If I can change, and you can change, everybody can change! It's showtime! You son of a bitch! Welcome to the jungle! We got fun and games! We got everything you want! We know the name! Sit up, sit up, sit up, sit up, sit up, sit up, sit up! Oh, welcome everybody to Canada's Pinball Podcast, coming off the Building Bridges tour. Went on WAP yesterday. Donald Garrison and Jengis. A lot of fun. I heard after the show now Retro Ralph wants to go on the show. So does David David Van Es. See the Kaneda effect, baby. We're bringing everybody together. We're talking about pinball. And some people think that means Kaneda's going soft. Our friend Bond over there on the chat last night getting cute. Kaneda going soft, brother. I started this whole thing calling the pinball industry as it is man I never hold back on anybody oh because Canada's not taking Jersey Jack to the fire over their operating abilities uh last time I checked if I talked about the ability to operate a Jersey Jack game on location let me tell you how many subscribers I'd have. Zero. I understand these Jersey Jack games might not be operator friendly. I've never thought a Jersey Jack game is a good location game. They're more complex. The light boards apparently don't make it after 12 hours. I don't know if that's true, but my thing with JJP games are they're just easier to play in a home environment. They're more enjoyable to play in a home environment. I mean, welcome to a Harry Potter. There's eight things going on at once. Are you going to figure out that game on location? Walk over to Star Wars. There's really nothing going on ever. Fan layout, boring. Going to make an operator a ton of money. Stern sells a $6,000 game that won't break. That's what an operator wants. And I understand, Like, you know, for me, Jersey Jack is more of like a fine sort of like Ferrari. It's like, are you going to drive your Ferrari every day? Are you going to put like 500 miles on it a week? I don't think so. You take it out when you want something special. I mean, I kind of feel like that's what pinball is becoming anyway, because these damn games cost as much as a car. So maybe some games are your everyday beaters and some games are your rare sort of special occasion pinball machines. Let's talk about a special occasion pinball machine right now. Winchester's Mystery House, baby. Everybody's wondering something right now because I think we're a week away from distributors actually asking customers to pay in full. This is the moment when people are going to have to really decide how bad do you want it. I think they said they were going to get games to customers before Halloween. Well, Halloween is six days away. So, I don't know, man. I don't know. That's not a lot of time. That means games have to go out the door next week. And have we seen a photo or a video of games on the line? I don't know. You know, let's see how things are going over there. When they were being interviewed about the game, they were saying, you know, we got to order parts and sometimes there's delays. And so who knows? Who knows? And I said it from the very beginning. I think what's going to happen with this game is what happened with Dune. We're going to get an early batch out the door first, and then there's going to be a little bit of a delay because I think everyone tries to gauge how much interest there is before they order parts. Now, obviously, there's a lot of interest in this game. Obviously, 525 spots have been spoken for. And now the conversation in the thread is interesting to me because now a lot of people are wondering and trying to speculate whether or not they think this game is going to hold value and go up in value. And the reason why I think most of the conversation is about that is that the majority of people that have ordered this game have never played it. The majority of people that have ordered this game are also going to want to get Beetlejuice. The majority of the people who ordered this game know that there's going to be a lot of games coming out over the next two to three months. And almost everybody that ordered this game knows that before they get this game, most people who ordered it are going to see a new game from Spooky a new game from Pedretti a new game from Stern Pinball a new cornerstone actually two games from Stern Pinball You have to remember Barrels is not gonna make like 100 of these a month 50 to 75 games a month. So it's gonna be a wait. If you were to ask me right now, do I think that Winchester Mystery House is gonna go up in value? I don't know right now. The thing I'll say is this, I am surprised that nobody out there has scalped a spot. What happened to this hobby? Bond wants to call me soft. It's the speculators that have gone soft. I would be buying a spot for $2,000 and selling it for $5,000 this week. That's the way you do it. Because here's what's going to happen. And this is going to happen, people. There's no way that spots are not going to open up. Beetlejuice is going to open up some Winchester spots. Now, a little Beetlejuice news for each and every one of you out there. I would stick around your computer around Halloween. I'm just going to say that. I don't think you're going to see the game, but I think you're going to get some information about when you're going to see the game. And it is coming soon, baby. And the excitement and the energy over at Spooky is palpable. And I know that they're anxious to say, hey, that's an interesting mystery house you got there, barrels, but we're about to drop something called Beetlejuice, and it's going to be almost $2,000 cheaper, and I think the demand is going to be 10 times greater. It's interesting to me that people are like, well, Beetlejuice is not a very good theme, and I'm all in on Winchester Mystery House. You didn't even hear about Winchester Mystery House. You had no idea what Winchester Mystery House was like two weeks ago, and now you guys are like all in on it. It's a great theme for pinball. You guys are