1. Pinball machines were ALWAYS mass-produced. And they are definitely NOT cheap to produce. They are probably the most difficult peice of street location equipment to manufacture and maintain.

2. There is only one manufacturer left (Stern Pinball). Due to the almost complete vanishing act of the coin-op industry, locations have dried up, and the ROI of a pinball machine is so low, that many pinball machine sales are direct-to-home sales now. Licenses help spur these sales. It should be noted that 99% of the people who are left to design these thing would much rather work on brand new, in houses created IP; but everyone realizes that this is a tough sell, and it will take only 1 poorly selling game to effectively shut down the company.

3. Current designs are as a cookie-cutter in this era as any other era. This is pure “remember when games were fun” daydreaming that is typical of retro gamers. Sure you can pick out the one or two really stellar game form the past, but the majority of the games were time-waster clones, in pinball, movies, or video games.

Ultimately, there are only so many “sweet spots” you can put shots on a peice of wood that fit in a box. And the market can’t bear any completely radical change that might allow for zany experimentation.

4.With regards to the grueling, high speed movement comment, pinball has fallen into the the death spiral of “designing for your market while destroying any chance of growing your market.” Basically, the only people who play pinball is pretty much a strong little niche fanbase; if this fanbase feels that a game is too easy, they will not play/buy for home this game. So all game designs rest on previously well-accepted games. However, the learning curve is steep; and anyone who might even be remotely interested in trying a pinball game as a new player will be eaten alive. So, do you try and design a game to cultivate a new player, knowing full well that your fan base will hate the game, potentially causing the company to shut down, or do you cater to the fanbase, keeping the company alive, and hoping that maybe the license will keep the new player interested enough to get past the early, eaten alive, stage?

Anyway, just a few comments.