Episode 1219: "Why a $27,000 Resident Evil Pinball Makes Total Sense"

Kaneda's Pinball Podcast (Patreon feed)·podcast_episode·21m 27s·analyzed·May 13, 2026

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.034

TL;DR

World Pinball's $27K Resident Evil is "honest" but unsustainable; 2025 pinball market oversaturated and overpriced.

Summary

Kaneda criticizes World Pinball's $25,000–$27,000 Resident Evil pricing as simultaneously the "most honest" and "craziest" pinball price ever, arguing the steep cost reflects the brutal economics of limited-run manufacturing. He contextualizes this within a crowded 2025 release calendar (Transformers, Sonic, Fallout, Back to the Future) and discusses secondary market pricing pressure on Beetlejuice and Pokémon LEs, market saturation, and his concerns about unproven manufacturers launching flagship products with long delivery windows.

Key Claims

World Pinball is a Sweden-based company that has never made a game before and is pricing Resident Evil at $25,000 (LE) and $27,000 (CE) with only ~400 units planned.
high confidence · Kaneda, opening segment; confirmed via Jason Knapp article reference
These prices are necessary for World Pinball to avoid bankruptcy given their limited production run and manufacturing overhead.
medium confidence · Kaneda's thesis on pinball economics; opinion based on industry knowledge
New-to-market pinball companies with early reveals and long delivery timelines (10+ months) historically fail to deliver on time and many customers lose preorder money.
medium confidence · Kaneda, rhetorical reference to 'Haggis' and other failed startups; industry pattern observation
There will be a Back to the Future SLE with 88 units for America and 88 for Europe.
medium confidence · Kaneda, stated as confirmation but not sourced to primary source
Beetlejuice secondary market prices have declined from peak FOMO (~$22K+) to ~$14.6K (near break-even MSRP), but machines at original MSRP have not lost value.
medium confidence · Kaneda, citing Pinside listings and secondary market observation
Pokémon LE and Winchester LE pricing shows Resident Evil at 2.5x Winchester's cost ($11,600) despite similar feature count is unjustifiable.
high confidence · Kaneda, direct price comparison analysis
Spooky's Q4 reveal strategy (end-of-year announcement, full-year production cycle) is the only manufacturer timing strategy that prevents market saturation.
medium confidence · Kaneda, comparative industry analysis of manufacturer release schedules
May–July is the worst time for pinball sales due to seasonal competition from vacation spending and outdoor activities.
low confidence · Kaneda, opinion on consumer behavior patterns

Notable Quotes

“I think that World Pinball over there in Sweden pricing a Resident Evil machine where they're only going to make, I think, 400 total units at $25,000 for the LE and $27,000 for the CE is the most honestly priced game in the history of pinball.”
Kaneda @ ~2:30 — Core thesis: World Pinball's extreme pricing is a transparent acknowledgment of unsustainable manufacturing economics rather than greed.
“Unless you have outside money and annuity funding your little pinball venture, you will go out of business.”
Kaneda @ ~3:15 — Reveals structural weakness in independent pinball manufacturing; highlights need for parallel revenue streams (examples: Jersey Jack's billionaire backer, Churchill Cabinets funding CGC).
“It's dead on arrival. We know this. I mean, this is going to become the punching bag of the pinball content space starting today.”
Kaneda @ ~6:45 — Prediction: Resident Evil will face immediate community backlash and become a cautionary tale, not a commercial success.
“The only game that could really command $25,000 for one is Back to the Future SLE, which I'm here to tell you and confirm for you. There is going to be an SLE of Back to the Future.”
Kaneda @ ~7:00 — Insider revelation of unreleased Back to the Future SLE product; first public confirmation of this model.
“Keith Elwin has said that Transformers has the most amazing mech he's ever seen in a Stern machine.”
Kaneda @ ~9:00 — Signals Transformers as the next major competitive threat to existing Stern machines (Pokémon, Harry Potter).
“I've seen it all. It's one of these games where like, here we go. I've got a game and there's nothing more to do in the game. The Insider Connected is not set up.”
Kaneda @ ~10:15 — Criticism of Pokémon's incomplete code/feature set dampening long-term home owner appeal; early fatigue signal.
“Transformers is going to kill the Pokemon hype. Fallout is going to kill the Transformer hype and then Back to the Future is going to kill all the hype and then Goonies might kill the Back to the Future hype.”

