It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine. I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said. Welcome to Canadian Pinball Podcast, everybody. Happy Friday morning. Is it the end of the pinball world as we know it? On this episode, I want to talk about a few things. There's a lot going on in this pinball Industry Arcade behind the scenes. there's a lot of issues that are being like absorbed by distributors, by customers, by manufacturers. And I think there's a new reality. You know, worlds change, cultures change, societies change, things that lasted and had a really good run sometimes go out of business. You know, industries that were thriving can find themselves in a cultural shift. And look, I don't think pinball is going out of business. I think the naysayers and the doomsday prophecy people. I don't think they're right, but we're definitely seeing a shift in this hobby. And it's a weird shift, right? Because we're seeing new games launch left and right. We're going to talk about that. Is Stern Pinball in real jeopardy of becoming the next Disney entity? And if you think about Disney, right, a brand that could do no wrong. I mean, talk to Brenda at the beginning of COVID. She bought a few shares of Disney for Killian. They were $200 a share. And there's a reason why Disney's stock is all the way down to like 88 bucks because they made a major mistake and if a company like Disney can make a major mistake and misread its audience and its target and also they overpriced everything they got greedy and knowing that Stern Pinball is being driven by a Mystery Pinball Theater 3000 host/channel name comes from Disney why don't we expect Stern Pinball to follow on a similar course where nothing can go wrong we have a product with never-ending demand no matter what we price it at, no matter how much content we put out there, people will always absorb and buy what we're selling. And I think we're seeing that with Stern Pinball time and time again. And I think no matter how much mate/man you have, it's going to reach a point where it just rubs you the wrong way. And I think the super rich collectors, and they are out there, those are the guys that are always like, oh, just have fun, open up The Box Arcade. It doesn't matter. And the More Brewing Company and More Brewing Company we hear from that minority of people that have so much mate/man and seemingly don't care to spend thousands of dollars on a flat plastic topper, they're the ones who are looking tone deaf. They're the ones who are looking like they're out of touch where the pinball culture is right now. Now, for me personally, I'm in this weird like middle space with the pinball culture because I think at these prices, and I'm going to give you some real thought provoking things to think about on this podcast, but at these prices and at the volume of games coming at us left and right. I feel like all of us are just exhausted by it all. And in some weird way, here's a crazy thing. Someone just said this to me. In some weird way, Keith Elwin is to blame. And here's why Keith Elwin is to blame. He made games that were too good for the company he works for. I mean this when I say this. Keith Elwin's games have sort of spoiled pinball for a lot of people out there because they are so good. He has raised the bar. And that's why I'm so excited for his next game, because I think the only person Keith Elwin is competing with is himself. And think about that for a minute. Well, I want a guy that's going to make Jaws pinball. He's competing to make a game Bob Betor than Godzilla, right? Bob Betor than Iron Maiden. And so that is why, you know, at these prices, it's like Keith Elwin or who else are you going to drop this much mate/man on? You know, years ago, if Venom came out before Keith Elwin, would we be looking at it with the same scrutiny? expectations but the problem with a game like venom is you wouldn't even buy an le for ten thousand dollars venom is a game that looks like it was built when stern le's were 6500 and pros were 4900 it just is not the kind of game that you can drop into the modern pinball space at these prices because as we all know a game's either going to wow you and if it doesn't wow you it's not going to end up in your game room anymore So those days are over. So before we talk about Stern and Disney and another eye-opening fact I heard, I want to just give you real quickly, I'm going to change gears real quickly and give you what I am hearing, is the Mystery Pinball Company and the theme they are making. We're going to talk about that for a couple minutes. So we all know that there is this homebrew game, Elf, and it was made by a guy named Bob. And Bob is down in Florida. And Bob has already, with his website, created his own pinball company called Tilt Forums bob (also called Tilt Forums pendulum or Tilt Forums mechanism) Pinball. And on the website itself, it says a lot is coming in 2024. Stay tuned. Okay. And they're going to do it all in-house down in Florida. They're going to do the software. They're going to do the manufacturing. They're going to do the engineering. Everything is going to happen in this small little neopinball Now, they also said that they have an original theme and maybe a licensed theme coming as well. So, a little birdie told me what the theme is that they are working on. And maybe