funny. You're funny to me. If I had told you it was Winchester Mystery House like two months ago, you would have laughed barrels of fun out of the room. And now all of a sudden, the greatest theme in pinball history. Now, no one's saying that, but you know what I mean? You know what I mean? I still think it's crazy. I think it's crazy that Winchester Mystery House in two days sold more units than Dune Pinball sold in almost six months. Just think about that for a minute. A billion dollar movie franchise in which David went and got all the assets, all the actors, all the likenesses, everything. They designed that very complex mechanism. All of that went into this game. And in two days, a house in California that most people have never heard about with Carl on design sold more units in two days than all of Dune has done in six months. That is insane. Now, I also think a big part of Winchester's success is Carl. Carl's got a lot of fans. Carl does so much for the hobby and he's such a nice guy. A lot of support there. People like to support people that they love and everybody loves Carl. Another interesting thing when you think about it, who designed Labyrinth? Who designed Doom? Barrels had this approach where it was like a team designing the game. They were almost taking pride in the fact that they don't have like a designer, a specific individual designer attached to a game. And I think they're learning another important lesson in game design and in marketing and in vibes. People want to support a designer. They want to collect games from a specific designer. So yeah, having Carl as the designer helps. Having a team of people at barrels design Dune does not help because this hobby is built on falling in love with a designer's point of view. And look at Keith Elwin. Look at Jack Danger. Look at Steve Ritchie. Look at Pat Lawler. Right. We like to attribute a designer to a game. We don't want to see designed by Jersey Jack Pinball, designed by Stern. And so I think moving forward, David's learned another valuable lesson here. This is Carl's game. I think he needs to figure out who's the next designer at barrels to do our next title. And it could be David David Van Es. It could be anyone over there. But I think putting an individual's name as the designer is important. So Winchester Mystery House, baby, is it going to go up in value? Is it going to go down in value? You know, honestly, I don't know. I really don't know. I think the market will determine this. If I were a guessing man, and this is just my guess, I think this game is going to lose hype the moment Beetlejuice comes out. And I think this game's got a while to go in the code department. And I think that's going to be the thing is once people get this game, this is going to be the telltale sign of this game. once this game moves away from the hype and the honeymoon frenzy to get one because it done a great job of creating all of that The FOMO is real The excitement is real But once somebody gets one in their home and they put it next to some of the best games Stern has ever made, they put it next to some of the best games Jersey Jack has ever made, once it's in a home environment and someone can be on this machine intimately for hours, I think we're going to get a better sense of how good the game really is, how complete the code really is. Does it have that one more game quality? Is it creating pinball moments that are really magical? And I think that's yet to be determined. That's always yet to be determined on every single new game. So more to come on that. I hope they get games out next week. I don't think they promised that though. Like there's no like official release date. Again, I think a few games, if I were to guess maybe 20 games trickle out before now and November or mid-November. And then I think it's a little bit of a wait and then we're gonna get Beetlejuice and then it's gonna be interesting. Are people gonna go all in and write a check for 11.6 to barrels if they also wanna get Beetlejuice for $10,000? Now, Beetlejuice is going to have the butter cabinet as an additional cost and a topper as an additional cost. But the Winchester topper is also going to be an additional cost. It's a beautiful machine, though. It is. It's a very beautiful machine. And my big question mark on it is how the code will progress and also how the game shoots. I still am on the fence around the gameplay of the game. When we talked to Don yesterday, he said he was able to hit all the upper flipper shots. I found the upper right flipper to that upper left ramp to be a very difficult shot to hit, but I only played one game. I mean, it's almost like take everything I say about Winchester gameplay and throw it out the window because I only played it once, just once. And most people only played it a handful of times. And so I think everybody's gameplay experience is a little bit of a guessing game right now on how the game will be. Like if I were to be completely honest, walking over to Star Wars after Winchester, Star Wars has better flow. It just does. I mean, because it's a fan layout. It just has better flow, but it's boring. And when I was playing Winchester because the layout is different, I was not bored at all. And it was also just an original game. It feels like, here we go, another boring Star Wars from Stern. All right, speaking of crazy news, I was reading on my Patreon, on Don posted an interesting rumor that I have not heard anywhere else, that the Ghostbusters license could potentially be coming back to the world, but not from Stern. That Jersey Jack pinball may have secured the license to Ghostbusters, and it might be the game after we get Steve Ritchie's Sonic the Hedgehog, and this might be Mark Seiden's next game. Now, an interesting fact about pinball and licenses is that almost none of these licenses are exclusive. So, for example, I've also heard rumors that another pinball company has the Transformers license in addition to Stern. And so there is actually a possibility that