Episode 47: Spooky’s Big Win… And Stern’s Big Shrug?
The Flipside Pinball Podcast
50 min
Summary
Spooky's value-packed games challenge Stern, but market realities limit competitor responses.
Retro Ralph analyzes Spooky Pinball success with Evil Dead (CE) (CE), examining what drove their market dominance and whether Stern needs to respond. He concludes that while Spooky has set a high value bar with included features (shaker motors, art blades, powder-coated armor), Stern's production pipeline and business model constraints make immediate changes unlikely. The discussion centers on perceived value, collector dynamics, and secondary market depreciation across manufacturers.
Highlights
- Every single Beetlejuice unit has sold out
- Spooky produces approximately 800-900 games per year maximum
- Stern's current game pipeline has 12-48 months of development already locked in and cannot be changed in response to competitor moves
- Evil Dead achieved excellent reliability at Electric Bat venue after past Spooky quality issues
- Secondary market depreciation for Stern games is significantly worse than boutique alternatives, with players losing thousands of dollars on resales
- Beetlejuice LE sold out in 9-15 minutes pre-reveal based on KB context vs podcast discussion of rapid sellout
- JAWS (Premium/LE) is the last recent Stern Limited Edition to maintain resale value
- King Kong topper from Stern is prohibitively expensive and missing quality control items (chains, letters)
Beetlejuice is a massive win for Spooky Pinball, no debate there. But what does that success mean for the rest of the hobby? Are we now expecting more from every manufacturer, including the market leader, Stern Pinball? And the big question… does Stern even care? In this episode, we dive into the ripple effect Beetlejuice is having across pinball. Is Stern better off staying the course, or are boutique manufacturers proving that players want more value, more innovation, and more personality in every game? Does this shift the landscape, or is it just noise in the bigger picture?
In this episode
Beetlejuice
Spooky Pinball
Dune
Barrels of Fun
Evil Dead
Spooky Pinball
JAWS
Stern
Jurassic Park
Stern
Star Wars
Stern
Stranger Things
Stern
Comments