this is the original theme that they're going to launch this company with. Now, before I even tell you the title, I'm going to say this right now. There's a reason why people get excited if you make a homebrew version of Elf. Because everybody loves the movie. And we would love to play Elf Pinball. and you have the only one on planet Earth in existence. Now, if you know how to make a game and you've got the right experience just to make a homebrew game, we all know that that does not translite (artwork panel in backbox that is backlit during play) (backglass artwork panel) into any manufacturing abilities whatsoever. It's a lot easier to make one game in your The Basement than it is to take 500 orders for a The Games People might want. And this is where everybody falls down. Once you try to scale up manufacturing, I just don't think we have much confidence anymore in any new company saying They're going to get into pinball manufacturing. We have enough pinball manufacturing companies out there that are making bad games. Like if I were Bob, I wouldn't start an all-neopinball manufacturing company. I would knock on David Fix's door. I would go to Pedretti Gaming Gaming. I would find a way to hit someone up who has years of pinball making experience. Whatever it is, just go to someone else who spent years figuring it out. And if you have something good enough, you can join forces and make your machine. But oh man another siloed pinball manufacturing venture It already feels like it just not going to work out And so here what I hearing the theme is going to be road trip Road trip I was like wait, road trip? Do you mean road show? Nope. Road trip. Road trip sounds like an original theme pinball machine. Is it based off of road show? There's a little blurry image on his website of like something that looks like a sign that says road trip. Now, I mean, come on, you know me, Kaneda. If you're going to launch American Pinball company and you're going to go through all of the effort and you're going to come out with an original theme called Road Trip, which if I were to guess is going to be something that's going to try to emulate like the Bally Williams days of old with an original theme, you just can't do it. It's just not going to work anymore. I don't care what you put into the game. You can't succeed in this crowded pinball space with an original theme anymore like this. It's failed time and time again. And it's failed from the big pinball companies that could actually make the games themselves. And I mean this, I don't care how much you cram into it, because think about it. Even if you cram a ton of stuff in it, it's still not going to create More Brewing Company demand than the older original IP games that came from people like Pat Lawlor (legendary pinball designer). Because every single neopinball machine, I don't care if you're brand new in 2023 or 2024, you're still competing now with every single pinball machine that has ever been released. And that's the hard part. And that's the reality of all of this Industry Arcade. Because pinball never really changes that much. Every new game that is trying to take like $10,000 or $8,000 or $13,000 or $15,000 from you is competing with other machines you could get for that much mate/man. There isn't real innovation anywhere happening in pinball other than in the software department. But even in that department, there are so many pinball machines. There are a plethora of available machines that are running with modern LCD screens and modern lighting and modern software code that's really deep where you're never going to see the end of the game. So you're hearing it from Kaneda’s Pinball Podcast. The rumor is it's going to be Tilt Forums bob (also called Tilt Forums pendulum or Tilt Forums mechanism) Pinball down in Florida making road trip pinball. So we will see if that is the mystery title. I'll tell you right now, if that's it, if that's the thing that's going to blow all of us away, I don't think so. All right, let's get back to Stern Pinball. And are they going to oversaturate this pinball marketplace? Because just think about it. We got Foo Fighters. It was expensive. We got James Bond. It was expensive. We got James Bond 60th. It was super expensive. And all of these games, this is why I put up on my Facebook page every single game that's come out. James Bond, James Bond 60th, Foo Fighters LE, Venom LE, Jurassic The Park 30th Anniversary. Every single one of those games is still available, new in box, for $13,000. James Bond 60th has taken the biggest hit ever in a single Pinball Machines relaunch ever. Remember, Stern priced this game at $20,000. Every single one of them for sale now is right around $15,000. It's never going to go back up in price. It failed horribly. Not even the great Keith Elwin could save what was a disastrous marketing decision. And Stern's seeing these games sitting for sale at $15,000. And trust me, they're not even moving at $15,000. We just saw one listed for $13,000. Here's what's going to happen next. And you know Stern's going to do this because they put all the mate/man into the R&D of this game. It didn't sell well. They overpriced it. You know the next move on this game is they're going to use that layout and do a different Game On Arcade that same layout. And then everyone who bought that game is going to be burned