I wish I was a little bit taller. I wish I was a baller. I wish I had a girl who looked good. I would call her. I wish I had a rabbit and a hat with a bat. A six-point ball. Welcome everybody to Canada's Pinball Podcast. How's everybody doing? We get to see on Pinside now, people are actually putting up for sale Beetlejuice games. We're seeing the prices people are getting. Distros are getting $500 for transfer fees. What exactly does that mean? What does it take? How much effort does it take to move one guy's name over to another guy's name? $500, the price of an Xbox, 500 bucks for just changing a name. Hey, everybody, we're going to see some game changing coming in this whole space pretty soon, baby. We got maybe the never-ending story by Barrels of Fun. Let's talk about that. We've got Harry Potter, the number one game in the world right now on the Pinside 100 with about like 387 reviews. Still like very early on. This always happens, then the Stern Army comes in and basically dive bombs those reviews to push a Stern machine back to number one. I think Evil Dead was number one for a while, but it's all good. It's all good. You know, nobody takes this list very seriously. Just buy what you love, but I will say this. No game has ever gone to number one that really sucks. And no game has gone to number one and stayed there for a while. I mean, if you stay in the top 10 over like a thousand reviews or more, then it's somewhat legitimate. But right now it's still early. If you think about it, like 387 reviews for Potter, most of them are coming from Harry Potter owners. So what are they going to say? What are they going to say? But I don't think anyone would really deny the fact that Harry Potter has done really well. It is most likely the best shooting Jersey Jack game to date. That and Elton John. It's easily their biggest theme ever. It's got so much in it. And the game's doing phenomenally well for Jersey Jack. If you ask me, the number one thing I think they need to figure out now as a strategy moving forward, I don't think Jersey Jack can do this unlimited CE thing ever again. I know it's like great that none of you got burned and none of you had to pay over for Harry Potter CEs. we're going to talk about Beetlejuice now that the prices are up. But here's the thing. You know, it's great that everybody got their Harry Potter in the exact trim they wanted. And I heard over 3,000 people ordered a CE for $15,000. And I know it feels good right now that you got one. And, you know, maybe you're never going to sell it. And that's the idea, right? We want this to be in as many homes as possible. And people are not going to want to sell these games. But we all know that there are going to be people that want to sell their Harry Potter CE down the road. And we all know, good luck getting anywhere close to $15,000 if there's 3,000 of these out in the world. And then all of those wizard editions and arcade editions. Because remember, every single version of Harry Potter is the exact same game. Same layout, same mechs, same code. I think you're going to see a huge depreciation in this game over the years. And it's going to be a lot like GNR, where you're going to see them for sale all over the place. Because I do think people are going to want Sonic the Hedgehog, maybe Matrix. I don't know exactly what's after Sonic. There's the rumor of Ghostbusters. Not sure I believe that one. But anyway, you know, I think Jersey Jack's next game, they need to go back and bake in some scarcity, some FOMO, and some secondhand value on the Sonic the Hedgehog Collector's Edition. That will be my recommendation to Brett when I talk to him. You can't have it like this forever now because if you do it, you're just going to completely lose the secondhand value on your products. And Spooky's got the opposite approach right now. Everyone's banging on their door to make more Beetlejuice games. The demand is insane. We are now seeing games listed for, I think, around like $7,800 if you want to buy someone's Beetlejuice spot. Now, that includes the $2,000 deposit, maybe the topper, the butter cabinet. Net, net, people are getting around $5,000 over for this game. And I'm here to tell you right now, I think that this is a good price because it's going to get even worse. And let me explain why I think it's going to get even worse for people trying to get this game down the road. The demand for this game is not going south ever. And most people who are into pinball, who are casual pinball buyers that want a really nice game based on a theme they love. Most people still have not seen this game. They are not aware this game is even out. This game was sold out before it even hit the public eye to the diehard enthusiasts who are on Pinside, who are following Pinside content creators, not Pinside pinball content creators. They knew this game was coming out. Now look, for everybody else out there, they have no idea this game exists. So think about it like this. Imagine