Deep down in Louisiana close to New Orleans Way back up in the woods among the evergreens There stood a log cabin made of earth and wood Where lived a country boy named Johnny B. Goode Sit up, sit up, sit up, sit up, sit up, sit up, sit up Welcome everybody to the 6th time favorite pinball podcaster who can't win another award We're here to talk about pinball. Happy Monday morning everybody. Spooky Pinball is having a good Monday morning They've sold over 500 units of evil dead pinball. Is that a success? Is that indicative of a softer pinball market? We're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about what I think continues to hang over the pinball world as a dark cloud. I think one move or lack of move is indicative of what were they thinking? I want to talk about I want to talk about how the biggest pinball company in the world decided not to make what would have been the biggest game of its history and how did Stern Pinball come to the conclusion that we should not make Back to the Future. Instead, we'll make Venom. Instead, we'll make John Wick. Instead, we'll make Sturms Decision Making, hartwoods, Foo Fighters, Aarons, How did they come to this conclusion and where do they go from here? Now that we know this right? Now that the whole pinball world knows that the number one pinball company in the world Slept on the biggest theme they ever would have made what does that mean for Stern's decision-making moving forward and are they going to be able to salvage that mistake and and in could deal with Dutch pinball from what I hear right now it's not looking so great alright so let's talk about evil dead five hundred units or more have sold with a twenty minute featurette video nobody seen gameplay most people out there you know you're not huge fans of the movie but what you did get was one of the most beautiful pinball machines we've seen you got an incredible art package by Christopher Franchi you got a game loaded with fun stuff The game is a wide-body game. You can get one of the nicest toppers in the history of pinball for $1300. It's not super cheap. Don't get me wrong everybody, the pinball world's gone crazy. Spooky games used to be half this much money. They're only going to make $888. I say only because it is like a sweet spot for them. It's not too little. Like,forteasy, Theobites minded Bobby Sh cap Sh art Sh art Sh art Sh art Sh art Sh art Sh art How many Š? To you? Next? And? What? Grace. Well, I'm going to ask you to watch Evil Dead 1 and 2. They are not really that good. Army of Darkness is where it gets better, but how many of you out there, raise of hands, have watched these movies and then felt compelled to watch them again? And I know there's going to be people who, because of this game, go and watch the movies for the first time. And let me tell you, most of you are going to be really disappointed. They're not good movies. And so that is why I think the sales of this game is Even though the game is so awesomely cool, it's still not mainstream enough to sell as quickly as a game like Rick and Morty. And look, Scooby-Doo, a much more mainstream theme, I would argue the Scooby-Doo pinball machine not nearly as designed as good as this machine. And also, the problem with Scooby-Doo is they said they were making 1964 of them, so those games are not rare at all and they're easy to get. So also here's why I think they sold 500 and do I think they're gonna sell 888? Maybe the issue now is this a couple things we haven't seen gameplay So I don't know like what the gameplay is gonna be like it's a wide-body game. It looks pretty wide open So is the game gonna shoot really fast or is it gonna be a little bit floaty? I don't know The Week in Pinball, Johnny Pneumonicbrance, I have to wait to see the gameplay like the rest of you. The reason why I think the gameplay is going to help is when we see the gameplay, we're going to get all the assets and the integration is going to be great. We're going to get all those funny campy callouts in the game. And I think the game is just going to have so much personality. And I think that's really going to come through when we see gameplay. Now, I don't like no gameplay on the day they want you to buy the game. I don't like that. I'm just tired of that. I don't understand. Hasn't this game been in development for a while? Surely there's enough to put some gameplay together. And it's like when you think about the marketing around pinball these days, it's like they just don't want to show you enough. They want to show you the sizzle, but they don't want to show you the meat on the bones. And even as I'm watching the featurette video, I can see a little bit of gameplay and some of it looks a little like slow motion. The game is available to play The game is maybe out on location on day one Remember when they used to do that Remember a few years ago when the day that Stern revealed the game it was already on location It kind of like they pulling back You know Jersey Jack didn have avatars shipping on day one like they did Guns and Roses It like everyone pulling back again and they want to only give us just enough to sort of pull the trigger But the problem in modern pinball now and as spooky as sold 500 games here the issue What's the issue I see? Let's just say they sold 500. Now there's 388 more games for sale. If your number, let's say 600 on their list of games to make, by the time they get to your game, your Evil Dead, by the time they get to it, we will also get Harry Potter. By the time they get to game number 600, we will also get Barrels of Fun's The Goonies. By the time we get to 600, we are most likely going to get Keith Elwin's King Kong. And that's the thing. It's like, so then why would you want to be further down the line on this game? And also, we all know this. By the time they get to number 600, some of those first 500 games will pop up for sale, will be cheaper than MSRP. And that is why in the pinball world, Money talking about there began at much fee Make Don So how was militia, illegal corruption in ballpark market? If you have a good reason why mobile books cannot approve emergency pullback on your tradicional E sesa reports comeback If you found经不起 beyond SnyoungSark回答 CV sakhisti site of Preferting anbeige I also look