Here’s what the first year of modern pinball machine ownership is like – Jaws Stern 2024 Premium

Tomorrow, 3/14/2025 will be one year since my son received his Stern Pinball Jaws premium that was ordered literally the day it was announced in January 2024. This year Stern’s cornerstone launched at CES 2025 was Dungeons & Dragons: The Tyrant’s Eye and the first run of premiums should be going out by the time you read this or not long after. Historically, Stern produces LEs first, then pros then premiums last.

I wrote in great detail about the first 40 days of ownership at PGM here: Our Son Bought a New In Box Jaws Stern Premium – The First 40 Days of Ownership – What’s the Experience Really Like? We’re not going to rehash those details here, so go read that first if you’d like to know what happens when the game first arrives.

Instead, we’re going to talk about what has happened since then, what sort of play action the game is getting in our family, other games we’ve bought since then and added to the lineup including how that impacted gameplay and interest playing Jaws. The picture atop this article spoils what those games are — and what the next year of ownership and beyond looks like.

Specifically, this article will address the following questions and more, and have been broken into links so you can read and reference in order of most interest:

• Maintenance – for those wanting to know what it’s really like owning at home a modern Stern Pinball maintenance-wise, what do you have to do to keep the game looking and running great?
  • How much time was spent on preventive maintenance?
  • What broke, if anything, and how was it fixed?
  • What mods, if any, were installed or at least considered?
  • How much $$ spent on the game after the initial new in box (NIB) purchase?
  • What is the anticipated maintenance-related expense costs for the second year of ownership?
• Gameplay
  • Code updates over the first year, including new challenge modes, exclusive topper mode and more
  • How many games have been played to date?
  • How did the amount of gameplay change over the year including, but not limited to, how much is played now?
  • How good has our family gotten at playing Jaws over the year?
  • What does the future of our gameplay for Jaws look like?
• Ownership feelings and thoughts
  • Why I keep an ownership diary?
  • Was this a good purchase or not worth the nearly $10,000 USD? Or should have bought Pro for $7,000? Or jumped in on an LE for $13,000?
  • Will we buy any more modern pinball machines from Stern? If so, which of the current ones available or possible themes we might be interested in?
  • Recap: who should buy these modern pinball machines? NIB or used?

Maintenance

If space and cost are not an issue, maintenance, in my opinion, is the #1 reason not to buy a pinball machine. You hear people say: “maintenance, maintenance, maintenance” and if you’ve never owned one of these beautiful machines, you don’t really understand what those who do own them already know: there is some amount of maintenance required to keep them running and looking in tip-top shape.

That said, if you never or rarely play them, dust still accumulates. There is still at the very least some amount of cleaning required on these machines.

After owning Eight Ball for 10 years or so, and I can’t say enough how miserable that one machine was to own, because it was in such poor shape and I didn’t have the knowledge or acquired and learned skill to properly get it running and keeping it running, so the vast majority of the time it was broken and/or partially working and I began to resent owning it. A lot.

So, it took me almost 20 years to regain interest in the idea of owning another game. It was my son with Jaws, highlighted in this article, that took the plunge and showed me firsthand what owning a modern pinball game is like from a maintenance perspective. Let’s cover specific questions in this topic heading.

How much time was spent on preventive maintenance?

Over the course of the year diary entries, I didn’t document the specific amount of time, but can quantify this in an answer:

• Quick cleaning – every 25-50 plays OR weekly – this involved some amount of wiping down and dusting the playfield with a microfiber cloth. This process takes anywhere from a couple minutes to 5+ minutes.
• Deeper cleaning with cleaner – every 50-100 plays or monthly – this involved using the pinball cleaner and wax mentioned in my 40 day article. I use a thin coat across the entire playfield with a little heavier application in the high traffic areas (the lower third, better known as the Italian bottom). Around the flippers and outlanes is a very heavy trafficked area. The area along the right and left inlanes is frequently a culprit for ball trails. I’ve found this area needs more frequent cleaning than any other area on a pinball machine. This process takes 10-30+ minutes.
• Ball inspection – every 150 or so plays – remove the balls and inspect for damage. Usually in conjunction with Quick Cleaning documented above. I will manually eject all six balls and inspect under a magnifying glass each ball’s condition. If even one of the balls is heavily scuffed or scratched, the balls are removed. This inspection process takes 15 minutes or so.
• Check for loose parts, screws, bolts and any missing/broken pieces – during every ball change, which is typically somewhere between 250-500 plays OR as needed/noticed (as the game gets more broken in, we’re noticing the balls seem to last longer before getting as beaten up, perhaps the sharper corners are more worn, I don’t know) – every time we’ve changed balls in the game, and that’s happened like 12 times since this writing (we’re about 4,500 plays, as you’ll see in another post), I doublecheck the connections underneath the game as well as the screws and bolts holding the plastics and other components on top of the playfield. This might seem like overkill to some, and I’ve been told as much, but it’s part of inspecting the game and seeing a problem develop before something goes bad.
  