when those 10 show games go down to Florida for pinball at the beach and, you know, a bunch of rich guys with their Florida mansions, they roll in there and they see this game and this game is amazing and they want one. What are you going to tell those guys who live in a three, $4 million mansion that the game's not available? What price do you think they would pay? I mean, these are gentlemen who buy their Y's, $50,000 Rolexes. They've got $100,000 cars in the garage and they really want this Beetlejuice game in their house. You can see what I mean. The more people play this game, also TPF, the more the public sees this game at shows, the demand is going to go up, not down, right? That's the whole principle of supply and demand The supply is always going to be finite and it going to be very low and the demand for this game is just going to keep going up and up and up And I predicted I think it going to go near to is what it going to require to get one of these games down the road. Now, look, once they start making games and it's a real tangible item and there are hundreds of them out in the world, yes, that does seem by conventional wisdom that there will be a period where demand will start to go down a little bit because the supply is out in the world. Right now, there's like zero supply. Nobody has the game. So you could argue that right now is when FOMO is the highest and people that cash out now are going to cash out at the highest. I don't agree with this game. And I also know that the next title they have coming out is also as big, if not a bigger banger than this. So there's almost like a frenzy to get on the list for the next game, but it's way too early. I know Carrie's been talking about getting on the list for the next game. Leave these guys alone. They need a year to make this game. They've never had a game this popular. They've never had to distribute these games across a variety of dealers, and everyone's got a different approach on how they do their lists. I think this is going to be a wake-up call for everybody who's got spooky products. How are you going to handle your list? How are you going to put people on that list? Do you want to make it fair? Are you going to allow people to transfer spots? Some companies don't. Brian Savage just said on the record, they don't allow anybody to transfer spots of Winchester's Mystery House. What does that mean? How can you stop somebody in a free market society from transferring their ownership to somebody else? You can't really do it. You can make it difficult. You could make it so that person has to actually receive the game, but they're still going to scalp it. You're just adding an unnecessary step. I get it's a headache. Nobody wants to have a 350-pound pinball machine arrive at their house, and then you have to schedule pickup from your house to the new buyer. So that's kind of annoying. That's why people like Joe Newhart have the $500 transfer fee. if you want to do it and you want to sell your spot to somebody else, that's 500 bucks. That's kind of trying to prevent scalping. But is it really? If you're seeing people get $5,000 over, what does $500 do? Of course you're going to pay that because then you're still making 4,500 bucks. And I bet it's kind of hard for these dealers because this is where the pressure is for dealers. Because think about if you're a dealer, you're in business and you gave this guy a spot and you made maybe a thousand dollar margin on the game. And all of a sudden a dude who comes in who did no work is going to just flip his spot to somebody else and make $5,000 overnight. And he's just going to pocket that money. You know, these people are not paying taxes on it. He's just going to pocket that money. And he made five times what you make simply because you got him a spot. And I'm here to tell you right now, would people just lose their minds if a distro just sold all of their allotment at the market value of the game. What do you think would happen? Would everybody never buy from that person again? Why are we like this? You know, right now, here's the thing. There's not a single dealer or distro on their website that has a Beetlejuice spot for sale. Why don't dealers do this? Are they allowed to auction it? Think about it. Like, would that not be fair? If everything's spoken for and no one can get a single spot, what if a dealer said, hey, we're going to list our five Beetlejuices for auction and you get to bid and whoever bids the highest gets the machine. How is that not fair? Let the market set the value. Meanwhile, you can have like Project Pinball. I know they're a charity for a good cause. They're raffling these things off for like three times what they're worth. Nobody's waving the red flag there. Why do they get to make $30,000 per machine and then a dealer can't just auction it off and let the person who wants it the most have it? Would that be so problematic? We really do look at all of these higher prices. It's weird. I'd rather