How Stern Pinball is connecting pinball machines for the future

venturebeat.com:

Did you miss a session from GamesBeat's latest event? Head over to the GamesBeat & Facebook Gaming Summit & GamesBeat Summit: Into the Metaverse 2 On Demand page here.

Stern Pinball is one of the biggest believes in pinball, and it has been making the machines for decades. When I went to the CES trade show in Las Vegas, I always met with CEO Gary Stern to talk about the latest machines that the company was working on.

I didn’t make it this year, but I was able to catch up with George Gomez, chief creative officer at Stern, to talk about the new Insider Connected feature that is aimed at keeping players engaged with each other. The feature connects the machine to your smartphone and the internet, and it lets you upload your high score. And that makes pinball more social by letting you compete with your friends.

Insider Connected works in both home and commercial environments, and it also presents professional operators of the pinball machines with tools to drive location play, build player loyalty, analyze performance, make adjustments remotely and maintain the machines.

Here’s an edited transcript of our interview.

Three top investment pros open up about what it takes to get your video game funded.

GamesBeat: I’m happy to be here. This is the first interview I’ve done in a while that probably doesn’t have anything to do with NFTs or cryptocurrency.

George Gomez: Really? Hard to believe!

GamesBeat: Unless you have something to tell me about pinball machines of the future.

Gomez: Pinball NFTs! Pinball NFTs are the future (that’s a joke). We’re watching the space. But the place to start is with Insider Connected. Insider Connected is our initiative to connect the universe of Stern Pinball machines. You have to ask yourself–it’s