Welcome everybody to Canadian Pinball Podcast. You know, first I have to do a retraction. apparently Keith Elwin did share in the making of Jaws Pinball a mech in which the shark Brucie eats the ball so I was actually wrong it is out there I don't know why they couldn't make it fun but hey look this Jaws Pinball machine as I said I think is going to be probably the most bolted to the ground Stern machine since maybe Godzilla. And so yes, Kaneda was wrong. So thank you to those of you out there who shared with me that information. I just never saw that making of Jaws video. I can't see everything that happens in the pinball world. Here's what we're going to talk about on this episode. Is X-Men even going to come this week? I just talked to some distributors and they don't even have a Stern call on the books for this week. And these are major distributors. So now I'm starting to worry that this month of Marvel isn't actually going to be the month of Marvel. I mean, are they really going to launch it on the 30th? Which is like what? Like Labor Day weekend is when Stern's going to announce a new pinball machine? I mean, that is like the worst timing ever. You never want to release something on a holiday weekend when people are traveling and spending money on the last long weekend of the summer. That is not when you drop a new machine. And also, if they really were going to launch a new game, would they be dropping the news about Stern selling at Costco? We're going to talk about that and how you can now rent a Stern machine for your company in the office for $500 a month. The idiocracy of that move. And then I'm just going to talk about why is nobody else sort of jumping on this moment in which Stern Pinball is looking pretty desperate. And then I'm going to close this show with something I haven't done before. And I'm going to call it Canada's Pinball Podcast Box Trot. Yup, the Canada Box Trot. We're going to look at some games that are for sale today that are new in box, that are still in the box, and we're going to look at what people are asking for the game in a box and if we think it's worth it. And it just goes to show you, you should never roll the dice. You should never send fools like Damien and Marty money. You should never have to pre-order a game because out there in the pinball world, people, there are thousands, yes, thousands of games sitting in a box. that you could buy today. And that is the scary part. I mean, when you think about all these companies every week putting hundreds of new pinball machines into the world, and there's thousands of games without homes, and for some reason, Stern Pinball thinks that they're not even satiating the demand for pinball, and that there's this audience out there that if they just put pinball in front of, is gonna buy their product. So before we go on to this Costco real quick, I don't know if X-Men's going to drop today. It still might drop today, but it doesn't seem very likely. The other thing is this is Stern is promoting that this new Jaws topper mode is going to happen today. They seem to have no real energy around their next cornerstone game. And I think this whole thing is stupid. Let me just start here right now. If you're Stern Pinball and you release three cornerstone games a year, a month before the reveal, you should have the date by which that reveal is going to happen. The same way like movie companies and video game companies, you don't have to tell us what the theme is. Just tell us the next big cornerstone is coming out like 8, 26, 24, like whatever it is. Why wouldn't you give people like enough of a runway to plan their lives and get together and get excited about when you're going to reveal your next cornerstone. And look, they don't do it. They don't do it. And again, I think all of this is really making Stern Pinball look like a company that doesn't really have a strategy. They don't really want to do anything differently. And I think this move at Costco and this move about being able to rent a game for your office, I think all of it is just telegraphing to everybody that Stern, for some weird reason, as this company moved into a bigger factory, as they brought Seth Davis on board, as they've done a lot of good moves, like they've done some really good moves. And yet for some reason, and I don't get this, for some reason, even after they've innovated, insider connected, even after they continue to make better themes than most of the other pinball companies. For some reason, Stern Pinball doesn't want us to be the future of its company. I don't understand it. They continue to make moves that indicate that the audience they want to attract to pinball, they think growth in pinball, this is the reason why they are doing the Costco move. It's the reason why they wanna rent games out. They think growth in pinball is going to come from moves like that. Like someone's going to walk into a Costco and need to buy some duct tape and some bananas. And while they're walking down the aisle, hey, honey, sorry, I just put a $5,000 pinball machine into our cart. That is not going to happen. And yeah, I get it that people are like, well, it's just advertising for pinball. And there's so many