games demand more. You know what that means? It means the game's great. It means there's not many of them. Would you rather live in a pinball world? If I gave you the option, would you rather live in a pinball world where every single Stern only is losing three to five thousand dollars? Or would you rather live in a pinball world where every single spooky is going up five thousand dollars in value? Now, we heard from Luke yesterday on the live. They are absolutely raising prices on the next game. They're not dummies. They see what's happening. It's probably going to be somewhere around eleven five. I think they're going to be right where barrels is. So 11.5 plus the butter plus the topper, everybody, all of a sudden, baby, all in a spooky game is $15,000. But if you were to look at all the pinball companies out there in the world right now, who actually feels like they are in a position where that price kind of makes sense? If every single Beetlejuice is selling right now on the secondhand market for $15,000 to $17,000, they're absolutely not going to be ripping us off if they raise their prices by $1,500. But there's going to be a point where they're going to have to stop. There's going to be a point. And that's the hard point to reach. Stern didn't do it. Stern's LE at 10.5 was where they should have stopped. And they didn't. They kept raising it and raising it to the point now where no stern looks like a $13,000 machine. We saw the walking dead yesterday at IAPA. We got the first footage of the code over the shoulder, crappy cell phone footage. I'm just here to tell you this right now. This is all on them. I love George Gomez and I enjoy talking to him, but this is inexcusable. This is Mickey Mouse marketing at its finest. how do you reveal a game before you have permission to show the game in its final light that is mickey mouse marketing none of my clients would ever do this this whole like excuse we're waiting on licensor approval fine then get all of the licensor approval before you release the game this is inexcusable the world premiere of a code of your game should be from you in your factory in your studio with your content creators We have to see the world premiere of this game half not ready yet for primetime, yet it's out on a show floor. It's Mickey Mouse marketing. You need to know what your timeline is. You need to know what your deadlines are. And you should hit them. There's no excuse. This whole thing is just so lame. And so, yeah, the game looks better in real life. Duh. Did anyone think it wouldn't look better in real life than photos? Is there a single pinball machine in the history of pinball that looks better in photos than in real life? But what's funny to me about this Walking Dead game is we have this new Spike 3 system and they've been touting the big difference that you're going to notice is the bigger screen. and yet once again the damn clips are tiny they basically squish them to look like the same ratio as a dmd this is so comical to me stern what's wrong with you guys seriously does nobody over there have common freaking sense if we're gonna go bigger on the screen we need a game that shows that off star wars put all the clips into a smaller box so it didn't utilize the big screen And now we've got this Walking Dead where it's just this tiny sort of middle section of the screen is where the animations are. It looks stupid. It looks bad. It looks like Letterboxd. Like, what is this, gang? It seems like cheap. Why did they do it this way? Why didn't they utilize the full screen? If Jersey Jack did this, if Jersey Jack on its big screen created animations that only used like a quarter of the screen like that, we'd all be like banging down the door. It's just so weird to me. It's so weird to me that Stern continues to just make these boneheaded mistakes. And then did you see the art package on the game? Kerry Hardy pointed it out. It's on my Facebook page. They use the same exact image three times in a row on the apron twice and then on the play field. And you're telling me that there's an art director looking over this stuff and saying, hey, we can't recycle this stuff. You're just going to keep dropping the same image three times on the game. And I love it too, because on the left side of the apron, they're just anticipating the apron card will block it. But we see it, man. We see it, Jeremy. I'm expecting a text message at 1245 this morning telling me how I've destroyed your life again, brother. You can't come out Canada blaming me, bro. Guys, wake up. Open your eyes. Those slingshot heads look really corny and lame, but the game looks better. But the question now is this, does it look like a $13,000 game? Does it look like it has enough? And I think the part that Stern doesn't get, because George is like, everything's fine, everything's fine. Everything is not fine. The problem with Stern is this, it's not about volume, it's about quality. It's not about volume. It's about value. It's not