This afternoon Stern pinball officially revealed the details of the Insider Connected event that it has been teasing, the "Stern Pinball Cup."
It is a massive six-week, Insider Connected contest that challenges players to hit certain objectives (5 per machine) across ALL of Stern Pinball's connected games. Wow, that's a lot.
Below are the details. Sounds fun!
"The Stern Pinball Cup is a series of six, week-long races where players compete for rankings and badges. Any player competing in the Stern Pinball Cup will be placed in a specific skill tier based on their performance in previous races. Your skill tier can be raised or lowered based on performance of each race. Each race will have its own leaderboard, and progress can be tracked using Stern's Insider Connected App.
Here's how the scoring works: Each race will have specific, in-game objectives that need to be completed to earn race points. Every Stern Insider Connected Title is included in the Stern Pinball Cup. Each Race Week will deliver five new challenges from each Stern title, ranging from Very Easy to Very Hard. Each Race Challenge has a point value associated with it. Easier challenges are worth less than harder challenges. The more points you accumulate, the higher you'll place on the leaderboard.
Badges will be awarded after every race and will be awarded to players based on their performance. Badges are also designed to indicate the user’s tier they are competing in.
Qualifying begins on Friday, December 13th and runs through December 20th, with our first race beginning on December 21st. And if you miss out on qualifying, don't worry, you can jump into the Stern Pinball Cup anytime in December or January.
So buckle your seatbelts for the Stern Pinball Cup!
GET CONNECTED AND PLAY! http://sternpinball.com/insider
BRING HOME THE FUN! https://shop.sternpinball.com/collect...
Learn more at http://www.sternpinball.com"
Checking in on the state of arcades, I know that the kiddie casinos aka Dave & Busters are not a favorite destination of pinball people or classic arcade people. Having said that, I had a good time taking my sons to Dave & Busters when my they were little. And I do think that the health of D&B is indicative of the health of the overall industry to a certain degree.
To put it lightly, Dave & Busters is not doing well. Earlier this week, the Company reported its financial results for the third quarter of 2024. Here's the highlights, or lowlights:
Revenue down 3% versus Q3 2023
Comparable store sales down 7.7% versus Q3 2023
Earnings: A net loss of $32.7 million, or a loss of $0.84/share
Adjusted EBITDA down 16.3% versus Q3 '23
In addition to the terrible financial results, Dave & Buster's announced the resignation of its CEO, Chris Morris.
The Market did not like what it saw from D&B, sending its public stock (PLAY) down -26.82% over the past 5 days and -49.49% Year-To-Date.
I'm hopeful that Dave & Busters has raised its prices so much, man it's expensive to go there now, that consumers are shunning it and going to independent arcades and breweries to get their arcade and pinball fixes instead, but I don't think that's the case. Anecdotally, I've heard that business is slow in many arcades. Is that what others are finding as well?
Healthy public arcades are very good for the hobby. Hopefully things begin to turn around in the future.
Dave & Buster’s Reports Third Quarter 2024 Financial Results; Announces CEO Transition
I only take my kids to arcades with mostly physical games like basketball hoops, football toss, coin pushers, the beer pong style game, Ice Cold Beer, skeeball, air hockey, etc.
Arcade video games that are straight digital or even hybrid digital (steering wheels, gun games, VR) have zero appeal compared to their console/PC/tablet games at home.
Dave and Busters has a huge overhead. They have big big spaces and lots of expenses. Staff. Electricity, equipment and repairs. Their mix of games is not ideal for pinball. They confuse people with the cost per game on their cards. And it's pretty loud. It's a place I used to dream about going to when I was younger, but skip nowadays.
As far as I'm aware, it's overall just tough times in the restaurant space between inflation on food and increased wages to get anyone with a reliable pulse to show up for work. I'm seeing a lot of local spots going out of business or the owners just decide it's time to take an early retirement
Pinball arcades have shifted to breweries and bars. My young son begs to go to the kiddie casinos, but we rarely go as it's such an overpriced experience, and the games are iphone lootbox apps on big screens. Why waste $60 in a casino when their ipad has the same games? Arcades were great in our youth because they offered people something unique and unavailable at home, etc.
@Jason. I started receiving emails again. Yeahhh... did you fix something?