at it a little bit like this is another labyrinth. It's a theme that like sure if you like it, you're gonna love it. But if you don't like it, it might be an easy pass for most people. But this is the advantage of being a boutique company. You don't need to make something that everybody likes. You don't need to make something that sells two to 3000 units. You don't even need to sell All your games on day one. And as Spooky has said in the Patreon chat or on Pinside, they are already working on three more titles. I think they have their next four titles lined up, three of which have playable whitewoods, and they're currently coding those games. So maybe they make 888 evil deads. If they only sell 700, no big deal. They'll just go on to the next game. And so spooky pinball is very much The good vibes around this game are hard to miss. I haven't felt a week like this in a long time. We didn't get this with Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. As much as I tried to hype up the community around that game, ultimately, the game itself just didn't land with magic in it that made people go, wow, like I wish there was a little bit more in that game. I tell this to Melvin. He's gonna have to code more wow into that game. So we'll see what happens. We definitely didn't get any of that with X-Men. I mean X-Men was a wow when we first saw X-Men It was beautiful. It was awesome. It was so cool, but Jim Weisz and destroyed this game with his code He's just not a good coder how many months later and now X-Men they had to send out a service Bulletin on a few games You might have to do this fix and it seems like a complex fix for sure The game is supposed to be made the same way. How is it that just a few games have issues? That does not make any sense to me. That is absolute hogwash. Something went wrong from prototype to final production in this game. And so now you've got mechanical issues. You've got software issues. And by the time they figure it out, I mean this, people are just not going to care. The game was rushed and now the vibes around that game are never going to recover and it's a learning for Stern. They really need to learn to slow down and make sure you get it right. What Spooky did this week and again I'm not going to say something stupid like Stern's in trouble because of Spooky. Stern Pinball will make more money in one week than Spooky all year. They make more games in one week than Spooky can make all year. The only thing that can kill stern pinball is stern pinball. We're going to talk about that in a little bit. And they're doing a good job of seemingly killing themselves with some boneheaded decisions. You know, the thing about spooky pinball is this spooky pinball is in a really good position. They've got a good team of people over there. And when you look at Franchi, when you look at bug, when you look at Luke, when you look at Ben Heck, when you look at everybody, radio iPod retrieve http://www. Epic-Level-tools.com http://www. versa HD.com http://www. http://www.x土s http://www.youtube.comín chois牺 steelง�� snack y Porsche 지금은ван loved anyone really is you don't need any more game like nobody needs more games everybody is out of room The games are so much money and for something to sort of take your dollars now it really really really needs to feel like it going to make you feel better than you already do in pinball and I want to say Congratulations to the team at spooky because I think you made everybody feel good this week And I think everyone who ordered one feels great and I think when we see gameplay video you gonna sell more But I also don think the game is gonna go up in value which is fine And you know not every game can will it hold value much better than Looney Tunes much better than Texas Chainsaw Racer Analyzing fifteen point three JAMEPROX, WILLIE Behindront 2ms., Scane Pense to get a good fit for Pension-erik Hello I guess I will be able to win LOL LOL LOL to grab em up, but this run is one-shot�� If you lose, mind about whine subscribe smh pequzt for the phonecalls diye swift dot cut that falarg Everytime I wish to 금 Thumbiscopeant method it becces of a Other team member fields is like a The game was released in the 1980s. How the heck did Sternpinball, who's got designers that are around our ages, right, people born in the 70s and early 80s, more likely the 70s, you know, I don't believe it when Stern Pinball says that nobody at Stern Pinball wanted to make Back to the Future. There was nobody over there that wanted to make that game. The truth is they brought in a consultancy. This was one of the moves, you know, Seth is the new CEO over there. They brought in a marketing consultancy and they did focus groups with people that are young, with a Gen Z audience and they put themes in front of them because to Stern, they think the way to grow and the way to future proof their business is to focus group, an age group that has no money to buy pinball. Pinball buying demographic, It's like if you're a Antonio Cruz Line and you want to keep your Antonio Cruz Line going and nobody 18 to 25 wants to go on a Antonio Cruz, it doesn't matter what you put on board the ship, they're not going to get on board. And so for Stern Pinball to go to people who are super young, do not have disposable income and to ask them what themes do you want to see in a pinball machine that you can't even afford, right there, they were destined to fail with their marketing efforts and so apparently what I heard is that when you put Back to the Future in front of Gen Z kids who have never seen the movie, who don't understand any of the cultural context of the film or the significance of the film, they didn't want it to be made. And so Stern went off of that feedback because do you think John Borg wouldn't want to make Back to the Future? The dude is like stuck in the 1980s. He like rides a T-Mex Bikearound with like a Sony Walkman on and he's like still using skateboards. That dude would love to make Back to the Future. Oh, and by the way, I'm just here to confirm for each and every one of you that Tron remake is coming. He is doing the same thing to Tron that he did to Metallica. And I also heard that he feels that Tron could have even more in it. That when he originally made Tron, you