Gary Stern coming to Sydney - 9th Dec

[coon82]

was asked if he has played the WOZ, short answer was no as he did not want his photo taken playing it

That would make a funny 'what the....'

[swinks]

one more thing to add:

Since all cabinets have decals now, decals will now be available through distributors to replace the faded or damaged ones on your cabinet


here is also a poor image of the node boards that soon will be used on regular machines

[pinnies4me]

Thanks for the write up Jady!!

[MartyJ]

Great work thanks for sharing and taking the time to write it up

[Cursed]

Thanks for the post Jady. 

[delarge]

one more thing to add:

Since all cabinets have decals now, decals will now be available through distributors to replace the faded or damaged ones on your cabinet


here is also a poor image of the node boards that soon will be used on regular machines

I got excited about the prospect of decals on cabinets when I was lucky enough to tour the Stern factory at Pinball Expo last year (they were pumping out Transformers in the factory). Owning a new in box machine at the time was a pipe dream.

Would love to know how much cabinet decals cost now. Would be nice to have tucked away in case anything happened to the current decals.

Cheers!
Adam.

[Replay]

waiting for the doors to open, will get photos and videos where possible

you should have said gidday, us AAers dont bite lol

Was interesting to hear Gary speak in person, well worth the trip

[Caveoftreasures]

I enjoyed reading your report Jady(Swinksy), it was excellent for you to go out of your way to go to so much detail.  

Gary Stern doesnt like bright green pinballs because the only other bright green dmd he ever did was Godzilla with the unusual headbox shape n lots of bright green ramps etc, and they only sold 500 maximum. So that probably cost him money, whereas this time round, HULK LE will make him money cause they are selling like hotcakes.

The probable reason for X Men not selling as good as they thought was because perhaps alot of people were still paying off their LE AC/DC machines, and people were also probably waiting for the Avengers to come out so they could make their mind up. I am told in recent days that X Men sales have picked up both here and in the USA so that is good news cause X men is a really great game IMO.

Everything else was great to read...5 seperate LED lights in the backbox means we will all now get backbox lightshows, and the machines all going to LEDS is also great news.
Funny to hear widebodys n people going broke by doing them etc...perhaps JJP will need to do a std body sooner or later to capture alot of the Pro market who still wants BNIB but at a lower cost.

Overall, very excited about the future for Stern from Garys talk and the feedback u gave. Thanks again for a excellent report/review Swinksy.'

[GORGAR 1]

Back box lighting bring it on and get rid of he Fluro.

Peter

[Olivia_jason]

 

[Retropin]

Everything else was great to read...5 seperate LED lights in the backbox means we will all now get backbox lightshows


?????? You dont like backbox anything as its all redundant when playing the game remember?

[Caveoftreasures]

Gav,
I like backbox lightshows. Nothing bad about that. Lightshows are not 26 inch LCD screens, which no one can really decide on yet til the machine is finished and the programming for the machine is finished. Still months n months away til finished games arrive with finished code. but so far, it doesnt change often enough during gameplay with the early code, and I like translites, or backglasses.

Stern does traditionally 3 or 4 titles per year averaged out over the 13 yrs. They now do 3 or sometimes 4 variants of the machine. Because X Men and Avengers are super hero related themes (very closely related themes) its not unusual for people to wait to see the next superhero title before deciding which superhero title suits them best. In this case, Stern made two superhero themed machines back to back, which to my knowledge hasnt been done before, so yes, its normal for people to wait n check out the new title before deciding. It doesnt mean they are producing too many titles per year, because all titles are still selling well going by the amount of people on all the various forums worldwide talking about their recent Stern purchases.

JJP could do at least 2 titles per year, once they really get going, versus 2 only in a 3.5 year period, and they could potentially do more than 1 variant. Pro is like a variant, LE is like a variant. But JJPs LE versus the STD widebody is too close for me to call it a major variant. If they did a Pro or a std body, that could be a proper variant perhaps. This is up to JJP and potential JJP clients to decide on with their feedback.

Personally, I dont think JJP is really going to do anything major to upset Stern, because Stern are producing machines which are being sold out within days of release, plus they cater for the $6600 buyer and the $9300 buyer (or pro-rata the same in the USA.
JJP will have to make some broader changes to take more of the broader market before they ever really upset Stern in my mind.
The fact that Stern is making great machines now, means they may even grow their own business, so it looks like a promising future for Stern, with or without JJP anyway. Thats my view. Any growth in pinball is great for the industry, no matter how or who does it.

[Olivia_jason]

 

[Caveoftreasures]

maybe.

[Freiherr]

as for JJP not having price variants or not enough models,  have you ever thought that maybe JJP are a Porsche and Stern is just a pov pack commodore? it seems to me they might be a high end pinball maker,

Looks like I'm stuck with playing Sterns. Maybe I'll go for the HSV (LEs).