it. I think the only way we would get a widebody game is if Eric Minior wanted to go back to widebody layouts. Jersey Jack was really the only company that was doing this. Spooky as a widebody Scooby Doo, but it's not really a widebody. It's just got a wide upper playfield, but the rest of that game is in a standard playfield size, just in a widebody cabinet. I don't know. I think these companies are trying to cut their costs while they charge us more money, so I don't think we're going to see a widebody game next year. Alright, Bond said, first and foremost, a pinball pause of no buying til sanity on price versus value comes in alignment again. With bombs equal to asking price, Stern's 6500 pros, $8500 premiums and $10,500 500LEs. Well, that's what the pricing was when we had Godzilla. Bond, I don't think we're going to go back to that. He then says, still plenty of money for the manufacturer. JJP, $9,000LEs, $11,000 CEs. Well, look Bond, CEs were never I do think Jersey Jack's sweet spot is $9500 for LEs and $12500 for CEs. And then he writes Spooky competingwiththepros6500SE $8000 CE Pinball will pick up again with new in box to home use only values being restored for buying then secondary selling when new games come out. Basically what Bond is saying in all of that, I want prices to go back to what they were erg 18113