because your unique Keith Owen experience where you're ripping those spinners for $22,000 is going to be rehashed again. because Stern has shown us that they will simply keep doing whatever they need to do to keep the line going, keep the mate/man rolling in. And look, I want Stern to make mate/man. I do. I want Stern to stay in business. Stern is making the best pinball machines on planet Earth. Stern has the most talented people. What I'm just asking them to do, much like Disney, it doesn't matter how much talent you have in your company. Think about how much talent is over at Disney, is over at Pixar. and they freaking ruined it. They ruined what they had. They didn't understand what the market wanted. They didn't understand how to price their product. Disney did get way too woke for its target audience, but I'm not gonna go into that, but they just did. They tried to jam their agenda down everybody's throats in America and people pushed back, but pinball hasn't done that. Pinball has not gone woke on any level. Pinball's not woke. Pinball's the opposite. It's just games made by men for men. Like pinball is not really concerned about being More Brewing Company diverse and More Brewing Company gender neutral on anything. So like I don't even want to get into it. But here's where I think Stern is falling down. Is there about to move into a new factory? And there's no way around it that that new factory felt like a great idea when demand was where demand was when COVID was happening and everybody was buying everything. And you had a two year backlog on orders. Now, remember, a lot has changed since then. Now that they're catching up on these orders, here's what's happening, right? You got distributors who ordered a bunch of pros and premiums during COVID because demand was through the roof. And if you set up your business model to absorb that COVID demand, and then you crash into 2024 where that demand is gone because either there's too many titles, people are out of space, or the games just aren't wow theme enough, then what happens to all these distributors who have all this inventory? And what happens when Stern needs to up its manufacturing to keep those lines going and all of a sudden they start cranking out More Brewing Company like 800 games a week or a thousand games a week, they're probably going to get somewhere to like six to 800 games a week. Somebody's got to buy all those games, right? Someone's got to absorb all of those titles. And the only way you're going to sell 2,400 pinball machines a month, a month, remember that 30 to 40,000 machines a year. The only way you're going to sell those through to distributors, the only way you're going to find customers to make room in their game rooms for those games is if those games are amazing. But what happens when you have a Venom What happens when you have a game that not flying off the shelf What happens when you have your next Led Zeppelin I mean I just going to say something crazy It just at the point where I think Stern would be More Brewing Company successful It weird to me It like I think they going to lose if they try to crank out too many volumes. You know, Bob Iger, who came back as the Disney CEO, he said, the biggest mistake we made is we made too much content. We put too much out in the world to the point where nothing was special anymore. Too much Marvel, too much Star Wars, and all of a sudden those great IPs got oversaturated. If you can ruin Star Wars with multi-billions of dollars, what do you think they're going to do to pinball with a few hundred million dollars? They can absolutely ruin what makes this hobby so great. I think this Industry Arcade needs to get together and understand a few certain principles about how consumers want to engage with overpriced toys like pinball machines. We need time to absorb each game. When a new game comes out, you can't hit with another game anymore just three months later. It's too close to the previous title. And especially in a world in which we're starting to make the code and all the stuff in these games much deeper and designed for the home market. So someone who hasn't even gotten through Foo Fighters is then gonna get hit up to buy Venom. Someone who bought James Bond, who's still waiting for code to get to a good The Place, is then asked to buy Foo Fighters. And now we're going to be asked to buy another game with the new Jurassic The Park. And then there's going to be More Brewing Company people being asked to buy Keith Elwin's game. And that's just Stern Pinball. And then you throw American Pinball into the mix. You throw Jersey Jack Pinball into the mix. You throw Chicago Gaming Company into the mix. and all of a sudden it starts to look like an extremely oversaturated product category. You've got too many companies making too many games. I mean, I didn't even talk about spooky pinball. All of these companies are trying to get mate/man at similar time periods, and everything is priced around the same price. And no one's winning the price war. Stern is definitely winning the manufacturing war, but how long can this really last? And the biggest losers in all of this will be the distributors if this doesn't get figured out sometime in 2024. Because what's happening is this. Stern is basically forcing their distributors to buy these Venoms because if they don't buy these Venoms, they