Entities

World Pinballcompany Kanedaperson Resident EvilgameStern PinballcompanySpooky PinballcompanyJersey Jack PinballcompanyChicago Gaming Company (CGC)company

Signals

?
product_launch: World Pinball's Resident Evil at $25K–$27K represents a 2.5x price premium over comparable limited-run machines (Winchester $11.6K) with unclear feature justification. Kaneda frames this as economically necessary but commercially suicidal.
high · "World Pinball over there in Sweden pricing a Resident Evil machine... at $25,000 for the LE and $27,000 for the CE is the most honestly priced game in the history of pinball" due to manufacturing constraints forcing unsustainable MSRPs.
?
business_signal: New-to-market pinball company launching flagship product with 10+ month delivery window after early reveal; pattern historically associated with missed deadlines, customer pre-order losses, and company failures.
medium · "May and they are saying this game is not going to be on the line until early next year. So think about that for a minute. May, and probably February. That's 10 months from now... Have we ever seen a new to market pinball company ever deliver on time?"
$
market_signal: 2025 Q2–Q3 sees unprecedented product launch density: Transformers (May), Sonic (June), Circus Voltaire (3 mo), Resident Evil (Feb 2026), Fallout, Back to the Future, Goonies. Kaneda predicts market oversaturation and revenue cannibalization.
high · "We are now experiencing what we knew was going to happen. We are living in a new time in which there are more pinball manufacturers than ever before in the history of pinball all trying to execute at once."
$
market_signal: Kaneda argues May–July is worst release season due to vacation spending and outdoor competition; positions pinball as 'winter sport'; contrasts Spooky's successful Q4 strategy (only competitor with clear timing advantage).
low · "Pinball is a winter sport. When you're out there on a sunny day, the last thing you should be doing is inside staring down at a pinball playfield."

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.064

0:00

That's a horrible idea. Yeah, right. God damn, thought we had a chance. Slip right through my fingers when I had it in my hands. Yeah, God damn, try to understand. That's the way it was, but it isn't who I am. God damn. Sit up, sit up, sit up, sit up, sit up, sit up, sit up. Welcome everybody to Canada's Pinball Podcast. It is May 13th. It is the second birthday of my little Padawan, Cassian Wynn, Caloris. Happy birthday, my little man. You're my champion. On this episode of Canada's Pinball Podcast, we're going to talk about what might be the craziest thing I've ever seen. A pinball company that has never made a game wants to sell you a Resident Evil pinball machine for either $25,000 for the Ellie or $27,000 for the collector's edition of the game. What do you think about them apples in a world in which pinball machines are already way overpriced? This company coming from out of nowhere with Resident Evil and it's coming, man. They've got like the license. They are making the game. I want to talk about this and I'm going to say something right now that I don't think any of you expect me to say. Not only do I think this is the craziest price for a pinball machine ever, but I also think it's the most honest pinball price we've ever seen. Let me repeat that. I think that World Pinball over there in Sweden pricing a Resident Evil machine where they're only going to make, I think, 400 total units at $25,000 for the LE and $27,000 for the CE is the most honestly priced game in the history of pinball. You know why I'm saying that? Because unless they price this game at that much money, they will go out of business. Now the irony is, because they've priced this game at that much money, they will go out of business. And all they're proving to each and every one of us is this is why you can't just become a pinball manufacturer and make a significantly limited number of games and stay in business. It just does not work. This hobby is brutal. Unless you have outside money and annuity funding your little pinball venture, you will go out of business. Chris Turner isn't surviving because of pinball sales. Jersey Jack needed a billionaire to keep that company going. There is other money floating CGC. The reason why CGC can go all these months and not make games and not even talk to us is because Churchill Cabinets is making all of the money. The pinball is the side project. So I don't know the financial situation of the gentleman over there at World Pinball. I know they're like a pinball parts seller. It would be like if Pinball Life in America all of a sudden said, hey, we sell all these pinball parts. Let's make a pinball game and charge $25,000 or $27,000 for the game. Are you buying it from Pinball Life, a company that has never screwed together an entire pinball machine? And so let's deconstruct this real quick before we talk about some other stuff in the world of pinball because it's all about to get crazy. It's funny to me right now, just on a macro level, all of these companies coming out with all of these products at the same time. We've got this Resident Evil game. They're about to reveal the game and try to get pre-order dollars. We're going to talk about that. Then we've got Pedretti Gaming has now confirmed that Tales of the Arabian Nights is coming back from them. The game is on the line. It's going to be shown this weekend. Okay, so that's crazy. You knew about that if you listened to Kaneda. Then we got Circus Voltaire coming from American Pinball in three months We got the Transformer teaser coming out in three days The game coming out next week from Stern Pinball with Elliot Eisman Now we got Sonic the Hedgehog coming out in June on Sonic birthday like June 20th or 21st All of this is happening right now A lot of you are still yet to pay for your Potters for your Beetlejuices for your Winchesters for your Dunes It just keeps going on and on and on. And you can see why. As a marketer, I'm looking at this hobby, which is not very big. And it's very easy to come to the conclusion that this hobby is very oversaturated and all these companies trying to release products in May, June, July is a horrible time to do it. This is the time of year when a lot of people are paying for vacations. You know how I feel? Pinball is a winter sport. When you're out there on a sunny day, the last thing you should be doing is inside staring down at a pinball play field. And so, yeah, do you want to drop this much coin in the spring summer on a winter sport like pinball? And so, yeah, I just have a feeling that we are now experiencing what we knew was going to happen. We are living in a new time in which there are more pinball manufacturers than ever before in the history of pinball all trying to execute at once. And the only company that has really carved out the right time of year to do a reveal is Spooky. See, every year they do it at the end of the year. Nobody else has anything ready to go when they go. And when they go, it's instant sellout now. And then they have all year to make the game. And I also like the way they sort of bookend the year. It's like end of the year, new game. We make it all year. Then when the year is up, we've made all the games and then we're on to the next game. It's a really winning formula and nobody else has figured that out. It's like they've turned Q4 into new spooky game moment. Everyone else, it's like all bets are off. All bets are off. Who knows when stuff is happening with everybody else? And unfortunately for everybody else, they've decided to make everything happen at once. And I think it's going to spell disaster for some of these companies. Now, let's talk about this Resident Evil. Then I want to talk about our Beetlejuice prices tanking. I keep seeing this word tanking. Jerry Stellenberg says he's going to have the most impressive mechanism in pinball history in his next game. We're going to talk about that. So let's go to Resident Evil first because it is insane to think that a brand new company that has never made a game is going to ask people to preorder a game that is going to be this expensive. Is it based on Resident Evil 4? Is it based on the whole franchise? I don't care. The Resident Evil franchise is not big enough to command this kind of price in the pinball world. Let me ask you a question. Do you think a brand new company that has never made a pinball machine before based on Resident Evil is going to make a better game than The Walking Dead? Do you think they're going to be able to code this game to be better than Lyman Sheets' The Walking Dead? You think it's going to have more impressive mechs in it than Stern Pinball's The Walking Dead. And so The Walking Dead can't even sell for 10 grand right now in its new trim and form. And so how is this company going to bring a game out that's got twice as much, more than twice as much, because it costs two and a half times as much as a Walking Dead. And how are you actually going to stare at people in the face with a straight face and ask them to spend $27,000 to $25,000? What is their manufacturing know-how? And here's the scary part. It is May and they're about to release this game or reveal this game or announce they're taking orders on this game. In fact, they said they've already had several orders for the collector's edition of the game. Who are the wives of these men who are making this game or trying to keep this company afloat? Several orders? Who? The game's not even available. How do you have several orders already? None of it adds up on day one. But here's the scary part. It is May and they are saying this game is not going to be on the line until early next year. So think about that for a minute. May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December, January, and probably February. That's 10 months from now. So you have to ask yourself, why would a company that is 10 months or more away from shipping their first ever game, why would they show it now unless they need it money? Have we ever seen a new to market pinball company reveal something early with the promise of a date in which they will manufacture the game Have we ever seen a that new pinball company ever deliver on time Hello Haggis Hello everybody else that ever done this Have we ever seen them be successful in getting those games to market Have we seen more of those companies fail and go out of business and more people have lost their preorder dollars hundreds of thousands and if not millions of dollars has evaporated because people went in early. Now, the good news is this. I don't think there's anybody I know in pinball that is itching to put a deposit down on a game that costs as much as my car. I don't think there's any pinball experience on planet Earth that could possibly be worth $25,000, let alone $27,000. I also don't think it makes any marketing sense at all to make anyone who's spending $25,000 on a pinball machine feel like they're getting the second best version of the game. Think about how stupid that is from a marketing standpoint. It's almost like they don't even want you to buy that version of the game. And they also just didn't have the guts to say we're only making $400 and they're each going to be $25,000. How much was Winchester? With 525 units, Winchester was like $11,600. So you're telling me this game is twice the price as Winchester. It's going to have twice as much in it. It's going to have twice as much design and mechanisms and coding in it. It doesn't make any sense. It's dead on arrival. We know this. I mean, this is going to become the punching bag of the pinball content space starting today. I don't even think people saw the story yesterday. I think it's kind of just catching on. I mean, I didn't see it. It was in Jason Knapp's article. And I guess these guys are starting to turn on the teaser marketing campaign for this game. But I can tell you right now, at this much money, based on this theme, it's dead on arrival. The only game that could really command $25,000 for one is Back to the Future SLE, which I'm here to tell you and confirm for you. There is going to be an SLE of Back to the Future. I'm not sure how much it is, but I hear there's going to be 88 of them for America and 88 for Europe. That is the current plan for Back to the Future SLE. And if you ask me if there is any theme where if you only made 88 special editions in each market, I think Back to the Future may be able to get $25,000 from people, maybe. And that's Back to the Future. It sure as heck is not going to be Resident Evil, not happening anytime soon. So we'll see what happens when they reveal this game. But man, I wasn't even expecting this because all attention is going to be on Transformers this coming week. That is going to be the big news. I can't wait to see the game. Keith Elwin has said that Transformers has the most amazing mech he's ever seen in a Stern machine. Everybody's really excited. They really are. I feel like Pokemon is yesterday's news. Stern Pinball did not do enough in the first four months of Pokemon being out to get people really excited and that is shame on them. I'm sorry. Your movie's been in the movie theater now for four months. The special effects are not even in the movie and now everyone's moving on. And if you're going to serve up something way more mechanically impressive than Pokemon, my worry is Pokemon is going to be a quickly forgotten game by homeowners Homeowners and will become a game that operators love. But I think homeowners are going to feel the burn of Pokemon. And I am one of them. And I am honestly going to report what is going to happen to this game. And I'm telling you right now, I am not turning on the game anymore because I've seen it all. It's one of these games where like, here we go. I've got a game and there's nothing more to do in the game. The Insider Connected is