I don't give a damn about my reputation Living in the past is a new generation Don't do what you want to do, but that's what I'm gonna do And I don't give a damn about my bad reputation Sit up, sit up, sit up, sit up, sit up, sit up, sit up Welcome everybody to Canada's Pinball Podcast. Happy Memorial Day. For you parents out there with young kids, You know these long weekends are really long. Like you can't wait to drop the kids off to daycare. Stern Pinball is about to make another version of Godzilla. Let's talk about that because this is a huge thing happening in pinball. We got the world's biggest pinball company about to re-release maybe the most popular game it's ever made in Godzilla. Now, I don't think Godzilla has outsold games like Star Wars and maybe Ghostbusters and ACDC and Metallica. We don't know. But it is considered by many, and you just have to go to the Pinside Top 100, it is considered by many to be the greatest Stern machine ever. And it pretty much checks every single box. It's got a very unique layout. It feels like a game in which Stern put a lot of toys into the game that you can see when you walk up to the machine, right? Nothing hidden here. It's not like Jaws where everything's jammed in the back. There's a lot in this Godzilla game. There's a lot of movement, right? The bridge collapses. The building goes up and down. There's that awesome magnet that grabs the ball and swings it into different shots. It's got a lot going on. And then the assets are like absolutely perfect assets in this game that really have a lot of character and personality. You can even switch the game to be speaking to you in Japanese. Like they thought through all of this. And it feels like one of the only sterns in a really long time in which there were no compromises. I think the only weak link might be the Zombietti art package divided people. Godzilla, did he look like a watermelon or did he look normal? Was it too colorful, too much of a bag of Skittles, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle looking? And should it have looked more throwback like the original Godzilla movie posters? And there are colorful old school Godzilla movie posters, but the style, that's the thing is the style of the artwork does not look like the Godzilla movie posters from back in the day. Now, look, I don't think they're going to change any of that with this 70th anniversary black and white edition of Godzilla premium, people. Now, remember, George Gomez said they are never going to make more LEs of a game that already had a limited edition version. That was not the original plan over at Stern Pinball. Remember, they made an LE of Jurassic Park. And then they made another LE. And they made like four LEs of Elvira. And I think they're not going to do that again. But here's what I'm hearing, people, on this episode of Canadian Pinball Podcast, because I'm so curious how Stern's going to do this. Because think about it. They've got distributors that are sitting on Godzilla premiums unsold for $9,500. When you go on pin side, there's a ton of Godzilla premiums for sale. So I would argue that the supply of Godzilla premium outweighs the demand, especially Godzilla premium far outweighs the demand. And there's a lot of LEs for sale. So here's the tricky part is the game that's really trading for well over MSRP. Because remember, Godzilla LE was $10,500. They made 1,000 of them. And those sold out instantly. And then on the secondhand market, these games were going for around $15,000 to $16,000 all day long. I think they're still kind of going for that. I think people just see the value in it. Personally, I don't. Because I never really liked the Godzilla LE very much. I found the armor to be boring. that gray silver Mechagodzilla armor is very boring. That game doesn't pop in a lineup the way other Stern LEs pop in a lineup, but it's such a good game, right? It's such a good game. And when the game is so damn good, people just want to own the nicest looking version of the game. And you could argue that, yes, the LE is nicer than the premium and it's special because it's limited. Okay. So here we are today. John Wick sales are abysmal there. I mean, John Wick has been out now for three to four weeks, and all I'm seeing is for sale ads for these LEs. I don't know who's buying them. I see nothing but listings from distributors trying to move these John Wick LEs, and they're not going to move. And now everybody knows if you're in the know, you know that Godzilla black and white is coming out. So if you don't own a Godzilla and you want a new pinball machine, are you going to spend $13,000 on a John Wick LE? or maybe get the greatest rated Stern machine of all time in Godzilla. I mean, we all know this. John Wick is not even going to be probably a top 50 game. I mean, it's just going to fall into the abyss, much like games like Venom and WWE, games like Mustang. It's going to be a blip on the radar. And now that we know another large sea creature on the radar just popped up, it's like a Godzilla movie. We see Godzilla coming towards us, and it's going to come towards us in July, and it's June next week. So we only got six weeks to go, basically, until