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Godzilla is here!!!
- Thread starter J.C.Rox
- Start date
OP
OP
Godzilla — Stern Pinball
tbh i like it !! i mean im really waiting for ccc but this is cool and i could be tempted
Nobody in their right mind will buy a pro model.
Yes they would and I will. The difference between £7000 & 10,000 is absolutely massive to me. It's all subjective as to whether someone is of 'sound mind' or not but I'd literally have to sell my car to upgrade from a pro and then I really would be out of my mind.
It's easy to throw these comments around as if thousands of pounds are not a factor in an economic decision but they are. I'd prefer the V6 version of my car but I can't afford it so it's the 1.9TDI unfortunately
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Agree but you will lose so much more on the long run.. Has to be a prem or LE..
I know, it's a bit like traveling to work in car. You just get there so much quicker in a helicopter
Premium is the new LE at £10k and it won’t be long before the Pro becomes that the way prices keep going up ……… Can it really keep going ? …… If folks keep buying it will
A lot of folks set their ceiling at £10k but despite that they are still buying the LE, I guess the ceiling has been raised ……… It’s an addiction
A lot of folks set their ceiling at £10k but despite that they are still buying the LE, I guess the ceiling has been raised
……… It’s an addiction
WOW!
I think it's easy to forget that Premium and LE machines are designed for collectors. There is NOTHING wrong with buying a pro machine and enjoying the experience of owning a pinball in your own home.
The way prices are going at the moment there is a danger of pricing out those wishing to get into the hobby, especially considering an LE is approaching £12,000. You can get a new family car for that (Dacia Duster 1.6 SCe 115hp Essential).
I think it's dangerous to suggest that if you can't justify or afford a LE machine you are somehow making bad choices; it's hardly encouraging.
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Simples. Don’t play Stern’s game. Don’t buy the pro!
They are frankly taking the **** with this pro and charging more!
They are frankly taking the **** with this pro and charging more!
This is how mad we are, I’m running around in vehicles that are worth much less than one of my pins and I’m holding off buying a new one but someone dangles a carrot and there goes thousands on another pin
I wish I was near somewhere that I could just put coins in and play, seriously it’s madness but I like it
Stern difference between the pro and premium is unreal and £3000 is another nice complete pin.
Im sure you will still have much fun on the pro for about 30% less money.
I wish I was near somewhere that I could just put coins in and play, seriously it’s madness but I like it
Stern difference between the pro and premium is unreal and £3000 is another nice complete pin.
Im sure you will still have much fun on the pro for about 30% less money.
I don't think that's a big problem TBH. In July, I overpaid for a Fish Tales (it was £3k without topper) as a first pinball machine, we're having massive fun with it, and I've just bought a LoTR.
In total, we've spent less on those two pins than a new Godzilla.
So, it's not like you can't get involved in the hobby of pinball unless you buy a NIB Stern
I don't think that's a big problem TBH. In July, I overpaid for a Fish Tales (it was £3k without topper) as a first pinball machine, we're having massive fun with it, and I've just bought a LoTR.
In total, we've spent less on those two pins than a new Godzilla.
So, it's not like you can't get involved in the hobby of pinball unless you buy a NIB Stern
Honestly, whilst I agree that you don't need to buy a NIB machine to get into the hobby, I do think this will be a problem down the line.
There are a finite number of the older machines floating around, and they've been increasing in price for as long as I can remember. Simple supply and demand - as more people get into the hobby the demand increases whilst the supply stays the same, hence the price increases on older games.
Then there's the fact that people are reluctant to let games go because they know they'd have to buy them back for more if they want them again in the future = less supply.
This ties into NIB games because one of the biggest motivators for most of us to sell a machine is wanting something new and shiny - we're all restricted to some degree by either space or money. Neither are infinite. So if the prices of NIB rise so high that most people are priced out or just unwilling to pay, there's less new games being bought which equals less older games being sold, further supressing supply.
And on top of all this, it means less titles available on the secondary market in the future. Using LOTR as an example - that would have been NIB in around 2004 for around £4k or less. It was a popular game, and at that price quite a lot would have been sold NIB, hence there are quite a number of them around and they frequently come up for sale. With machines selling for £10-12k less are bought NIB which means less supply in the future than older games.
When I got into the hobby 17 or 18 years ago a Fish Tales could be had for well under a grand, along with many other 90s titles. Our first machine was a really nice Twilight Zone which I think cost us around £1.4k. For the £3k you spent on Fish Tales someone new coming into the hobby could have bought 4-5 machines. So we've already priced out people who don't have at least a couple of grand to drop on a toy.
Prices only seem to be going in one direction at increasing speed.
Edit: Dug out an old post I made and updated it - these are the NIB machines I've bought and prices paid over the past nine years:
November 2012 - AC/DC Premium - £5995
April 2013 - Metallica MOP LE - £6695
June 2014 - Iron Man Vault - £4600
May 2016 - The Big Lebowski - €7550
September 2016 - Ghostbusters Premium - £7000
April 2018 - Total Nuclear Annihilation - Approx £7k (Bought direct from Spooky in $, Phil helped ship it over, can't be bothered to work it out)
March 2019 - JJP POTC - £9495
October 2019 - Jurassic Park LE - £9900
October 2020 - Stranger Things Premium - £8750
March 2021 - Rick and Morty - £7740
Clear trend there if you ignore Spooky games.
So looking at Godzilla pricing - since Nov 2012 a Premium has increased by 66% and since April 2013 an LE has increased by 79%!
One way or another, price increases like that are going to have an impact on people getting into the hobby. It would be like if suddenly every car produced cost over £50k - sure, in the short term people would buy older cars second hand, but the pricing of the new will eventually increase the pricing of the old.
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Fair point but I have to agree with @JustLikeMe; further down the line there could be some entry level pricing issues.I don't think that's a big problem TBH. In July, I overpaid for a Fish Tales (it was £3k without topper) as a first pinball machine, we're having massive fun with it, and I've just bought a LoTR.
In total, we've spent less on those two pins than a new Godzilla.
So, it's not like you can't get involved in the hobby of pinball unless you buy a NIB Stern
When you put it like that I feel incredibly lucky to have got involved when I did and extremely privileged to own a couple.
Obviously another 79% increase over the nest 8 years puts LE's at £21,500 and probably the hobby as a whole out of most peoples reach in terms of having pins at home.
Let's be honest, it's hard enough to try and sneak a couple of grand past the wife to get a battered old Williams . . . I'm not sure too many can sneak twenty grand
Yes the days of telling the wife they are all around £500 are long gone.
Here’s another thought.
At what price does it become uneconomical for Phil to lease out his machines? Or for someone to buy outright and put on site?
If NIB for normal collectors becomes too costly and people like Phil don’t site games, then where do we get our fix of the latest games?
At what price does it become uneconomical for Phil to lease out his machines? Or for someone to buy outright and put on site?
If NIB for normal collectors becomes too costly and people like Phil don’t site games, then where do we get our fix of the latest games?
D
Deleted member 2463
All aboard for the Godzilla Hype Train!
Love the art package. This'll be my first modern game in the lineup so I'm excited to have a bit of newness - it certainly won't look samey to me. Although I never have really understood why they don't pull more artists in. There are *so* many good artists out there who 1. need to the work and...
www.pinballinfo.com
D
Deleted member 2463
original iPhone price £457
iPhone 13 price £679.
when you look it at like that its ****ing nuts how much prices have gone up.
iPhone 13 price £679.
when you look it at like that its ****ing nuts how much prices have gone up.
...an arcade?
D
Deleted member 2463
If that happens there won’t be any new games…
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
I bought a new Prius in 2010 top spec leather etc for £21k that is now £30k!
Same with my van of the same age, 160k miles and 190k miles. These will be scraped before I buy again.
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I really like the look of this game, I even went to Phil's site but the price is a killer! I want at least a premium but can't justify it. Even if it went out on site ROI will be years!
Completely agree. That’s a really good ppint.