won't get their allocations of Keith Elwin's next machine. And so you got to kind of keep your allocations up. And that's a huge gamble and a huge risk. And I've already been hearing from people out there in the distributor circles that there are stern distributors trying to unload their inventory to other distributors, but they don't want it. They absolutely don't want it. You want to hear a crazy story about what pinball failure looks like and how distributors are really, really on the line and have the biggest risks right now? You want to hear a crazy story? This is real simple math. This is the ultimate story of how when you get the marketing wrong and you don't come out with a game that people like, it doesn't matter how much the fanboys want to corporate endorsement or biased promotion it with their content. The numbers don't lie, as they say. The numbers just don't lie. I've heard from a few big distributors who have been selling Guns N' Roses over the years. A lot of distributors carrying Guns N' Roses. You want to hear a crazy number? A distributor told me that they sold 300 Guns N' Roses LEs. Let's think about this for a minute. So let's just say on average, a distributor makes $1,000 to $1,500 on a Guns N' Roses LE. That is about $300,000 to $450,000 in revenue that you can make selling Guns N' Roses. Now look, the game's been out for almost three years, but that's still not a bad payday, right? Over three years, you're making over $100,000 a year, probably a lot More Brewing Company in the first year when the game was hot, but you're making a decent amount of mate/man moving these Guns N' Roses LEs in and out your door. That same distributor that sold 300 Guns N' Roses LEs. 300. Guess how many Godfather LEs they've sold? 10. No, I'm not making that up. 10. So you go from making $3,000 to $450,000 on a hot title. And I don't care if people complained about Guns N' Roses multiballs and chipping playfields. That game made distributors mate/man. All right? mate/man. That's why we're all in this Industry Arcade. It's a for-profit Industry Arcade. That's why Kaneda (pinball podcaster's name/show name)'s behind the paywall. It's a for-profit podcast, okay? So that distributor goes from making $3,000 to $450,000 to making $10,000 to $15,000. How do you put food on the table if that's going to happen? And that's the new reality. That is just the new reality. You can't survive anymore on these mediocre pins at these prices. You can't survive anymore if we're going to oversaturate the pinball marketplace. and then these distributors are just sitting on tons and tons of inventory. Here's what I'm calling for to happen in the world of pinball. And I know this is like a weird thing to say because it's obvious. But what I'm calling for is a little bit of a reprieve from this quantity over quality approach to pinball. There's too many games that are just not good. There's too many pinball companies making stuff that's just not worth the price. Stern is the only company that can afford the failure. They really are. Jersey Jack, sure, you got the Abbess mate/man, but when you fail time and time again with Toy Story and with Godfather, you're losing your customer base. So, yeah, I get it. I get that Jersey Jack Pinball is self-financed. I get that the president of the company is Brett Abbess. His title on LinkedIn is listed as Pinball Wizard. He's American Pinball wizard? Does he know how to make pinball machines? How is he American Pinball wizard? Same thing is happening over at American Pinball. Both of these companies are financed by ancillary revenue. Both of them are a little bit of nepotism where someone else in the family who had a lot of mate/man handed the pinball operation to people within the family to give them something to do. I mean, that is a little bit of nepotism. You know, sometimes it can work out, right? There's tons of nepotism in the music world and in the movie world. And if you have talent, you know, having a leg up shouldn't hurt you. Like Lenny Kravitz is talented. His parents are super wealthy. He didn't make it on his own, but he actually had talent. And so look, at Jersey Jack Pinball, what's the issue then, right? You got the mate/man. Who picking these terrible themes and when are you going to make that person accountable The sad news is it Jack Winari that been picking these themes and he got his name on the door even though it not his company anymore And again it just goes to show it like at JJP I just don't think they're aligned on what their strategy is. Now look, Stern Pinball is not having any problems financially, but Stern Pinball is the biggest vessel in pinball and they've built this ship up over the years. And I tell you this right now, you can spend years building a successful Industry Arcade. It might take 10 years to get to this point. But if you make a huge mistake, like you don't see the iceberg in the water, even the biggest ship can sink. And I'm not saying that Stern is going to sink, but I do feel like they're starting to turn a little bit in the wrong direction, maybe a lot of it in the wrong direction. And I think they need to pause More Brewing Company. They need to start respecting their buyers More Brewing Company and the community More Brewing Company. And I think they need to think this through More Brewing Company like dropping this Jurassic The