Stern's going to announce another game. And it just goes to show you, when the media went over to Stern and showed us how big that factory is, this is what Stern's going to have to do. When they have a soft seller like John Wick, they're going to have to quickly put something else on the line to keep all those 500 people with their livelihoods doing something every day because they're not going to be able to have that factory be profitable if people are sitting around waiting for orders to come in if they're never coming in. And so we've got this black and white Godzilla. And as George Gomez said, it won't be a limited edition game. So we won't see this game numbered, right? It's not going to be like one of 500 or one of a thousand. That's not going to be there. George Gomez also said that the anniversary editions will not come with powder-coated armor that is special. So this game will come with black premium basic armor on the game He did not say that these games wouldn come with foil decals He did not say that the Anniversary Editions wouldn have sparkle a la Elvira Blood Kiss Edition So here's the problem with all of this, right? When you bring back a game where there's no longer any real demand because you made so many Godzillas, if you wanna make this 70th Anniversary Edition and you're stern, how do you release this game in a way that's not gonna absolutely destroy all of your dealers and distros that are sitting on current inventory of Godzilla premiums. So imagine you've got 10 Godzilla premiums and they're $9,500 and Stern's about to bring out a nicer version of Godzilla premium. How is that not going to absolutely destroy your ability to sell those games? And this is where it's going to get interesting because here's what I'm hearing and you're hearing it here first on Canadian Spinball Podcast, I'm hearing that Stern is going to price this Godzilla Premium, this black and white edition, closer to the price, if not the same price, as a Stern LE. So this might be a premium, kind of like Batman Premium, where it's not going to be $9,500. They might charge for this premium maybe $12,000 to $13,000. It might be $12,999 right on the head. And so what does that mean? Imagine if they come out with this, and even though it's not technically, think about it, it's not technically a limited edition because it's not got the plaque and the number, but if you price it at the same price as an LE, you are now indicating to us that you think this game is as valuable and as collectible as a $13,000 Stern, which is where your LEs are at. So they might do something that I think is a loophole in their entire strategy to not piss off earlier Stern buyers. But here's the problem with all of this. For Stern to go back to the well this soon on a game like Godzilla, I think it's going to create more problems for them than it will solutions. I don't think the world needs more Godzillas right now. What everybody would want right now is you got to go deeper back when you want to go to a well game. You know, you got to go deeper to a game like Tron. Tron is like a decade old and you never really made more for so many years. To me, that's going back and remaking something people want. Go back and make Lord of the Rings. Do we really need another Metallica? Maybe. They made so many Metallicas. But again, if they remake Metallica on the LCD screen, the same layout and game that everybody already has out there, there's no getting around the fact that they are just going to oversaturate everything. And it really is going to be interesting how Stern navigates this because I just don't think it's going to last forever. It's like Axel said, nothing lasts forever. And if Stern wants to make this many games a week and do this and then oversaturate games that have held value nicely, they're absolutely going to destroy the secondhand value of the entire pinball market. And if you destroy all of the secondhand value of the pinball market, then everybody's going to stop buying new in box because the whole reason why new in box sales were so great all of these years is all the games preserved the secondhand value nicely. And it's at the point now where a Stern LE is actually the worst value. It will lose you the most money. As I've said before, a John Wick LE by the end of the year will lose $4,000 in value. You can't pick a single pinball machine from the year 1990 all the way to the year like 2010, right? There isn't a single pinball machine that you could have bought new in box that would have lost you $4,000 after buying it new in box. not Thunderbirds, not WWE, not Circus Voltaire, nothing. Nothing you could have bought would lose you that much money. And this is where we're at. And so it's going to be really interesting now between June and July, as everybody knows about Godzilla coming back. Is it going to have sparkle? Is it going to have foiled armor? The other thing I think Stern is going to do is this. I think they're going to offer accessory packages that are tailored to the black and white game So you're going to be able to make your game look just as good, if not better than an LE. And if this game is going to go full black and white, is Stern going to release a