It's alright, you were dancing through the lightning strikes Scapers in the heart, it's night But now the sky is over light Oh-oh-oh-oh Sit-a-sit-a-sit-a-sit-a-sit-a-sit-a-sit-a Ah, good morning everybody! It's a rainy Monday here in Connecticut. It is the week of Pinball Expo and I've been reflecting on what this show is going to be like. I was thinking about the games I'm going to see. I'm thinking about the manufacturers I'm going to say hi to or try to avoid maybe. I'm thinking about this hobby and this industry as we head into mid-October of 2025. And it's kind of like an interesting, I think, reflection period in the hobby. I just saw an auction this weekend where games like Legends of Valhalla were selling for $3,500 at auction. I saw a X-Men LE, I think Flip N Out Pinball is selling it for basically like $8,000. The $5,000 loss. I'm reading on Pinside and people are saying Stern has a backlog of order. as long as your arm is what Neil McRae is saying. Is that true? How can that be true? And Stern is basically shuffling the deck on its sales team. They are moving people to Europe. They are moving people out maybe. They are bringing in sales help. If things were going great, would we really see a shakeup in the Stern sales team? I'm looking at the Star Wars Fall of the Empire thread. The owner's club is not very big. There are people that are telling me, hey, you're focused too much on the LE versions of the game and the premiums are doing just fine. I don't believe that. I have a hard time believing that all these people are going to spend $9,700 right away on a game in which the LE version of the game will probably be worth $9,700 in two months. Why wouldn't you wait? And Star Wars, from the very get-go, has had a very, very mediocre response. I don't think people are going in on this game. And I said on my Saturday morning show, it's starting to feel like the LE does not stand for Limited Edition anymore. It stands for Loser Edition. Because everyone's losing so much money. Now, on the eve of Expo, as I get ready to go there, what are the things I'm excited to see? the things I'm excited to play, the games I can't wait to get my hands on. Well, first and foremost, the number one reason I am excited to go to Pinball Expo has nothing to do with the games. There's nothing I'm really going there that really has me running to the airport. The main reason I can't wait to get to Pinball Expo is to see the people. That is what makes it fun. The people are going to make this really enjoyable. If you're going, we are going to have a good time. For those of you who have been to Pinball Expo, and you know what I'm talking about when I say this, you can lap the entire show in less than an hour. You could jump on every game within a two-hour period of time. Almost every single gameplay experience won't be good because it's way too loud. I'm hearing that Barrels of Fun took my advice. I think they're going to showcase Dune in a separate room with dark lighting so you can hear the game as well and have the right kind of experience. That is smart. That is how every game should be at a pinball show. It is horrible when they are all lined up together and you can't hear anything and you don't get to absorb any of the software and the code of the game. You're really just getting a gameplay experience and then you're looking at the artwork because the sound is always terrible and the code does not come through. And so I'm not really looking forward to any specific game per se. I am absolutely looking more forward to the homebrew stuff than the stuff I will see from the manufacturers. I've played a lot of Harry Potter, so that's not going to be a new game for me. Harry Potter is doing really well. The one thing Harry Potter is doing the best at is showing everybody the full potential of how amazing a JJP game can shoot, how much assets can be in it, and also just how beautiful the overall package is. The problem with Stern Pinball these days isn't what Stern is making. It's what they're not making. The problem with all these Stern games is the moment you put it next to a Harry Potter and an Evil Dead you just don feel the value anymore And the days of gameplay and fun factor they don't have a monopoly on that anymore. The other companies have caught up to them and in many ways surpass them in those aspects. And so, yeah, when you put King Kong next to Harry Potter, it makes King Kong look like a $5,000 game. And I'm talking about the Kong I'm not even talking about the other versions of Kong. And that is just the problem. And here's the thing, too. As more and more people put these JJP games and these spooky games into their game rooms and they look at these games in juxtaposition to all the Stern machines you've been buying all these years, it really does make these Stern games look really cheap. It doesn't take anything away, though, that Stern Pinball does make amazing pinball games. They are so much fun. The gameplay has been so good for so many years. I would still argue their games still have the best flipper feel. And their games, you know, when they're coded right and they're integrated right, they're amazing pinball machines. But there's just so many of them. There's tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of Stern games out in the world. And I think all of us are waking up to the new reality at these prices, putting 30,000 more pinball machines into the world every year is just never going to work. And it is going to be the new dawn of pinball driven by the boutique companies that if you're a pinball company, you want to be in a place where you're making anywhere from 500 to 3,000 games a year. not Stern's ship that needs to crank out 20 to 30,000 games a year and has to find demand for every single one of those games. So I'm looking forward to playing Big Trouble in Little China. I'm looking forward to playing Predator. I'm going to go into it with as much of an open mind as I can, but it's a new pinball machine. So I can't wait to see how Predator plays. and absolutely I'm