know, it doesn't have that much in it. So he's going to add a few more special things into the game. So if you have a Tron LE right now and you're not going to listen to Kaneda and you think you can sell it for $21,000, I want to tell you right now, you should sell your machine for what you can get right now. And don't come crying to me when this new Tron hits and your machine is now worth like $9,000 if that, because no one's going to want any of the old machine when the new Tron comes out. You heard it here. I keep telling you. I told you about Metallica. Smart people sold. Those who held onto it, you just lost $10,000 on your $19,000 Metallica LEs. So John Borg would want to make it. Now we hear Keith Elwin. It would be a dream theme of Keith Elwin's. Well, he was over there for years. Did they ask Keith Elwin if he wanted to make Back to the Future? No. I'm sure Jack Danger would want to make it. Heck, Brian Eddy would want to make it. Who wouldn't want to make Back to the Future? And so here's my thing. This lack of awareness by Stern. To me, it's everything wrong with them right now. They just seemingly are out of touch with who buys their product, what they really, really want, and they're sort of trying to grow the company in all the wrong ways. You bring in these outside consultancies and you end up with garbage like the new Jaguar positioning. The Like what Bud Light went through you think the only way to grow your brand is to think Outside of those people who love it right now when George Gomez said to me the customer I want is Not the customer I have That is something I would have never said and the moment you start thinking like that is The moment you are headed off the rails The Game of Thrones is what I want to grow my industry is to take all the customers I have and if each of them just invites one Friend into this hobby then I will double the size of my business and that is our goal My goal is to listen to why my customers right now Buy my product to listen to what themes they really want and to deliver to them The Week in Pinball, Terminate What they want and exceed their expectations of what they can expect from Stern Pinball and if I achieve that if we drop more themes that they want and exceed their Expectations on how great those games can be we will double the size of Stern Pinball and that is my goal I didn't hear any of that Instead they did Gen Z focus groups and landed on stuff like John wick and Jody Dankberg They got mr. Sharp over there one of the sharp sons This Week in Pinball Johnny Pneumonic Black Water Kaneda Pinball Podcast Twippies Awards transliteelectronic And look I been talking to them and I would love to work for Stern Pinball one day but I would love to come in there in a position to really build a marketing department build it the right way. You know, they haven't had to sort of grow up and become a modern marketing company. And look, when it comes to marketing, everybody, it's all about the decisions you make before you start making the game. The most important marketing decision you can The Week in Pinball, Johnny Pneumonic, Black Water, Kaneda's Pinball Podcast, Twippies Awards, transliteelectronic SirLeN Neaba, FashionEyes covetee+, Partушка Ultimate, Katie Borg, Tenemos Conceptará, Summer Cancels for the second year of the year for March first annual I'm Chris Spieri, welcome to MC fabiciwa,西 March, Tantrums facing Stern in the future. I think they've learned their lesson. I do. I think they're trying to recover from this I'm also hearing that 40% of Stern sales are Keith Elwin And so this company, you know as big as they are if I had to give them a recommendation I would go to only two cornerstones a year, but make them amazing make them bangers I think they're way too aggressive on their scheduling I think three cornerstones who can absorb three Cornerstones games a year and a remake of a hit game from yesteryear. It's too many games. And if you make Back to the Future, you're going to sell more Back to the Futures than Foo Fighters, Venom and John Wick combined. So one real magnificent Cornerstone in my honest opinion is better than three mediocre themes. The game that not everybody wants and so we'll see what happens with stern pinball I'm nervous because the other thing I'm hearing is this they are about to raise prices in January and if you thought you were at the top you're not they're about to raise prices and I think when that happens it's gonna be met with a lot of resistance because what you're gonna raise prices on Dungeons and Dragons you can't raise prices google translate ability to use Animus ST, Al останов You can go get JawsLE for less. You can get every single game for less money. If you think MetallicaLE is going to stay at $17,000 or $18,000, it's not. We all know this. We're going to move on to the next. Harry PotterCE is going to have a feeding frenzy on day one, and then it's not going to be hard to get it six months later if they make $1,000 of them. Nothing anymore. Nothing anymore. I don't know, gang. It's just kind of lost what it used to be. It's all overpriced. And look, maybe the The cost of making these games has gone up, but the enjoyment that games are giving us hasn't gone up 40%. We remember how much fun we used to get for like half as much money. And I think it's a real dilemma for these companies. I think it's a real quagmire. A lot of you collectors are in, you kind of know you're just good with what you got. And the higher the prices go, the more pinball will turn people off. The less pinball will grow, the higher the price is This Week in Pinball, Tanyo Kneumonic 훨flanzen is backhit porqueี่ The Overconsumption in America is a pathway to unhappiness. The end of the week. Like, you should be working out and feeling good. You should make sure your money's growing in a way that makes you happy and feel secure. You should be doing experiences with your friends and family. Instead of buying a $15,000 pinball machine, call up your best pinball friend, go get two first class tickets to Tokyo, have some amazing meals in Tokyo for 10 days, come back and that trip will benefit your life way more than a pinball machine. And you know it everybody, Kaneda out. Happy Monday. ³innenkuya doobie mo casa, Vin Phil and Birgo João,