black and white topper? How cool would that be, right? All the color is black and white except for maybe Godzilla and his atomic beam. So are they going to do that? It's weird, right? Because on some level, I think all of us are really excited that Stern can make these anniversary editions and make these really special versions of the game. But I think they're going about it all wrong. I don't know what the answer is because part of me was like, well, is the answer to make it more like a super limited edition game where you go way above the LE pricing? So if people bought an LE for 10.5 and then you come out with an SLE for like 15 or 16 and you only make like 250 of them, are those original owners gonna be able to complain? Probably not. But if you do it like this and you do it like Jurassic Park and you make hundreds of them and then you price them at a point that is underneath where the secondhand value is on the game. I'll give you an example what I mean by that. if Elvira 40th anniversaries were selling for like $18,000 to $20,000, and then you make a nicer version of the game for $13,000, then everybody's 40th anniversary game just plummets in value. And that's what happened. Because if you love this game and you want the nicest version, it's not just the number that makes it the nicest, it's the trim package. And that's the part that George doesn't get. He's like, whoa, those people shouldn't be upset because they have less units. It's not just about less units. It's not. It's about who's got the nicest trim package game. And guess what? It's all subjective. So you know who decides that? We do. The marketplace does. And I think that's what's happened. So this is going to be like major news. And I think a lot of us are going to be talking about this. You know, I'm really not sure how Stern Pinball gets people reignited into the John Wick sales. I know the media tour happened. We saw a lot of people went over there. I didn't see a lot of news coverage happen after people went over there. Jason Knapp put up a great story, but nobody else has really done anything that would make anybody want to order one And I think that that And it hard to tell if Jersey Jack Elton John is catching on or there just a few people and the same owners are in the owner thread talking about the game. I will say this, there are distributors now that have Elton John collector's editions in box ready to ship unsold. And so once again, it's like the supply of these games is far outweighing the demand. I saw a funny post on Pinside where this guy's like, there is only 350 Labyrinth machines left. And it's the weirdest post because he's like, oh, man, like we better get it now or it's going to go way up in value. And no, it's not. It's absolutely not. There is no way Labyrinth is going to go up a dollar from the MSRP. and again the fact that there's still 350 of them that they need to sell and they've only made I think about 400 of these games so far I think it just goes to show you that there's not that much demand for this theme and barrels of fun being a new company making these games slowly doesn't help them out because when you trickle games out you're not going to be able to ride that initial wave of frenzy to get it. And if I buy it, I'm going to get it sometime soon because people in pinball are not very patient, even though that's the one thing I encourage everybody to be is patient. Nobody really wants to wait a year for a game because over the last few years, if you went in early on any of these like boutique games, you saw what was happening. You saw that you could cut the line before your game was even made. And not only that, you can normally cut the line and get the game you're waiting for for much cheaper. And then we always saw these companies would come to shows with those games. They would sell games off the floor at the show. And you're like, wait a minute, I got to wait eight months for my game. And you just brought these games to a show and people who didn't even wait a day got to put it in their truck and go home with it. I don't know how that makes me feel. And so making pinball is really hard. Making pinball is really hard. These are not easy things to make. I would love it if we knew more transparently how many games a week these companies actually make. Stern is making like 600 plus games a week. Just think about how crazy that is. They could build every single labyrinth in two weeks and be on to the next. It's going to take barrels of fun an entire year just to make like these games and that's fine like there is definitely room in this hobby for major players like stern for middle-sized players like jersey jack and then boutique players like barrels of fun and spooky and dutch pinball right cgc's in that middle ground i think more like with jjp because the thing about the boutique companies and the thing i love about the boutique companies is their strategy is different normally they don't go after the triple a themes that are really expensive to get. Still shocked. Everybody's shocked that Dutch Pinball landed Back to the Future and Stern didn't land it. Like, how did that happen? Like, Joe Kay and Gary Stern are boys. How did Roger Sharp