looking forward to playing Star Wars Fall of the Empire. I haven't played one yet. I haven't played one yet. Mike at Automated does not have one set up. I usually would go over there and play the new stuff. He doesn't have one on the floor yet that I know of. So I will play Star Wars for the first time at Expo. I look forward to going live from the show to give you my impressions of all of these games. I look forward to stopping by all the different vendors that will be at the show. Always a lot of fun stuff on display. But ultimately, I will say this, and I'm going to be honest. The actual show floor does get boring by hour four, by hour five. So if you want to find me, I will absolutely be looping the show. But I'd much rather hang out with each and every one of you at the bar, at the hotel. Maybe we go over to some of the steakhouses. Isn't there like a Perry's Steakhouse, a Capitol Grill? Let's just have fun hanging out with each other because these games will eventually be everywhere and you and I won't be everywhere together. So I think we maximize our pinball expo time together. Let's get a Canada meetup going. I know Kerry Hardy's doing drinks on Friday night at the bar, at the hotel. we might as well just piggyback with Carrie and do it all there at the same time. Let's just get everybody together. It's going to be a good time. I've got my omakase dinner Friday night with Kale, Rachel, and Melvin Williams. That's going to be fun. It's at 530, so I can get back to the show. I think we've got to take an Uber into downtown Chicago to have that dinner. And what I want to do at the show is really just walk around and talk to each and every one of you that's going to be there. And I want to get a sense of like, how are you feeling? How are you feeling about the hobby? And I think as I look at this dark gray day in front of me right now, I think a lot of us are in the same space. We still love pinball. We still love the friends we've made. We still love pinball content. We love watching what these companies are going to put in a box every few months. We love so much about this hobby. None of us love the pricing. None of us. None of us love the secondhand market where everyone's trying to get delusional prices. But that's not what keeps us coming back. The world is a chaotic place. It really is. There's so much going on in the world. It's so divisive. Everyone's like seemingly so angry. It seems like everyone's getting really rich but you. There's just so much happening but pinball is something that each and every one of us can still get our arms around. You can still get your head around what going on in this hobby You know every single manufacturer there is Name me another hobby where you know every single manufacturer that there is You also know every single product that is about to come out from every single manufacturer So it's a nice little niche, small little nano hobby. It really is a nano hobby. It is a subculture within gaming. And it makes me laugh that some people out there, Stern being number one, they think there's tremendous growth for this hobby. And I just kind of hate to break it to them, but there's not tremendous growth. There's a little bit of growth to be had. And the only way you're going to get that little bit of growth is if you make amazing games. Like that's it. There's no other way. There's no other way. So it is funny to me that the one company that really needs there to be growth is making the most mediocre pinball machines right now. is making games that look really cheap right now. They need to get their act together. Stern Pinball needs a statement game. They just do. Everybody knows that. As long as they keep coming out with these games that just feel like it's just another Stern, they're going to get the same response they got to Star Wars. The same thing will happen to Fallout. The same thing will happen to Pokemon. The same thing will happen to Transformers. These games need to take it up a notch. Most of you don't even care about Pokemon. You really don't. And so I don't think if they just make a Pokemon pin, it's gonna fly off the shelves. Even though that's such a big property, look how big Star Wars is. Like Pokemon's number one, but Star Wars is like number four in the biggest properties out there in the world. And look what happened when they made Star Wars. Now you could argue there's Star Wars fatigue, which there is, but Pokemon, is there Pokemon fatigue? You don't even care about Pokemon to be fatigued by it. So I really think they need a statement game. And I think it has to come from Keith Elwin. And I think they need to figure out what it is. And I'm not sure because if it's Fallout, nothing they do will ever be a statement game if that's the theme that they need to recover with. And I worry that like the Walking Dead remastered is going to raise the price. It's going to be underwhelming. and no one's going to want to buy the same game for twice the price it used to be. And everybody knows that all eyes are on one game and one game only over the next couple of months. It's all about Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice. And I think Spooky Pinball will tease this title. They keep alluding to the fact that everybody already knows what it is. They know how special it is. I know they can't wait for us to see this game. and it's coming out in less than two months and it's gonna be a lot of fun when this game hits. I think it's gonna be the instant sellout we want it to be. And then 2026 is all gonna be about Spooky making those Beetlejuice games. After Beetlejuice, it's gonna get interesting because gang, remember, Star Wars came out in September. So Stern's next cornerstone is gonna be in December, January. So is it Pokemon or is it going to be Transformers? What I love is even though they're not doing well right now, Stern Pinball needs a new game every four months. And it's easy for us to wait. I know it doesn't even feel like Star Wars even came out because nobody cares. But yeah, it did come out. And in like two and a