not set up. And in just like seven days from now, I'm going to be able to buy Transformers that's going to have way more in it. I think that's a really disappointing way to feel as a customer. And I think Stern Pinball needs to get their act in order. This is not how you want your customers to feel, especially when one of them has a microphone and thousands of people that listen to every single show. OK, let's talk about is Beetlejuice tanking. I keep saying this is Beetlejuice tanking in price And if you go on Pinside right now there are a lot of Beetlejuice machines for sale and they are not commanding anywhere near what they used to command At the height of Beetlejuice FOMO you were getting around to for your Beetlejuice spot That was the height Most people that were scalping right away were getting around to over Now it a whole new story Dudes have unboxed games with the topper, with the butter cabinet, and they're asking like $14.6. That is pretty much a break-even price on the game. But I want to ask the question, is a game that's now been revealed to the world for seven months is now out and it's real? Of course the FOMO is gone. It's seven months. You can't hold on to the FOMO hype train for more than a couple of months. Like it lasts barely a month now with all of these products. The thing is this. The game is not tanking when you look at it at a certain angle. It's tanking from the high that it used to command. But nobody is losing money on Beetlejuice. If you bought a Beetlejuice at MSRP, you're not losing any money. I also don't think Beetlejuice machines will ever lose money. I think they're going to get closer to MSRP and then I think they're going to go back up again. I absolutely do. When you look at the stuff happening with the code in this game and all the attention Spooky is putting towards this game and you look at how stunning this game is, trust me when I say this. This game, if you got it for what it was like, I don't know, what was it like 999 plus the butter if you got butter plus the topper, this game is going to do just fine. Yes, it's no longer a game you can buy to scalp and that is all that's happening. The scalpers that got in and out early, you made a good buck. Those who held on, you're screwed and that's kind of how it should be. The same thing is happening with Pokemon LE. I mean, some people scout Pokemon LE, I was one included, for a lot of money. A lot of money. And those people that waited are now holding something that they can barely get like two grand over sticker for, if that. And again, I think it's going to get even worse once Transformers drops. But for those of you out there that are like, they're pinball machines, they're not investments, come on everybody. Once you start dropping $10,000 to $15,000 on anything that's got like a resale market, you're going to be paying attention to it. You just are. It's also because why buy it new? That's the thing that everyone's like wondering. Why buy it new? Is there an urgency to buy Sonic right away if they're going to make unlimited CEs? It begs the question. Maybe not. Are we going to start to see a lot of Harry Potter CEs pop up for much less than 15 if Sonic crushes it? Maybe. I don't know. Potter's really special. I think Potter fans are diehard. I don't think they're going to let it go. So I think Sonic is going to be the greatest game of the year. Maybe Steve Ritchie's greatest game of all time. It's definitely going to kill the Potter hype and we're going to move on to the next game. Transformers is going to kill the Pokemon hype. Fallout is going to kill the Transformer hype and then Back to the Future is going to kill all the hype and then Goonies might kill the Back to the Future hype. It's just the way this hobby goes. It's really exciting to watch it all happen. It's not exciting on our wallets. I mean, we are literally now in one of the most expensive inflationary worlds ever. Our salaries are not going up. Nothing's keeping up with the inflation. And then a pinball company from Sweden wants to drop a $27,000 pinball machine out into the world. That's not even like you're the Bentley of pinball. It's like you're the Pagnani of pinball. If you don't know what Pagnani is, go look it up. It's like you're coming out of nowhere and trying to sell a $3 million sports car. How can this company actually make a game where they could look at us with a straight face and say it costs twice as much as Harry Potter's CE? How? I don't even understand what they're going to do. Speaking of putting stuff in games that can justify the price, Jerry Stellenberg is saying he's got one of the most impressive mechanisms ever in a multimorphic game coming out. And I hope he does. And I've been saying this for years. I've been saying this for years. I think Multimorphic has some of the greatest engineering happening in all of Pinball. And I also think it's wasted on a platform that most people don't want. To me, putting the greatest mech ever into a Multimorphic game is like buying the nicest suite on the Titanic. You could, like you could rent out the nicest suite the Titanic. Titanic has to offer. But in the end, no matter how comfortable the bed is, how spacious the bathroom is, how deep that tub soak is, how beautiful the linens are, it's going to sink. It's going to sink because no matter what you put into the platform, I just don't see how the experience is going to be better than what's happening everywhere else. If I'm Jerry, I might have waited to see what's in Sonic and what's in Transformers before I make such a bold claim. Everybody wish Cassian a very happy birthday. Life is good. Every day above ground is a great day. These pinball prices are stupid. The more the prices go up, the more I look at my children and say, hey, we're good with one, man, right? We're all good with one. We just want to have hugs and invest money in ourselves and in the future. Everybody, happy Wednesday. Canada out.