On the drive home from field work today, I started to ponder where pinball is headed in 2025? It was a long car drive and I was tired after a long work day. It feels like a topic I’ll eventually ponder on a live stream, but decided to ponder it in an article here first.
Let’s start with the elephant in the room: Stern.
We know Stern is going to release more new games, after already announcing a rather exciting Dungeons & Dragons. I know, I know, some might be not excited by this theme, but D&D is a huge property.
But Stern has at least two more aces up their sleeves in 2025. King Kong is the next rumored Elwin pin and when or if that happens in 2025, I think it will be huge. Will it be a bigger Elwin than Godzilla? Yes, it very well could be. What about Jaws code being completed? Check. What about John Wick getting more code updates? Check. X-Men as well? Check. Metallica: Remastered code getting finished by the end of 2025? Check.
The biggest Stern news — non new games of course — will be the launch of Spike 3. We’ve talked about what Spike 3 might bring and we hope it will bring, but I have a sinking feeling it will be a bit of a work in progress for a few more years. They will release it and use the market to further refine it, until they dial in and make it great. Sincerely hope I’m wrong on this one and Spike 3 launches and is amazing out of the box.
What improvements are coming to Insider Connected? Am hoping they bring back the missing stats and a better UI, see: Stern Horribly Upgrades Insider Connected – please revert! I think 2025 will largely be more of the same we saw in 2024: new monthly quests for badges, a featured leaderboard
What about the other companies? Jersey Jack Pinball will continue to make (too) expensive pinball machines. They will look greater than most of them play. I don’t see them doing any sort of connected play in 2025, which is unfortunate.
Spooky will get those sweet looking Evil Dead pins out into the wild. They will be happy to do it, as they are one of the happiest looking — and sounding — pinball machines. Yeah, they’ll probably announce at least one more game before the end of 2025. What that will be? Dunno, but Evil Dead sure looks good.
The rest of the companies? Will they do anything exciting and new? This might sound strange, but I’m looking somewhat to the newer companies for something different and cool. You know, maybe Barrels of Fun that busted out with Labyrinth and Turner that needs an IP for their second game. Turner have a connected pinball connection and, presumably, will turn it on before the end of the year?
What about the people? It seems reasonable to predict that more people will get into pinball in 2025. The popularity of pinball has definitely returned and there seems to be no signs of slowing that enthusiasm in the hobby this year. What I do feel will slow is home sales. The prices are too high, see OPINION: Active, Interested Buyer: New in Box Modern Pinball Prices are 20% (at least) Too Expensive
What about on location pinball? With some slowdown in home sales, this should bump up participation and play on location. And by the end of 2025, we should see more pinball on location. More businesses adding more pinball machines to their floors. I think it will be whatever is new, whether it be the newest Stern, perhaps a few more JJP’s and Spooky’s, maybe some scattered other companies here and there.
Lastly, we should talk more virtual pinball. It’s interesting to see Magic Pixel update Zaccaria Pinball recently. I still think Stern is behind the scenes thinking about, maybe working themselves, on some kind of virtual pinball of their pins. CEO Seth Davis said it’s an area they are looking into. I don’t think we’ll see them release any official versions of their games as virtual pinball in 2025, but I do think we’ll hear perhaps a little more.
Zen, the recognized leader in virtual pinball, will continue to release new pinball games across their wide berth of platforms. It wouldn’t be a stretch to predict they come out with another platform, but I think their done with new platforms in 2025. Maybe 2026 they will release Pinball N or Pinball O, whatever follows Pinball M. Or perhaps Pinball Galaxy to follow Pinball World on mobile. Whatever they do, they will release more games. Hopefully some more versions of real pins.
This leaves VPX and FP. Development will continue with that. Maybe 10.8 will see a release candidate? That seems likely, as well as work on whatever the next version continuing.
How about virtual pinball cab businesses like Atgames? Who doesn’t think Atgames had a horrible year in 2024 with their Legends Pinball 4K? They came out with that saying they’d have like 16 different skins and have they released even half that many to date? It’s hard to imagine a worse year in 2025 for them, because they dabble in a marketplace pretty much alone, but they need to get the lag fixed in their 4K pin or they will. We could be seeing sub $1,000 ALP4K pricing by year end. This might stir a little bit more interest in what they’re up to.
As for PGM and the Wednesday Humpday Pinball show? I was hopeful that would return weekly at some point in Q1-2025, and still sticking by that, but less confident of that happening with a month already gone and my day job still very busy on Wednesdays. It might be Q2-2025 (April-June), perhaps in/around the time the third season of the Score Chasing Recap show on Sundays goes dark for the summer. Then again, I need to train for the April 20, 2025 17+ hour pinball event described here: Sunday April 20, 2025: Goal to set personal livestream record of 17+ Hours Playing Pinball while standing. I think one off pinball live streams, virtual and real pinball are more likely in Q1-2025. Training yes, training. Have to keep telling myself that because the idea of standing and playing 17+ hours of pinball seems daunting as of this writing.
Personally, I’m thinking I’ll play a little less pinball in 2025 than 2024. I played over 2,000 games in 2024, which was a record for me. Also, our family bought three games. I don’t think we’ll buy three games or more in 2025, we might, however, buy 1 or 2. Or maybe we buy none at all. I’ve already stated 2025 is the year of playing what we already have, so that seems to favor zero new pinball purchases in 2025, but we’ll see. 2025 Resolution: Travel Back in Gaming Time lays out where my gaming head is at and pinball is mentioned more there.
Let’s look back a year from now on a 2026 Humpday and see how much or any of this has come to pass. Where do you think pinball is going in 2025? How much more pinball will you be playing personally?