and Barry, like, snake out Stern for Back to the Future? I mean, that is just bonkers to me. I don't know how they're going to handle the demand for this game. It's going to be interesting to see what happens there. But for the most part, boutique companies make games where there's more of a cult following versus mass appeal. And it's very rare that they make a game that has more mass appeal. I would even argue that Rick and Morty, while it's so big, it's still a little bit of a cult property that not everybody's seen or everybody is into. But it's looking now like some of these boutiques might have themes like Sonic the Hedgehog. That's mainstream. Themes like Beetlejuice. That's pretty mainstream. There's musicals on Broadway. There's another movie coming out, they might have stuff like Goonies and Gremlins. Like those are big properties. They're still a little bit cultish, but they're big properties with a lot of nostalgia from the 80s. And that's the sweet spot. Jersey Jack landing Harry Potter, right? And just think about that. Jersey Jack landing Harry Potter is huge. It's huge. It's so big. It pissed off Joe Kamikap. He spoiled it for everybody. It's amazing to me. Like that was the greatest troll move ever. and he was like really upset about it because you could tell he wanted to make it with Stern and we've never seen that before. I've been covering this hobby for 10 years. I've never seen someone like that ever do that. Like someone who's really in the inner circles of licensing and merchandising spoil another company's IP like that. That's bad blood, that's bitterness and that makes me happy because I want to see more stuff like this. I want to see these companies actually realize they are competing with each other. There's a lot of competition for our money. And this whole like everybody play nice in the sandbox, absolutely weird, right? And I know these guys like in Chicago, they all hang out at the same bars and arcades and they all know what each other is working on. But at the end of the day, you're competing. Like you're competing. Like there's only so much money to go around. Like most people, like it's hard for them to have $15,000 in a single fiscal year to commit to a pinball machine. enough. I have to make a decision between Elton John and John Wick. Oh, now there's a Godzilla coming out. Oh, but wait, Harry Potter might be coming out. And by the way, I'm hearing now that Harry Potter is not next from Jersey Jack. I just feel like they've done a really good job of keeping what Mark Seidens game is a secret. I bet we're on it. It's going to be one of those things like Matrix, Muppets, Avatar, Harry Potter. It's going to be one of those things. If it is something completely different. The only wild card I can think of would be Michael Jackson or Pac-Man, but all the rumored titles that Jersey Jack might be working on, maybe it's Beastie Boys. I don't know, but it's going to be one of them. I don't think it's going to be something completely different like He-Man or something completely different like G.I. Joe. I don't think it's going to be anything we have not been guessing. The real question is just when are we going to see it, right? Because Elton John sales are not there. They're not there, everybody. Come on. Like the game's great. It is a great game. It's just overpriced. People are not running at this thing. And I don't think they're going to sell a thousand collector's editions. And I think the Platinums right now are sitting. They're sitting like people are not running at these Platinums for $12,000, you know, and I don't know, right? There's nothing right now that's going to make an Elton John owner want to get rid of his collector's edition, right? It's still the best shooting Jersey Jack game of all time. It is the best game of the year easily, and it's a lot of fun. Unlike a lot of these modern games where you have to learn the rule sets and everything is so complex and you start a game and you don know what to do What I love about Elton John it old school You pick your song and you're in it. The roller coaster begins. It's like getting on a roller coaster and it's so much fun from the moment you plunge. And some of these other games, even watching John Wick streams, it's not like that. You can tell it's just not like that. The game doesn't hit you instantly. And pinball needs to be a game that hits you pretty instantly. I know for you homeowners that are okay going deep into all these rule sets, but that's not what pinball is. There's a reason there's a coin slot on the door. It's so that someone can walk up to it on location and have fun instantly, instantly. And that is getting harder and harder as so many of these companies put too much on the LCD screen. there's too much code buried in the software and then the game itself does not communicate to you what to do and if the shots in the game and the toys in the game are not that satisfying it's just going to leave you a little bit underwhelmed and i think elton john is like old school pinball in a modern package done better than any game i've seen in the last few years and it's old school new school done better than any game i've seen in the last like