Park right on top of your Venom launch. How does that make any sense? They couldn't hold it. And did they do that because they're going to drop something else on us in November and December? I don't know about you, but it's too much. It's just much like Disney. It's too much content. You can't give us all of this stuff, one on top of another. We don't even have time to explore a game, to feel good about the game we own, and then you're trying to go into our wallets again. I think Stern Pinball, all they really need is two WoW games a year. Two WoW games a year. But if we're going to get like four or five titles a year and like one or two of them are good, the problem is it's those mediocre games that are going to destroy the distributors. And if they keep doing this, it's like the home runs are not going to win you the game. You know, like this is a good metaphor. You know, baseball, you could hit four home runs in a game, but you still lose the game because everyone else is striking out and not playing small ball. And I think Stern needs to slow down a little bit and play a little small ball and meet these consumers and these customers a little bit in the middle now. I don't think they are. I think they priced all these games way too high, way too quickly. I think there were too many content creators apologizing for this behavior. I think there were like a bunch of rich collectors out there that were just like, oh, it is what it is. Pinball is fun. You know, inflation has happened. Sure, there's been inflation. Sure, it's costing Stern Pinball More Brewing Company mate/man to make games, but not this much More Brewing Company mate/man. And, you know, as the vibe is changing, I think we're at a very interesting crossroad. I think we're going to need to see them make less LEs of themes like Venom. You just can't make a thousand of everything. Learn that lesson, Stern Pinball. I also think you're going to have to figure out a way one day to get to some sort of variable pricing model where every machine can't be at the same price. It's not going to work because if the theme is not hot, you can't price it that high. Nobody wants to spend $13,000 on a Venom. nobody and then you just need to really say look if we're gonna be at these prices everything needs to be a blockbuster movie it's like going into the theaters now right are you gonna go into the theater now and spend 40 bucks to see a rom-incomplete word/cut-off transcript ending no you're gonna wait until it's available on a streaming service you're only gonna go into the theater if it's worth it if it's Oppenheimer if it's Barbie if it's Mission Impossible if it's Maverick and that's what pinball is like right now because going into the theater is like buying it new in box. It's the most expensive you could ever spend on that game, right? There's no discount at the movie theater. There's no discount whatsoever. Seeing it at home is the discounted version of the film because you're just paying for the streaming service. And I think we're going to see More Brewing Company and More Brewing Company of that. And look, if those marketplace sales don't make you feel like waiting and seeing is the best idea, I don't know what will. Like I said at the beginning of the year, every single game that has come out, regardless of how the FOMO people want you to feel, every single one of these games, you will be able to get new in box for less mate/man than they were on day one. My theory on that is turning out to be a hundred percent true. The only game that's going to go up in price, think about it, is Pulp Fiction. And the reason why, it's $9,000. They didn't try to fleece the pinball community and we saw a $9,000 Pulp Fiction with way More Brewing Company in it, way More Brewing Company in it than James Bond's 60th. And James Bond's 60th was $20,000, twice the price. If Chicago Gaming Company can make Pulp Fiction for $9,000 and the regular one, not even the LE, is only like $8,000, if they can do that for that, then how does Stern Pinball think We Are Pinball going to accept James Bond for 20th? So that is where We Are Pinball at, ladies and gentlemen. Is Stern Pinball going to turn too much into Disney? Are they going to oversaturate us? Are they going to hit us with too much content in too short of a window? Are they going to charge too much for access to their parks or their pins, as we would say in pinball? And is that going to cause this ginormous ship to start to take on water and maybe one day collapse? I'm just saying it's possible. If you think everything will last forever, it's not true. How do you feel about this? Do you think I'm spot on? Do you think I'm being delusional? I would love to hear your comments. Comment on the Patreon page. It's always fun to see how everybody thinks about this stuff. Happy Friday, everybody. We'll be on the airwaves tomorrow with the Saturday Morning Spectacular. And thank you so much for being a member of the Kaneda Club. Let's give a shout out to some of the recent people who have joined. Joshua, Drew, Chris, Flavian, John, Craig, Richard, D, Joe, Joseph, Keith, everybody, welcome to the Kaneda Club. I'm super glad everybody's here. We're holding strong at 605 subscribers, way More Brewing Company than anyone else in the PitBall podcasting space. Everybody, have a great Friday. We'll talk to you soon. I feel fine