we might get a Ghostbusters machine from another manufacturer. Now, I would love it. I would love it if Jersey Jack, with their beautiful platform, made a Ghostbusters machine. Can you just imagine that? I mean, you can take any Stern machine and you just dream about it in the Jersey Jack platform. This is the thing about Stern that frustrates me. Why can't they take everything they're good at and just elevate the platform itself so that their games just feel more premium? that their games just have more quality, that the bill of materials, like why can't they just make their product just feel more expensive? For lack of a better word, they need to make their product feel more expensive because it is so damn expensive. Where Jersey Jack, I don't think you're ever gonna see a price increase. I don't. I don't think you're ever gonna see a price increase. They increased the price. It wasn't wise at the time, but they took the price way up on games people didn't want. Games like Toy Story 4, games like The Godfather, games like Avatar. Okay, so we've suffered through these $15,000 Jersey Jacks, and then you get Harry Potter, and it feels totally worth it. I think a $15,000 Sonic the Hedgehog CE is going to feel totally worth it. I also think a Ghostbusters is going to feel totally worth it if they nail it Now I don think Jersey Jack should make CEs unlimited forever on every game But here the thing when I was talking to them, I think they're really considering that. And now it might make sense because if you have Harry Potter unlimited and you know you've got Ghostbusters coming maybe after Sonic, you might as well just keep Sonic CEs the same way as Harry Potter and just keep them unlimited and just make that your company's new approach. Because if you go limited on Sonic and then unlimited on Ghostbusters, it becomes very inconsistent. And I think this might be what Jersey Jack does moving forward. I also think Jersey Jack is going to stop with the arcade editions. Nobody bought them. They never want them. You know, Jersey Jack is a high-end premium product and nobody wants the base level. There is no such thing as a base level Jersey Jack. Even though they put everything into the Harry Potter arcade edition, it's not selling. People just will pay a couple thousand more for everything that's in the wizard edition of the game. And I think the arcade edition is once again the worst selling model. The Guns N' Roses SE was the worst selling model. Every time they've tried to do like a standard edition game, nobody wants it. It just feels like an oxymoron, like nothing about Jersey Jack should feel standard or basic. And so I think they're going to get rid of that. I think you're going to see like an Ellie and a CE and that's it. It's a little weird though, when you think about it, because you've got something called a limited edition machine, which is also not limited. And then you've got the collector's edition machine, which is supposed to be the smaller volume run. And that is also unlimited. So Jersey Jack should just call it like Jersey Jack gold and platinum. You know what I'm saying? Like, don't even connote that it's going to be limited or there's like a finite amount you're going to make because that's not accurate. Everybody look, it's a really exciting time in pinball. I have not gone soft. I'm always going to call it like it is. Like you heard me on the show yesterday. I said, Alice is not a great game. I don't think Predator is ever going to sell very well. And I also don't think Predator is ever going to go up in value. I think Beetlejuice is going to sell out in nine minutes. I think Stern is in big trouble, like much bigger than people realize. And I do think that the pinball hobby is going to consolidate and become a very boutique driven industry over the next two to three years. My big fear happening in the world lately, just looking at the macroeconomic reality of the world, I also think a lot of people in their prime years and in their prime earning are gonna find themselves out of work in the next five to 10 years. And I think that's gonna be something that's gonna really impact the ability to sell these machines. I'm a little nervous again. I think the world's going into a weird place and I see it all over the world these days. Unless you've got like a true trade skill that is always in demand. I think there's just a lot of people are gonna struggle like getting into their 50s and 60s and they're not gonna have that like consistent, tenured like income that our parents' generation had. And I think it's gonna get a little brutal out there. And once people feel the financial pinch, they're not gonna be buying these kinds of things at this much money. And everyone's just gonna pull back a little bit and tighten their belts. and I do think that's going to happen. But again, in a world in which you only need to sell like 500 to 1,000, that's why I think boutiques are going to be fine because you're always going to find 1,000 people that have got money to buy pinball. But Stern's not always going to be able to find 3,000 to 6,000 people on the dealer and distro level to absorb every single game they make as their games continue to lose so much money. Everybody, happy Saturday. It's nine o'clock. I'll be back on our Saturday Morning Spectacular in a little less than an hour. So don't say I don't love you. And hey, if you're enjoying the content, would love to give more people a shout out for raising the roof. But anyway, I think we're a week away from seeing and hearing when we might get Beetlejuice. I also think we're a week away from Winchester making its way into people's homes. And we're gonna see more about this game. Is it gonna live up to the hype? Are people gonna go through with their deposits? It's fun. This is so much fun to watch this. And congratulations to the Blue Jays. Man, did you see that Grand Slam last night? A pinch hitter Grand Slam. First time ever in the World Series. Baseball is back, baby. Kaneda out.