about volume and manufacturing efficiencies and speed. It's about what looks like it's worth it and has the passion and has the details. And because here's the problem that George doesn't get. Every single Stern premium is the same price as Beetlejuice. And when you put every single Stern premium next to what you get with Beetlejuice, I don't care if George is like, I can't live on those margins. Well, I can. You can. As a customer, do you care what the margins are between these two companies? No. What you see as a customer, and this is what George doesn't get. What you see as a customer is this item is $10,000 and this item is $10,000. I can't unsee that. I can't not compare and cross shop those two games. See, Stern doesn't care because they're like, well, we're going to make thousands. And like they're only make it doesn't matter. But what's happening more and more now is everybody's putting what you've got for 10,000 versus what they have for 10,000. And heck, you could put a $13,000 Walking Dead LE next to a $10,000 Beetlejuice. It's 30% more money, the Stern machine. The Stern machine is 30% more expensive and it looks 60% cheaper as a game. And so George and Stern, you know, I don't think you get it yet. I really don't think you get it. And I do not believe that Stern sales are great right now. I don't believe it. I don't see it. I don't see the threads blowing up the way they used to. I don't see the unboxings happening the way they used to. Unless there's all these people in the world that are new to pinball. Maybe, I don't know, maybe, maybe they've been clobbering people with Facebook ads and they have like half a million, I think, or more Facebook fans. Maybe they've just been clobbering people and all these newbies have been buying games left and right. I just don't see it. But I will say this. I would never count Stern out. You can't count them out. They've got tremendous talent. They've got the resources to do it. And I think everybody here just wants them to put it together better. That's it. That's it, Stern. We just want you to put the pinball puzzle together better. Theme, integration, mechanical magic, layout. You know, I don't even know like where the foiled cabinets go. Are there foiled cabinets on this Walking Dead? I don't think so. Maybe. It's just not enough. It's just not enough. And they've got to revisit what an LE means. They should all be 500. They should all have a topper. And they should all have exclusive modes. And heck, I would go one step further if I'm Stern right now. I think LDs should have an exclusive mech. I just do. I know it's harder, a little bit harder. So what? And also, did you see what they're doing now? And this is just testament that the LDs are not selling. They're running the premiums first. They're going to run the premiums first. And then you got these Stern apologists who are like, well, that doesn't mean the LDs didn't sell. I'm happy because this means they're just going to iron out the kinks. Iron out the kinks? Why do we keep giving this company so many excuses? Why should there be any kinks? They've got so many people, so much time to quality test. Why should there be kinks? Why should Star Wars ship where the Death Star shot doesn work What is this Why are we the guinea pigs Like they didn catch that at the factory That all of those great pinball players Mr Sharp Mr Danger Mr Gomez all them all these guys, Mr. Elwin, you're not going to have Keith Elwin bang on the game for a weekend and come back and say, hey, the Death Star shot doesn't work. So I just don't get it. You know, I just don't get it. I think this is a sign that the LEs did not sell very well. And this is bad, people. They can't even sell 500 LEs of a game that, you know, is a Lyman Sheets game. From what I saw at the IAAPA stream, it didn't really look like, wow, take my money now, $13,000. It definitely didn't excite me the way Beetlejuice did. And so here we are. Speaking of exciting, do you think Barrels of Fun's next game is the never-ending story? I don't know, man. I think it might be. I think it might be. The reason why I think it might be is I didn't hear anything from them. Normally, if I guess a theme and it's wrong, I will hear that it's not that. So I do think that the never-ending story seems like something David would make. I don't feel like David and I have the same upbringing. I think I was raised on Hulk Hogan and Jean-Claude Van Damme and Arnold and Back to the Future. Like the cool stuff. You know, David keeps making stuff that's like, you know, kind of like the kids that were inside the locker throughout high school. You know what I'm saying? Like Labyrinth, Dune, Timothy, Shama, like Dune and Never Ending Story. I don't know. You know, these are like the kinds of themes that would get you a wedgie. You know what I'm saying? Like a wedgie. Like I kind of want to give David a wedgie and be like, what are we doing here, bro? Man up, man up. And look, I know Winchester's Mystery House