  For example, I noticed when performing a deep clean across the playfield that the left lock was coming up. I pulled up the playfield and looked underneath to see the washer had come loose. It was an easy fix, but a little more time and the bolt would have come completely off and might have been not as quick and easy to repair. This process typically takes 15-30+ minutes or more, as there are a lot of screws, bolts and connections. Somebody more skilled could probably do this in under 15 minutes, but I’ve got bad eyes and need a magnifying glass to help me.

What broke, if anything, and how was it fixed?

There were three things that broke the first year:

• Corner piece of sticker next to Jaws boat missing – there is a replacement for this in the goodies bag. I haven’t fixed this yet, but discovered one other person posting about this issue recently. It’s an easy fix, the hole is already punched and you can simply affix the sticker. This was the very thing noticed wrong with the game. It happened during our home launch party around 1,000 plays in.

• Plastic in the horseshoe snapped at edge near screwhole, again, located next to Jaws boat. I attempted to Gorilla Glue this piece, but the glue didn’t hold. STATUS: needs to be replaced. The part is available on Pinball Life or from Stern directly. Waiting for the replacement part. This happened somewhere between 1,000-2,500 plays. It will take longer to replace this, maybe 30-60 minutes, as a number of things need to be taken apart to gain access to this piece. Advised by others to use a plastic protector to avoid this breaking.

• Spring in drop target too loose, needed tightening. STATUS: Fixed. I simply moved the spring up closer to increase the tightening. Happened somewhere around 2,500 plays. I noticed that the drop targets weren’t always resetting. This repair took less than 5 minutes.

What mods, if any, were installed or at least considered?

Two mods were considered, but neither were used on Jaws.

First, I was going to stream using a board purchased from Australia that captured the video out. That cost around $100. Instead of using on Jaws, I bought two of them for Iron Maiden and James Bond and have used on both of those games.

The second: Add Animation Flair to Stern Spike 2 Speakers with Pinsound Pinvision Coming Summer 2024 (DELAYED). I ended up using PINVISION in Iron Maiden, not Jaws.

Had I bought and used both of these on Jaws the cost would have been roughly $550 USD.

How much $$ spent on the game after the initial new in box (NIB) purchase?

Original machine NIB cost, delivered: $9,350.

• $128 (approximately $1.77 per ball x 6 x 12 sets) Ball replacement – 12 sets
• $17 – Mill Cleaner and Wax – 1 bottle (a ton is left, like 90%, will probably go bad before it’s used up, in fact)
• $20 – Microfiber towels – one package
• $10 – Two rolls of Shop paper towels – one roll used, another barely used
• $5 – One bottle of glass cleaner, no ammonia, just started on second
• $5 – Gorilla glue
• $20 – Tool box purchased
• $50 – Assorted tools, maintenance lights
• = $255 USD

What is the anticipated maintenance-related expense costs for the second year of ownership?

Estimating costs to be 25%-50% of what was spent the first year, based on the amount of reduced anticipated gameplay (see next section). The less these games are played, the less they cost to maintain, naturally. There is still some minimum amount of cleaning required, but obviously if they aren’t being played as much, there will not be as many maintenance-related costs.

Instead of $255, year two projected expense should be more like $75-125 USD, most of which will be absorbed by replacemet balls cost. We might need to consider a flipper rebuild, but that probably will need to occur between year 3-5, depending on play, maybe sooner. Flipper rebuild or any other significant break/damage will raise the anticipated cost.

This cost doesn’t include electricity while running the game. We don’t keep the games on unless we’re playing or the grandkids are home every other weekend the games stay turned on for a couple days. Power consumption for the machine is additional.

Gameplay

This probably should be the first heading, because this is what matters most: how often is your game being played? It’s only here second because gameplay can at some point be overshadowed by maintaining these games. Excepting major repairs, the maintenance is not a major factor in these modern games. Yes, you have to do stuff to keep them in tip-top shape, as the last section identified, but if you aren’t enjoying playing the games, aren’t playing them, maintenance is very minor.

These games do take up a fair amount of physical space. That should be a consideration as well.

Code updates over the first year, including new challenge modes, exclusive topper mode and more

When Jaws was announced at CES 2024 and launched, code was at 0.86. As of this writing code is at 0.98. There have been several updates, some quite significant, adding additional gameplay and challenge modes including the excellent Jaws: The Revenge. Elizabeth Gieske’s Broken Shark topper exclusive mode was also one of the updates.

