I would suggest Gary Stern has a list of customers who he could depend on to say buy 1 or 2 machines every time their is a new title made.
Lets say he has 50 dealers in the USA, and the average dealer buys say 5 machines, to site or sell, thats about 250 machines, in PRO form for the USA. Then add say another 2 machines per dealer for LE, thats another 100. making it a total of say 350 sold.. Then say add up the rest of the world, and u might have another basic sales order number of say another 200 combined. Thats 550 machines. Who knows if this thinking is correct, but he would know, on average that he could probably depend on around 500 units with a low selling title. If he sells the games for say $4,000 to $4350 USA dollars, allowing the Dealer a $750 margin in the USA, then the usual $5 grand USA selling retail price might be right. ?
If STERN sells say 500 machines, say at a profit of 2 grand a machine (he builds for 2 grand and sells to his dealers for 4 grand), then there is a million dollars in a 500 unit production run. I reckon these figures would be close. I am sure STERN would have anyone believe they make less than $500 a machine, but after being in business for 20 yrs, I know that no one trades say $900,000 to $950,000 in cost to only add $50,000 to their profit levels etc. If Stern is making that coin, they shld, and deserve to do so to stay alive. The above figures make business sense. He would have to be making decent coin per unit, cause running a dece3nt factory today is not cheap at all.
Selling LE versions, would be much more profitable again for Stern. Since Stern never releases numbers of machines built (pro models) who knows what they really sell.
and yes, they will do more of the LE AC/DC versions, cause demand, demands it !.lol They will just change it again, and do a numbered run to keep those who missed out early. No one knocks back coin, and Stern will happily take more money for another LE. So they shld. Everyone wins if the next LE is different.