half months, their next game has to come out. And it just never stops over there at Stern or else they're going to go under. And so what we're going to get is most likely Beetlejuice. then we will probably get Raza will be revealed early 2026 then we're going to get Stern's next game right in January they will bring it to CES that's where it's going to be debuted they always debut that game at CES whatever the time frame is it's always there where they bring their latest game I don't think anyone at CES considers this stuff to be technologically advanced but that's where they bring it. And then we're going to start to ask ourselves, where's the next game from Pedretti, which is going to be either Big Bang Bar, but I'm hearing it is a Toten remake with Brian Allen on artwork. I think we're going to get Toten and then Big Bang Bar. And then we're going to start to be asking ourselves, when are we going to see Sonic the Hedgehog from Steve Ritchie? But before we start asking that question, it's already going to be, what's Keith Elwin's next game, right? January, then February, March, April, April, May, we're going to get fallout. You can start to see the way the year is going to go. And then we're going to start to ask that question. Does Dutch pinball have Back to the Future ready for the end of the year? They need to get it done this year. This is it. Like it's make or break for Dutch. They can't keep relying on Melvin Williams bailing them out with these J remakes They need to finish Back to the future The demand for Big Lebowski has been up now for like almost a year And how come they not further along with Back to the Future If Melvin wasn in the picture gang, Dutch Pinball would have been the next Haggis Pinball. They would be out. They would be out of business. They have nothing for the line. So thank you, Melvin, for keeping the dream alive. I still feel like Barry should have inked a deal with JJP or Stern, made a few million dollars for doing nothing other than securing a license. I don't know. Maybe the license is not transferable and that's why he has to make it. But I think he just wants to make it. And I'm glad he wants to make it. He wants to prove a point. We need more companies that want to make statement games. And I think Barry sees Back to the Future as his opus, his statement game of what pinball is possible of. And it's not the cheap stuff you're getting from Stern. Okay, that's happening over at Dutch. Will pinball brothers survive if only 200 or 300 predator machines get made? I don't know what's going on over there. We're also ready now for the next CGC game. Remember, after Merlin's Arcade, CGC's next game is rumored to be Mark Ritchie's Halo. Now, when are they going to announce that? Because after Merlin's edition of Medieval Madness, there's nothing. There's nothing else scheduled on CGC's plate. Unfortunately, whenever they do announce their next game, you know you're going to be waiting two years to get it. But, you know, par for the course. They should announce it in 2026 and you will be taking delivery sometime in 2028. It's crazy when you think about the years and where we are. I don't know. You know, hopefully the economy can stay strong enough for all of these companies to keep surviving. I think it's going to get really tough. I do think it's going to be a boutique world in pinball. If I were to get a crystal ball and say, what does pinball look like in five years? I see JJP leading it. I do. I think Stern's in trouble. I don't think Stern is going to keep making it unless they change their business model, but I don't know how they do it. I don't know how they get smaller. Here's a crazy idea. What if Stern Pinball bought JJP? I mean, just think about that for a minute. What if Stern Pinball bought Jersey Jack Pinball? What if they acquired that platform versus the other way around? And I know the Abbott's family has more money than the Stern people, but just think about that for a minute. If you're Stern and you need to elevate your platform and someone else has all of it figured out, why not buy them? I think one of Stern's biggest mistakes is they never did any M&A. They never merged or acquired anybody. They should have bought Spooky years ago. They should have bought a few boutique companies a few years ago and they should have hedged their bets a little bit, but I just think things were going so well. They figured, you know what? If we just keep doing what we're doing, rising tides will make everybody successful. And unfortunately, I think they opened the door too much for their competition to now make Stern games look like not a great value. Everybody, here's the deal. Here's the deal. I think I'm going to sit down with Jersey Jack leadership during Pinball Expo, much like I did with Stern leadership a year ago. I would like to share with them some feedback from you. So I would love for you to tell me, I put this on my Facebook, I put it on Patreon, I would love for you to give me some feedback on Jersey Jack. What do you like about the company? What don't you like? Have you bought their games in the past? What made you buy them? What was your experience like? if you could give them any advice, what would it be? Stuff like that. I just wanna give to them. Here's what other people are saying about you, not just me. It's gonna be a fun week. I can't wait to go to Expo. I can't wait to hang out with pinheads. That's what makes this hobby great. The people are so much better than the pins and the people don't cost much money. I think everybody's figured that out by now. So everybody, let's enjoy this Expo week. a lot more to come on Canada Spinball Podcast. And I can't wait to give you my feelings on all the games I'm going to play at the show and share with you some really fun Facebook Lives and Patreon Lives as we connect with people at the show. I'm going to interview people. It's going to be great. We're going to have a good time. Canada out. Make your own sunshine And now the sky is all bright Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh