I couldn't agree more with Retropin and Olivia Jason, but it is obvious we're dealing with a firm believer who is going to see a full glass when there are only a few drops in it. That's still fine, so let's agree to disagree.
There was recently an interesting discussion on Pinside about things people dislike in modern pinball machines. Interestingly nobody mentioned Stern, but all the dislikes seem to appear on their games way more than on any other brand from the past 15-20 years. http://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/what-modern-pins-do-you-dislike

As for the royalties being paid for a license on a pinball machine: those aren't the costs. You'd be surprised how low that actually is.