people out there that don't know new pinball exists. I hate when people say that. Let me tell you, those people also do not care that pinball exists. You know, every time I meet people in these towns, and I meet people in very wealthy towns with a lot of money, people buying $300,000 cars like it's nothing. When you tell people that there's like 12 companies making new pinball machines, guess what? They don't care. They're not like, oh, I didn't realize that. Do you think anyone who's looking for entertainment devices that has an itch that pinball can scratch is going to wake up one day as a grown adult and just discover this hobby and then lay out thousands of dollars for pinball? It just doesn't work that way. And also, you got to just think about the context of this move. We are now at a point with where the economy is, where inflation is, where everything is in the world, the price at the pump, the price at the grocery store. Stern's strategy right now should be to double down on its core audience. How do we reignite and re-excite the core pinball buyer? That is what George Gomez should be focused on, Mr. Sharp, Michael Grant, Jody, Gary, all those guys over there, Seth Davis. How do we get the core pinball buyer reignited to buy our products? Because they are not reading the room at all. I don't even think they care. Because if you read the vibe around Stern Pinball right now, in the places where people are sharing how they feel, which is free market research. It is not good. And the best way this company can make a move to reignite and excite these people is to actually lower the freaking prices. It's so crazy to me that that's the one thing they won't do. Ladies and gentlemen, let's just be candid real quickly here. If a Stern distro buys a Stern LE for around $10,000, and sells it for $13,000. Okay, so they're giving almost $3,000 to a distributor to sell a product that can, for the most part, be drop shipped. Okay, so if they're handing $3,000 in profit to a distributor for a single LE sale, how much money do you think Stern is making off of that game? Do you think they're going to let the distro make as much as they make on the sale of a game? So let's say the distro gets three. I guarantee you Stern is making at least double what the distro gets So that means they make another on top of that three So let do the math Stern gets six grand in its pocket The distro gets three. That's $9,000. That means the bomb or the cost to make the damn game is $4,000 on an LE. And they're never gonna come out and give us these exact margins. I know dealers and distros right now that I'm friends with are like, Chris, you don't understand. You don't understand how hard it is. You don't understand. Like, I get it, guys. I get it. But most of the games you're selling, you're never going to have to do any customer support on that game. I get every once in a while, you're going to get a damaged game. You're going to get an irate customer. But for the most part, these pros, premiums, and LEs, they're really just being sent from the warehouse to the customer and you're never going to have to do anything again. So when they say they can't lower prices, sure you can. Sure you can. Because the cost of you doing business has not increased nearly as much as the cost you're now charging us for the product. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the number one reason why Stern Pinball is losing its core buyer. It's the number one reason why most of us really don't care anymore about these cornerstone launches because regardless of the theme, it's another moment for them to fleece us. And I don't want you to do the math like I just did. Like I just did that math. And why is it a mystery? Like I can go into a car dealership and know how much that dealership paid the manufacturer for the car when I'm inking out a deal. When I walk into a car dealership, I can actually haggle and negotiate the price I want to pay for the car. You can't do that with a pinball machine. So they've set the price. Everyone's going to get paid. The manufacturer is going to get paid when the dealer orders the product. And then you're going to pay the highest possible price. You're going to pay the most amount of money that game might ever be worth, even if you're seeing the game on the secondhand market. And this is what's going to be crazy when we do this new in box exercise right now. Even if John Youssi like after six months, a dealer has a Venom LE new in box. That dealer is not allowed to sell you that Venom for less than map pricing, even though the second hand market, someone who bought it and kept it in a box could possibly sell it to you for $10,000. I just think all of this behavior is just pointing us in one direction. The strategy is all off. You're not supposed to make moves like this that send your core audience packing. And they've lost their enthusiasm for your new launches. You can see it everywhere. And then you start to do stupid stuff. Like, look, do I think selling a pinball machine at Costco is stupid? Yes. Do I think it's going to work? No. Do I get upset by it? No, because I don't think it really matters much. It is really more about advertising pinball to audiences that are out there. They think it's going to be effective. It's not. They've tried this before. Did it work? It did not. It's not nearly the most expensive item that Costco's ever sold. They've sold engagement rings that are $350,000. They've sold SUVs for $75,000. But it's definitely not something that someone's going to walk in there and that they need. Like people need engagement rings to get married. People need SUVs to get around. Nobody needs a pinball machine. And that's the thing as a marketer. You've got this beautiful product that people don't need. And you've got this captive audience and this beautiful community that continue to buy your product time and time again. And you turned your back on those people. For who? for some Gen Z kids you think are going to buy Pokemon who couldn't afford it in a million years and you didn't even make Pokemon. Like I wish I could be having that debate. You didn't even make Pokemon. Instead you made John Wick without guns. You made more Venom LEs than Star Wars LEs. That's all you gotta know. Seriously, how can Stern Pinball wake up and look at itself in the marketing mirror and say, hey, we're going to make more John Wick Ellie's than we make of Star Wars Ellie. And I think everyone's just like enough. Like we want a move that shows us that they care about the core audience again. And, you know, when they invited the pinball media into Stern Pinball to try to last ditch effort, sell those John Wick Ellie's, you know, they didn't want us there. They didn't want me there. They didn't invite me there. But you know, they only did that because the sales were abysmal. They didn't want to do that. It's like when you go to your employer and to get a raise, you got to go get an offer from somebody else and you have to threaten to leave. And basically, us not buying John Wick was us threatening Stern and calling their bluff on the prices for some of these games that don't have themes that can command that much money. They didn't want to do it, right? If a job gives you more money because you have another offer on the table, they didn't really want to give you that raise. You forced them to give you that raise. We forced Stern Pinball to allow us inside the factory. That was not part of their plan, but they don't seem to have a plan. They don't really seem to have a plan right now. It's like You can rent a Stern machine for $500 a month and put it in your office. Does that make any sense? Like, let's break this down. If you were to rent a Stern machine for a year, it would cost you more than the Stern Pro, right? It would be $6,000. I don't understand the math there. If you rented a Stern Pro for three years, right? You're just like, let me get it, bring it in here. If you rented a Stern machine for three years from Stern, it would cost you $18,000 to rent a $6,000 machine. And the way they're marketing this thing, like work productivity goes up 20% when people play together. It's like a newsflash Stern, when you put a pinball machine in an office, work productivity is not gonna go up. And if you've ever worked in an office, and you hear how loud certain things can be, like ping pong is really loud, pinball is really loud. Unless you have like a huge break room somewhere away from all the people actually doing the work, a pinball machine would be the most annoying thing to put in an office. And also, let's face it, people, normally, if a company wants to put a game somewhere for people to play, A, they want something that everyone knows how to play, which is usually ping pong and pool, or they want something that's not gonna break down, which is also not pinball. You know what it is? It's like someone over there made these moves. Someone over there said, hey, let's do this. Let's bring games back to Costco. Let's sell these Jurassic Parks for $5,000 at Costco, and then let's sell the same exact game on our website for $6,000. Does that make any sense? Let's offer people a chance to rent games for their office for $500. Does that make any sense? Let's say that August is the month of Marvel and then deliver nothing to Marvel fans in the month of August. Because even if you do the teaser on a Friday now, you don't have anything until Monday, which is September. You still haven't released the Venom accessory Ghost Rider topper. Where's that? And then you still think this strategy of keeping everybody in the dark is the only way you can launch pinball machines. Keep everybody in the dark. Try to create FOMO, even though Canada's already told you what the title is and what the next title is going to be, and then the title after that. I think Stern needs a huge wake-up call. I think they need to have a meeting. I think on the center of that wall needs to be the new brief of Stern Pinball. How do we get everybody that already loves pinball, that's been buying pinball from us all these years. How do we get these people excited again? And how do we make these buyers buyers for the next 10 years? They're not doing moves that are turning any of us into buyers for the next 10 years. They're doing moves that have made buyers over the last 10 years no longer want to buy from them. Now, you tell me how that's a winning strategy. You tell me how that is coming from a new marketing company and a consultancy which Stern Pinball engaged. Like they brought in outside people to give them this kind of direction. How many times do we have to see companies that are destroyed because you bring in outside leadership and outside consultants who don care at all about your target audience You know if they care about growth and I just going to say this I seen too many companies I not going to name names because some of them I work with. In the name of growth, they absolutely destroy their relationship with their key customer. You know they think, oh we need to be more diverse so we're just going to do these marketing campaigns that turn off people who actually buy our product. I mean John Youssi it everywhere. John Youssi it absolutely everywhere. It's like, look at Star Wars, for example. It's like, oh yeah, Star Wars has like 2 billion nerds that love Star Wars. They don't need growth. And instead of them feeding the target audience that loves Star Wars so much, they keep making these stupid moves with all of their content that's more about a social agenda than it is about giving the fans what they want. And that is how you get people to turn off And Stern Pinball has done the impossible. They got a bunch of mostly out of shape, 40 to 60 year old men who live and die for pinball, who will buy every single new pinball machine they make. They did the marketing impossible. They found a way to turn off those people from their product. Great job, Stern. All right, so let's see what happens today. Are we going to get a trailer at noon? Are we not? Is it going to be the lamest month of Marvel in the history of Stern releases? Let's go to Kaneda's Box Trot. Now, these are games for sale today that are new in box. Let's look at what's out there and let's ask ourselves, is this worth it? We're going to start with Weird Al, new in box, LE, plus extra. So this guy is selling. This guy is selling Weird Al, LE, but he's selling a lot more. He's selling Weird Al that also comes with In A Box, Heist, Lexi Lightspeed, Cosmic Cart Racing, and Cannon Lagoon. He is located in Tennessee and he wants $18,000 or best offer for Weird Al and all these other P3 games. And here's the thing, right? Here's the thing that's funny. He bought all of this for more than $22,000 plus tax. Now, if it's $22,000 plus tax, you're in somewhere around $24,000 for all of this. And he wants $18,000 or best offer. So he's taking a bath of at least $6,000 on this. So would I buy a Weird Al and all those modules for 18 or best offer. You know what I'm going to say, people. I wouldn't go anywhere near this. There's a reason why P3 is like the electric car resale value in the pinball world. It's like, for some reason, you know, the most innovative new approach to pinball loses the most value instantly. And this is the problem with P3 is like, clearly this guy, for some reason, went all in on this stuff. It's weird that he would buy all of this. This is what's interesting about Canada's box trot is that all of these people are consumers who bought a pinball machine and never opened it. Think about that for a minute. Now, look, I know I didn't open my Guns N' Roses right away, but I always intended to keep it and I always intended to play it and I am playing it and I love it. These people are a whole new set of crazy because why would you buy a game, keep it in a box and not play it now look five years ago i would get it because you could buy games keep them in boxes and trade them for more money but there's zero money to be made in pinball over the last like three years if you kept stuff new in box absolutely crazy so here's an Ultraman Collector's Edition, new in box, $6,500. Wow. Now look, this is a game now, again, you got to wonder like, is it worth buying it new in box because you want a pristine version of the game? And you also got to look at what the game is selling for on the secondhand market when that box is open. Because remember, once you open the box, you're going to have the same exact game as everyone else out there, it'll just be mint. Is an Ultraman new in box? And remember, this game new was selling for more like $8,000. Is an Ultraman worth $6,500 new in box? The answer is no. And the reason why is that used Ultramans are now in that like $5,000. I think I saw one for like $4,800. I think I might even have seen one for even less. So unfortunately, Ultraman is a game that really just nobody wants. Here's a Cactus Canyon remake LE new in box for $9,000. Now look, that's not a terrible buy. Cactus Canyon is one of those games where people waited forever for the game. The LE is a nice game. It's just something about this game now where we know that CGC is not working on a code update. You're not going to get it anytime soon. But if you want a Cactus Canyon, it just goes to show you, I know a lot of people, when this game was announced, I was there. A lot of people thought like this was an easy moneymaker. Like you would just buy a Cactus Canyon LE and they were only making a certain amount and it wasn't too much money. I almost want to say this is less than the game was new. I think this game new was like $92.50. So yeah, not a bad buy at $9,000. But again, I think you could get Cactus Canyon LEs. You know, there's a bunch of them. I was just looking to see like what an open Cactus Canyon LE is selling for. And it's around like $8,500. So they're out there. They're absolutely out there. And you don't have to pay anything more than sticker for this game. So that's good. So yeah, that's not a bad buy at $9,000 for Cactus Canyon LE. We got a Stranger Things Pro New In Box. Well, they're rerunning that game. This is just listed for $6,500. That's what everybody pays. A Venom Premium New In Box, right? So Venom Premium new in box originally was $9,600. You can now get a new in box Venom Premium for $8,100. Here's the problem. You can almost get a Venom LE for around like $8,500 if you offered it on the table. Look, I just think that's where the majority of these sterns should be new in box from the factory. $8,200, $8,500 for a premium sounds about right to me. $10,500 sounds about right for where a Stern LE should be. So would I buy a Venom Premium at $81.99? No. I'm just going to go down what's available here. I know there's going to be stuff that I tell you is a good buy. Here's a Deadpool Premium, the cheapest new in box, it says, on pin side. It looks like it comes with a topper maybe. This Deadpool Premium is $8,895. Wow. Wow. Remember, Deadpool LE sold for this much money when it first came out, and it was easy to get. But this is another game. When Stern adjusted its prices, all the premiums all of a sudden went up. Now, if you want to buy a new run Deadpool premium, you're looking at somewhere around $9,600. So for $8,800 for a brand new Deadpool in a box, it's not the worst buy. So this is like a maybe. So here's the problem, you know, is like, okay. So I was like, all right, so you look at this and then you got to go and you got to go look at what happens when you unbox that Deadpool premium for $8,800. And I go on Pinside and there is a home use only Deadpool premium for $7,100. And that's it, people. It's like, well, you could save yourself $1,700 if you just don't buy it with the box around it. And then right after this Deadpool, this is the same seller. Biff Johnson in Lynn Creek, Missouri. Biff Johnson is also selling Venom Premium at the new in box cheapest. Game is new. Why does Biff Johnson have all of these new in box games? He's selling Venom for $8,500. Here we go. Fathom Mermaid Edition new in box. Los Angeles, California. ref fob is selling it for 7900 i should say this with all these games both the venom and the deadpool because it's like when you have a house right like how many days has the house been on the market and that does indicate what the demand is so the venom and the deadpool have been on the market for 27 days the weird owl has been on the market for six days this fathom has been on the market for 29 days. Now, I think that's about the same amount of time since we heard that Haggis was going under And so would you buy a Fathom Mermaid knowing that the company is out of business for roughly I don think anyone going to go near this I think this is another game where you going to have to take another off. I mean that. If I was going to roll the dice on a Fathom Mermaid edition, I would want one for around $6,500. That's as most as I would ever spend. And even then, I wouldn't go anywhere near the game simply because if anything goes wrong, right, if that play field starts to have issues or if anything breaks, you're done. Like you're going to have a $8,000 paperweight. And so knowing that, that there's a good chance that down the road, this thing's going to be a paperweight. How much is a paperweight worth to you? That's the question you got to ask if you want to buy fathom um Elvira House of Horrors premium in stock $10,500 I don't understand is Elvira more is Elvira premium priced higher than what a normal premium is that's the question I have yeah I wouldn't go near Elvira I'll tell you why because another thing you should do is go and see what prices are these games actually selling for. So there was an Elvira Premium that just sold for $7,800, another for $8,800. It looks like the going price for an Elvira Premium. Here's one with a topper for around $9,000. So I think if you want to get an Elvira Premium, $9,000 on the table is the way to go. Okay, so $9,000 on the table for an opened one. So is $10,500 a lot of money for a new in box one? And I'm just going to say this. I actually think that's kind of a fair price. I don't think you're going to get it for any cheaper. And I think if you want an unmolested version of Elvira, $10,500 is not bad. Here's what's funny. It's like Venom Pro on sale, new in box, right? This is coming from Biff Johnson. Again, Biff Johnson must be a distributor. So Biff Johnson, this has been on the market for 39 days, a Venom Pro on sale. Guess what the sale price is, right? Oh yeah, good sale. No one wants a Venom to begin with. So what is the sale price? $64.95. I mean, come on, that's not a sale price. You basically knocked off like $200. Like get out of town. Another Stranger Things premium, the cheapest new in box, Biff Johnson. Now, is Biff Johnson a distributor? He must be. This has been on the market for 40 days and he's selling it for $8,970. Now, how is that not cheaper than map pricing? This is my thing here, people. I heard that map pricing on a premium is supposed to be like $94, $99. And so these guys are knocking off another 500 bucks or so. It's just so funny to me because, you know, this guy's probably making close to a thousand dollars on every single premium he sells. So like it is what it is, you know. Here's one new inbox, the Godfather collector's edition, right? Remember that game came out, weird theme, had all the gold on it. How much would you buy a Godfather CE that's still in the box? Here's the funny part about this thing. And this is always the word I love the most. There's one word that you can never use when you're selling a pinball machine where the demand for that machine is soft. Let me spell out the word S-O-F-T. If the demand for the game is soft, the one word you can't use when selling your version of it is firm. Okay. You can't be firm on something that is soft. You always have to have an O-B-O, which means or best offer. If you really want to move a game with soft demand. So this guy wants for a new in box Godfather CE, he wants $14,000 firm. And is it any mystery that this game is still on the market after 54 days, he's had it at $14,000 firm. Here's the problem. There's a Godfather CE for sale in the same state where this guy is selling his game for firm, there is a low play Godfather CE in mint condition for $10,900. Firm though, it is a firm offer, but you could save yourself $3,100 if you just don't want the cardboard box. I mean, Godfather CE is another game where there's another one for sale for $10,700. look we all know godfather ce if they actually made a thousand of them after we get even better games like the matrix hopefully and harry potter uh i hate to say it but godfather ce yeah it's going to be like an 8500 game one day before i go i just want to talk about the most ridiculous games for sale right now are these pirates of the caribbean ces uh for some reason uh these people are still living in the COVID bubble. There are three Pirates of the Caribbean CEs for sale. One for $32,000, one for $33,800, and one for $32,000. They've been on the market for 18 days, 12 days, and two days. Every time I look, this game's always available. It's always available. You'd think with only 200 out there, this game would not come up for sale very often, but it always comes up for sale. Oh wait, there's another one. There is a fourth Pirates of the Caribbean CE for sale for $29,500 firm. And this one's been on the market for 34 days. It has, it's in incredible condition and has $4,000 in mods alone. And then we have a $50,000 Supreme machine for sale. Now, everybody, look, to put a bow on this weird episode of Canada's Pinball Podcast, I think Stern's marketing is all over the place. I think they need to wake up. I think they've lost the core audience. I think they want to grow pinball, but they don't know how. The best way to grow pinball is to just make amazing masterpieces based on the best themes out there and integrating those themes into pinball in the most magical way. The best way to grow pinball is to give better value back to your customers. They've made moves over the last three years that are greedy. They're not putting more into the games. They're relying more on software than anything physical that costs money. It's much cheaper for them to put software into the game than it is to actually physically engineer stuff. We know that. We buy pinball because it's a physical analog thing. If all the magic just happens on the screen, I might as well just go play video games for $60. And that's where we're at, people. And the door is wide open now for Jersey Jack. If I was Jersey Jack and I was watching Stern stumble with all of these moves and you have a new game coming out in September, Jack, hit now. Like hit now. don't let them sneak in with a new cornerstone and lock up a lot of money and take up a lot of room from people's game rooms you should hit now and remind everybody and remind everybody what's possible and pinball if you have something magical the only thing that sucks is is jersey jack's gonna just remind us that their games are 12 or 15 000 so there's like there's no there's no value anywhere left in pinball. And it's why we're all just shoulder shrugging our way through this hobby over the last few years, because nobody seems to be able to not rip us off. You're paying $13,000 for a product that has a bomb of $4,000. They're handing for free $3,000 to dealers and distributors. Why? Why can't we pay $3,000 less if we just buy the game directly from Stern without a warranty? right i'll pay for anything that breaks but i'd rather get three thousand dollars off heck if you got three thousand dollars off in le you would never need to spend that much money repairing anything that could possibly go wrong with the game everybody have a great tuesday hopefully we get the teaser today and we can turn a page and turn a corner and start to get into x-men during the month stern said it would be of marvel later Well, that'll be the day. That'll be the day. That'll be the day. That'll be the day.