There have been many bug fixes and tweaks, way too many to discuss in this section individually. Instead, here’s where to find code updates at Stern () and you can scroll through the history for each update, with the most recent as of this writing linked below:

• Jaws Premium/LE – 11/26/2024 – v0.98.0: https://sternpinball.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/jaws_LE_0.98-README.txt
• Jaws Pro – 11/26/2024 – v0.98.0: https://sternpinball.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/jaws_PRO_0.98-README.txt

Interestingly, this has been almost four months since the last Jaws code update, when we were seeing code updates at a pace of roughly every 4-6 weeks. They’ve released four games since Jaws (John Wick, The Uncanny X-Men, Metallica: Remastered and in January 2025 Dungeons & Dragons: The Tyrant’s Eye.

Overall, have been very happy with the code progress and release state of Jaws compared to other games. The code state release for John Wick, X-Men has been more premature. Metallica: Remastered seemed pretty good and D&D is still very much a work-in-progress, but definitely is playable and has a lot to do, despite the 0.86 version it’s at as of this writing.

How many games have been played to date?

Recently, at PGM I dug into this in greater depth here: Game Fade = How Long Does it Take You to Lose Interest Playing a Game? and, specifically, showed play stats for Jaws over the year. Let’s revisit that screenshot:

There hasn’t been much play since that article in January 30, 2025, but here’s a more recent update for comparison:

Over the last month, only about 50 plays or so, which continues to drive down the daily played average. We’re really averaging more like 2-3 plays a day on average right now, which is a long way from the 50+ plays per day when the game was first setup. This leads perfectly to …

How did the amount of gameplay change over the year including, but not limited to, how much is played now?

Yeah, it’s been a downward slide in games played. Is this normal progression? Would think play drops off for everybody, especially when new games are added. I think whatever you’re playing most at the time is going to have the most plays. For those with multiple games, that activity tends to move around. At the moment, we’re playing more James Bond than Jaws. It’s entirely possible that gameplay could change.

How good has our family gotten at playing Jaws over the year?

My play has definitely improved considerably. I’ve scored over a billion points a couple dozen times or so now. That’s pretty good for me anyway considering I haven’t scored a billion on any other Stern Pinball game officially (UPDATE: on 3/12/2025 @ 5:24am PST: live on a Twitch stream I scored over a billion for the first time ever on James Bond 007, making this my second IC-logged billion score on modern Stern after playing nearly 4,000 games across all logged in IC). Unofficially, as in logged into Insider Connected, I scored over 2 billion on Deadpool. Every other Stern Pinball game my best score is under a billion.

Our oldest grandson scores above 300 million fairly regularly. Sometimes in one ball. The owner of the game, my oldest son, scores in the 250-500 million range fairly regularly. Nobody else in the family has played enough to improve their average scores. All of us that have played a significant number of times have improved.

What does the future of our gameplay for Jaws look like?

Personally, I see returning to Jaws at some point after the code goes 1.0. Can we even get t the wizard mode is a different question, but I’ve almost beaten three of the four sharks several times, so getting all four sharks beaten definitely seems possible to me, with continued play.

Can’t speak for the rest of the fam. I think maybe they have moved on somewhat from Jaws, which if true is a bit sad. A lot of money to spend on a game for a half year of heavy activity, followed by a sharp decrease in play. I think game fade is a very real thing with pinball games, just like any others, but I still feel like Jaws is one of the best Stern Pinball games released in years. The problem, if you want to look at it that way, is they keep releasing new games every 4 months or so. This can lead to moving onto the next game.

IMO, if Stern backed off the gas on new releases to 2 new games a year, they could focus on releasing with more complete 1.0 code at launch — at least closer to that. Is this possible with their production schedule and production line labor requirements? Maybe not. In that case, they are combatting game fade with the frequency of new game releases very well with the way they are currently operating.

Ownership – Feelings and Thoughts

Finally, we reach the answer to the question in the headline: what it’s really like owning a modern Stern Pinball after a year? This experience will definitely vary from owner to owner, but I’ve had a firsthand look at this experience with my son for a year. My game, Iron Maiden, was purchased in September 2024, so the first six months were positive enough to propel me to buy another new in box Stern. And then another a month later — at my wife’s urging — James Bond 007 pro was purchased new in box in October 2024.

Why I keep an ownership diary?

Very little of what you’re reading in this article would be possible without me keeping an ownership diary. It might not be something that translates on the page here, but as a reference and notes for the actual experience, it’s been vital. It also has helped me to see and record overall activity. Would I recommend others keep an ownership diary? Depends on whether or not you want some documentation to reinforce if you made a good or bad buying decision.

Was this a good purchase or not worth the nearly $10,000 USD? Or should have bought Pro for $7,000? Or jumped in on an LE for $13,000?

