There’s been a lot of chatter out there lately that Dungeons and Dragons may not be Stern Pinball's next cornerstone game. Enough to make me question my earlier prediction that it is, so I dug and dug into it with multiple knowledgeable contacts and here's what I've been told...like I've been saying Dungeons and Dragons is next lol. To quote the late 90s / early 2000s game show Who Wants to be a Millionaire, "That's My Final Answer."
From what I've been told, the D&D cornerstone is not on the new Spike 3 board system. Having said that, an announcement about Spike 3 is coming early in the year.
According to both the conventional wisdom and what my sources have told me, King Kong by Keith Elwin is the next cornerstone after D&D.
Keep in mind that I'm not actually at Stern AND that production schedules are dynamic, not set in stone, but as of today I believe the above order of games to be true.
As far as a potential price increase for Stern's pinball machines goes, many have reported that one is a foregone conclusion for the next game. Having said that, I personally don't think so. I do think that Stern will eventually have to raise prices by a few hundred dollars in response to the tremendous inflationary pressure that I expect the United States to see in 2025.
A Stern representative, the legendary George Gomez, addressed this subject on an episode of Christopher Franchi's Super Awesome Pinball Show podcast this weekend. Here's what he had to say about Stern pricing:
[FRANCHI]: "And is it true that the prices are being raised in January to cover the cost for the kits?"
[GOMEZ]: "If the prices get raised, the prices will be raised probably because we haven't raised prices in like three years. But and I don't even know that they're going to do that. I think that I think Seth has been trying really hard not to raise prices.
So I don't know that they're going to be raised. But whenever that price raise conversation comes up, those guys will tell you, we haven't raised prices in three years. We can't say that for the stuff we're buying.”