It already feels to me, as a board gamer, that this is a hobby full of hyper-rich people who can regularly drop £10k on what is in essence an impulse purchase. Rather like learning to fly and meeting owners of private jets. It’s quite different to being a board gamer, for example, where you can pick up a new game for £20 (although prices are rising there, too).
If more people want to buy pinball machines, prices may fall comparatively speaking. Certainly in pharmaceutical manufacturing (which I’m pretty familiar with), a lot of the cost is upfront in research and development, not in manufacturing, which means that drugs targeting a small number of patients end up more expensive than blockbuster drugs to treat common conditions, such as, say, heart disease.
Given Stern has seen an increase in orders over the pandemic, it feels like Stern is putting prices up because they have a monopoly. They can’t make enough pinball machines fast enough to meet demand at current prices so, as there’s currently a limit on their production capacity, they’ve put prices up to reduce orders. I’ve done the same thing as a self-employed lone trader.
Long term, if demand continues, they need to build a larger factory. Or, alternatively, another player in the market (e.g. Spooky) needs to produce more machines of similar quality/desirability at a lower price.
I think it’s time to fit note accepters and charge more, I would pay more to play the latest and greatest. It has to be done otherwise they will not be out on locations.
But will others pay say £2 a game or 3 games for a fiver? Would that even get your money back quick enough?
Maybe a coin slot and then an additional coin accepter?
Adjacent to that I'd have a finance facility sponsored by Experian. You choose the number of games you wish to play then apply for credit spread over 48 months . . . then the ball goes SDTM.
Maybe also a 'Pawn draw' where you can deposit family heirlooms, wedding rings or small children in exchange for 2 games of Back To The Future which will cost £60,000 NIB.
To be fair the £60k is for the LE version which is literally mounted on a DeLorean and capable of actual time travel. The pro (£9000) is will have the best flow largely because there are no pops, ramps, slings or flippers to obstruct the ball (balls are an additional cost). It does however have a lovely cardboard cut-out of a skateboard beautifully illuminated by an LED. I'm in
NIB at these prices? I’m smart enough to know when I’m getting my pants pulled down.
I wonder if the community overseas is partly to blame for the hikes due to flipping pins at extortionate prices.
I wonder if the community overseas is partly to blame for the hikes due to flipping pins at extortionate prices.
On the operators side I guess it's hard to cost out, if you have a bunch of players that are average or below average with fairly quick ball times you make more money and incur less repairs perhaps, but there isn't always a steady flow of players. If they bought the machine they have whatever it's worth also, so coin drop wouldn't have to cover the entire cost if they sell it after a certain amount of time
On the players side if you're a decent player you may think £2 a game isn't too bad and you feel you get your moneys worth, if you're not that great like me that £2 might only last a couple of minutes on a game you don't know. I'd probably still play a new release a couple of times to see it but I wouldn't be spending 3-4 hours somewhere dropping £2 a game like I do now at £1 or 50p a game. Then if I'm only playing for 1.5 hours due to price per game, the 2 hour travel time seems less worth it.
I could be completely wrong but I think most places in the UK don't make very much from the machines and are more about people who are passionate about pinball and wanting to share that, with the aim being to cover their costs rather than make massive profit from the machines alone. If that is the case I (and most people that visit these places) are very grateful for those set ups but there would be a price point per game where it would make more sense to buy more machines at home , especially if you have to travel a bit to play on location.
If you buy a NIB and sell it a year later for £1k less, at £1 or 50p a game you might think its better value to play on location than pay that £1k, at £2 a game that £1k loss seems a lot less. Of course that's assuming you have space at home which is a whole other problem!
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Most of my machines have contactless payment on them (which also adds cost) but the idea is as much about promoting pinball as anything. Being solely a pinball operator wouldn't give me a living wage!
I suppose the issue is that in my head I'm operating the games to make them more affordable when (eventually) they come home or go into the club.
I suppose the issue is that in my head I'm operating the games to make them more affordable when (eventually) they come home or go into the club.
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Deleted member 2463
I don’t think most people in pinball are well off. It’s a tiny market.
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Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