Had to go back and read what was written after the first 40 days. The following quote seems almost prophetic to me:

“What I’d really like to see is him still fairly regularly playing Jaws past 10,000 plays. At that point, he’d own a machine he’s gotten his money’s worth and then some out of and it’s still worth a good amount of money if he wants to sell or trade or just keep for others to continue enjoying”

He’s not regularly playing the game at even half that number of plays, nor am I. Play has dropped off precipitously. Yes, we are playing another game in the home right now, James Bond, and I’d like to think play will return at some point to Jaws, but right now it looks like we’ve moved on. At least somewhat. That makes the price paid for the premium more challenging to assess.

Let’s see what gameplay looks like in year two, I guess, is what I’m asking for. Right now, I’m thinking maybe my son’s initial idea of buying the pro, saving $3,000 might have been wiser, but that’s only because the gameplay has dropped off so much. Then again, it’s only been a year and I think if you told me before he bought it that the game would be played roughly 4,500 times in the first year I’d have labeled that a good purchase. Yes, even at nearly $10,000 USD.

The other part to consider is the game is what the game is still worth. 4,500 plays and the game is worth $8-9,000 USD.

Basically, the family has been able to play at 75 cents a play (4500 x $0.75 = $3,375) a little over $3,000 worth of plays on a game that is still worth more than amount of depreciation on the open market. Yeah, that is a good financial purchase, if you look at it that way. To only lose about $1,500 in value but to play $3,375 worth of games? Yeah, good deal, just looking at that.

I don’t think my son is planning on selling or trading Jaws. Haven’t asked him specifically, but it remains one of my favorite Stern pins to play, despite my plays dropping off. Hoping he keeps it for a long time. We’ll see.

Will we buy any more modern pinball machines from Stern? If so, which of the current ones available or possible themes we might be interested in?

This is a pretty easy and emphatic: “yes.” When that is, I don’t know, but the three we have will not be the last three ever purchased, am pretty confident of that. We’re interested simply in the rumor of an Elwin King Kong pin and we all like what we’ve played so far of Dungeons & Dragons: The Tyrant’s Eye.

But it’s early with D&D. And at least speaking for myself, I’m nervous about a game until the code goes 1.0 complete. Both the Sterns I bought NIB were games with completed 1.0+ code (Iron Maiden and James Bond).

With D&D it seems to offer with the leveling and quests, plus the weekly randomness change more variety than some other pins, but the code is very early and we’ve only played the pro so far.

At TPF (We will be at Texas Pinball Festival on Saturday March 22, 2025, Are you Attending?) we’re going to play the premium D&D and see how we feel about that.

A third Elwin in the lineup out of four games would seem a bit Elwin-heavy, so not sure about Kong. None of the other Spike 2 pins released seem likely in the near future anyway, but you never know. Our youngest son really like Metallica: Remastered, but doubtful he’d buy one. We don’t have any immediate plans to buy any others at this time, but again, am fairy confident we’re not done buying Stern Pinball games.

As for competing companies? Not really the question asked, but Evil Dead from Spooky Pinball sure looks sweet. Haven’t played it, but want to. Hope the lines at TPF aren’t too long that we get the chance. There are some other pins from other companies that might be of interest, keeping an open mind on this one.

Recap: who should buy these modern pinball machines? NIB or used?

Who is the customer to buy these NIB or used modern Stern pinball machines? Someone that can get over the pricing — these are commercial grade entertainment purchases, not cheap home products — something I’ve written about in great detail (see: OPINION: Active, Interested Buyer: New in Box Modern Pinball Prices are 20% (at least) Too Expensive) and, again, you have the physical space and you are accepting of some degree of (very) minor maintenance and upkeep. I think time might be more of an issue than the money for some. Do you have the time or willingness to pay or appoint somebody else in the family to maintain your game? Are you going to play the games enough to feel like the purchase and space it uses in your home is value-added?

A pinball machine isn’t nearly the same maintenance as say a car, especially if you drive a lot, but it’s more than a trivial concern. And the more pins you have, the more physical space, time and money it will take to keep them playing good.

After a year, I can say, without any reservation, that modern pinball ownership is a dramatically better experience than owning an older game with issues I had like the beat-up Eight Ball. I wouldn’t recommend to people new to the hobby buying an older game (with issues especially) as their first game like we did. No, I’d say you’d be better off saving up $$$ and buying a used or new modern Stern.

Is it necessary to buy these games new in box? No, and you could save $$ by buying them used. I realize we haven’t bought a used one, yet, as of this writing but I wouldn’t be that concerned about buying one used, assuming I’d checked it out, played first and the price was right, of course. Making sure to look over the condition of the playfield and see what kind of action the game has taken for the price. See how the owner has taken care of the game.