five years It's just that good. I just don't want to spend this much money on it. I just can't justify the prices at this much money. And the other thing happening in pinball people is the things we're not talking about. The games that have been revealed and the conversation is zero. Funhouse remake. Where's the conversation? Where's the excitement? They're not going to sell out of that game, right? Zero, zero. They're not doing anything. I don't understand. You can't come out like this and then that's it. Like there's nothing left. You got to get these games sold in a short period of time because you didn't do the marketing right. You should have slow burned it and build up excitement over time and then realize what the demand was and then make that many based on demand. But they're not going to sell 750 of these things. Look at ABBA. They're not selling those games. I mean, I don't know. Maybe the demand in Sweden is huge, but we're not talking about these games and the community is not talking about these games. I mean it. Like John Wick Owners Club, zilch. ABBA Conversations, zilch. Like everyone is probably just enjoying their amazing games. And that's the thing. It's like all of this new in box battle won't work if the new in box games aren't better than the awesome games you're playing right now. They're not going to make you more pinball friends. That's where the real awesomeness lies. I had the most amazing night the other night. Saturday night, Bill Brandes and Sabrina came to New York City with Bill's parents and I took them to my Japanese jazz bar. And I know Bill's not a member of this show, but he should be, but he did treat me to dinner and drinks. So maybe that is his subscription. And I found out something about Bill that pains me. I'm not gonna say it right now, but he's got some pains where they shouldn't be. We're gonna talk more about that on a Saturday Morning Spectacular. Everybody, look, thank you so much for being a club member. We're gonna talk about what's going on in pinball each week when it's relevant and what we're thinking about. And that's why you're here. Hopefully you find this entertaining. I love doing it. I love your support. And thank you so much. We're at 714 subscribers. It's the new goal, 800. No giveaways, no translates. We don't have to buy every single game to earn our way into the community. I just give you the most relevant and timely chat about what's happening in pinball. And let's end this podcast with a moment of silence for Maurice. Due to budgetary cuts, after David Fix has once again made a terrible decision, instead of letting David Fix go, a man who should be held accountable for so many bad decisions, a man who's been burning Mukesh's money like it's going out of style, instead of making a real leadership change, they let go of their customer service guy, Maurice. And I guess you don't need customer service if you don't have customers. David Fix, Steven Bowden, Mukesh, the entire family over there, guys, game over. Game over. You've got nothing. Nothing. Your brand is worth less than zero now. The most painful thing about American Pinball is they know how to manufacture. They know how to do the hardest thing and they get all the easy things wrong. That is a level of leadership incompetence like no other. Like everyone who's on the line knows how to do their job. The playfields are good quality. The manufacturing is solid. Everything that is hard, the people who are over there do it really well. The easy part, which is just getting a license people want, having a marketing team that makes moves that indicate they passed the third grade, They don't do any of that. They do all the easy stuff wrong. They make a loaded game in Oktoberfest, not the best theme, and then they do the easiest part wrong, which is they make the ugliest art package in the history of pinball. How easy was it to get that right? They've got this Houdini game that John Papadiuk handed them. I mean this. He handed them the nicest looking Houdini art package imaginable. Matt Andrews was art directed by J-pop, which is the only thing J-pop does well. And instead of using that art package, they listened to Josh Kugler and scrapped it and made a dark, ugly looking Houdini. Who does that? It's like Michelangelo made you the damn artwork. You shelved it because some coder who probably wears cargo shorts made an aesthetic decision and you didn't listen to the guy whose only value is his aesthetic appeal to making pinball sexy. And it's just a series of these things. And then you make Hot Wheels with no loop-de-loop and no jump and no car wash. And then you make Legends of Valhalla, again, that had no demand. And then you make this Tank Force that tanked and now this Barry O's thing. It's just a series of mistakes after mistakes. And for some reason, David Fix is in it for the long haul. It's ironic because the man is named Fixed and all he's done is broken this company. He had it. He had a chance to turn this company around and he failed and he's still there. Mukesh, if you're listening to this, hire me. Hire me. And I will turn this company around. Later. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no Baby, baby, baby