has sold all 525, but I've been saying it. I think it's a little bit of a blessing and a curse because you guys were all just starving for something different and a haunted house theme. But even that, it's like, I just don't know, man. I don't know. And Never Ending Story, how many of those could they sell if that is the theme? And I've been questioning whether or not Winchester was on the line. And Todd Tuckey's like, watch my video. It's on the line. So I watched the video. Look, and I don't think anyone is not going to get their Winchester. It's just a question of when. It's just a question of when. And so I watched Todd's video and Todd's like, it's on the line. Okay, so I watched the video and there it is. Like four Winchester playfields on a rotisserie with nothing screwed into them. Have we not learned that that is not the game is on the line? That is a staged representation of what a pinball line is. That's not on the line. It's not like today there's a bunch of stuff screwed into those games. If those games are on the line and they make 15 games a week, then by the end of this week, Todd, those games should be complete. They're not on the line. They just put playfields in a line on rotisseries and are telling us the game's on the line. I don't understand why even do it. Like, why even do it? Here's the question I have. When is Winchester going on the line? Do you know? Do you know when you're going to get your game? The thing is this. Everybody knows that they are most likely not going to be done building these games until like October, November. And so the wait's going to be long. Same thing with Beetlejuice. I mean, I'm at the end of the line. I'm game number 999. I'm going to get my Beetlejuice sometime like in December of next year. So part of me is like, Cool. Like, by the time I get my game, I don't think demand is going to be south at all. I'm going to be putting my order in for Goonies, most likely. Yeah, Goonies. If you think Beetlejuice was crazy, get ready for Goonies, man. It's going to be psycho nuts. Psycho nuts. Is that even a term? It's going to be psycho nuts trying to get on a list. And if you thought people were complaining about getting a Beetlejuice, wait till you see what happens to Goonies. But anyway, gang, look. It's an exciting time in pinball. Stern Pinball is definitely in trouble. They need a hit. They know this. I don't believe any of their spin. And they've passed on too many losses to their customers. That is a problem. Beetlejuice is a huge hit. I think the prices are going to go all the way up to $20,000. I think there's a lot of good pinball at good prices that people are going to be able to get. Jaws 50th, man. If I'm buying a Stern, that's the only one I would really consider right now is a Jaws 50th. It's got the assets. It's got the layout. It is funny, though, that Stern made a Jaws game that doesn't eat the ball and Spooky Pinball makes a Beetlejuice game where the Beetlejuice worm eats the ball. That's comical to me. It's comical to me. Again, this company in Benton that built this game in a barn has more creativity in it than this huge company with four or five hundred employees. Stern, you got to step up now. It's just that simple. And hey, this is what makes this hobby fun. There's going to be highs and lows. And right now, Stern is at a real low. And they need a game that takes them high again. Will it be Pokemon? Will it be Transformers? Will it be Fallout? I don't know. I haven't seen any of these games. I look forward to seeing them. I know this. The Spooky Crew, they've got their next year already sold out. They get to wake up every day and build one of the most highly anticipated games of the year. That's amazing. The crew over at Barrels, same thing. They get to spend the next eight months building a game that's sold out in two days. That's a great thing. Whether or not the game's on the line right now, that's up for debate. I don't think it is. I think it's a little lame to stage that line. I do. David, you know I love you, man, but come on, man. We've seen this too many times. I was looking in that video trying to see if Marty's shoes were in the corner, bro. This is not the game being on the line. Yo, we're quality testing. What does that mean? Like, is someone coming in there every day dusting the play field for like a month? Oh, man, like I'm going to keep touching it. Will it dimple? Will it dimple? Come on. It's not on the line. And like that wall of labyrinths unsold, not a good look, bro. Not a good look. Move those things somewhere else. Like if I was doing a factory tour, don't let them shoot that wall filled with unsold labyrinth machines, okay? Public relations, baby. Marketing. Everything matters. Kaneda loves you. Kaneda out. I wish I had a rabbit in a hat with a bat and six more paws. I wish I was a little bit taller. I wish I was a baller. I wish I had a girl with a good, I would call her. I wish I had a rabbit in a hat with a bat and six more paws.