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Another Arcade Standby Calls It Quits
wokness writes with this bit of depressing news. "The arcade business is getting thougher and tougher -- from shoryuken.com: 'The Nikkei Telecom 21, the largest online news & information database in Japan, has reported that Capcom will discontinue sales and development of arcade games.' More info here. This sucks!" Seems like Capcom wasn't making enough money to justify themselves selling large boxes to arcades. Now, they'll go all the way (instead of just using emulation to make cross-platform games) and make games for home consoles instead.
If you have ever been to Asia however you would see a different side of the arcade gaming world. I'm talking about one city block with five or six different arcades. And not wimpy inside the mall arcades... I spent a year in Japan, in Nagoya, and there are entire buildings devoted to arcade machines, floors and floors of nothing but pure gaming bliss. Men and women alike, people of all ages. I spent a little bit of time in Korea and saw much of the same. I'm no expert, but I think that Capcom quiting the business will have a larger effect on things overseas.
So what you're saying is that since xbox won't compete in making boards for arcades, which we can assume from this article are on the way out, that they're fucked in Japan, which is not even close to the amount of revenue that the US and England create for video game companies?
Who cares?! Let the japanese be bigots. Microsoft will still make boatloads of money in the real cash cow market.
What did you eat today? http://www.atetoday.com/
I grew up to Double Dragon, Pole Position and Super Sprint. If I wasn't so damned young, I would have spent even more money on those games. As it stood, I would go very far out of my way to play those arcade games. In the time when the NES regined, they had SNES quality graphics. The games seemed to be about the most exciting around.
Fast forward to any time in the last five years. Arcade games can be broken down into three categories, in my experiences: Racing, Shooting (gun to monitor) and fighting. It's my experience that when the gaming industry finds a hit, it takes years to recover, and it's a damned shame. I believe the gaming industry (as well as other industries) calls this phenomenon "genres".
After Street Fighter 2, for instance, most arcades became a waste of wood and paint with all the cloned games out there. I remember games like NeoGeo's Fatal Fury adding a few new features to the gametype and calling it a day. Some say Mortal Kombat came close, but let's face it. The game lost out big because there was no real decent aerial action compared to Street Fighter with the likes of Vega and Ryu/Ken's Shoryuken attacks.
I'd like to see a truly original game for arcade systems. As for the newer arcade games out there today, well, goodbye. We never really loved you.
With the widespread availability of affordable HOME VIDEO PLAYBACK systems (both VHS and DVD), it's understandable that the MOVIE THEATER business might suffer a few losses. The price of valuable floor space (especially in malls) is becoming extremely expensive, as is the cost of MOVIE THEATER EQUIPMENT. Accordingly, the MOVIE TICKET prices are going up a great deal - a $5.00 is a rarity, and it's not uncommon to spend $10.00 to watch a 90 minute movie.
Simply put, this is just too much money for too little entertainment. I live somewhat near a BOWLING ALLEY (with 100 lanes and pro shop). Going to BOWL for 2-3 hours is much cheaper than spending about an hour in the MOVIE THEATER!
If one is a serious movie goer, the time spent WATCHING MOVIES every week is mind-boggling. Purchasing a cheaper VIDEO PLAYER (VHS, DVD, etc) is FAR more economical than ATTENDING ONE'S FAVORITE THEATER every night. In addition, DVDROM PLAYERS are everywhere for those with PCs, playing the old classic MOVIES. For those true geeks who like the MOVIE THEATER EXPERIENCE, there have been posts to alt.home-theater.misc about turning a DEN IN YOUR HOUSE into a dedicated MOVIE THEATER with a custom THX SETUP.
The ONLY real advantage in a real MOVIE THEATER is unusual hardware - especially THX and DTS Decoders. However, even that HOME THEATER hardware is becoming increasingly affordable.
Stunt Drivin' had some very diffrent tracks indeed. I distinctly remember a corkscrew, it is the only time I have driven upside down. A pity it didn't have decent force feedback.
Shouldn't that be "arcade mainstay" rather than "arcade standby"?
--
Breakfast served all day!
I'm not gonna mis Super Mega Ultra Street Fighter vs X-Men II Alpha Championship.
He who knows not and knows he knows not is a wise man. He who knows not and knows not he knows not is a fool.
LANs at home/school/parties are the problem. Playing a game over the Internet might be fun, but what was the best feature of an arcade was racing against your friends - sitting next to you.
This is possible using a LAN. You can play against each other while being in the same room. You can yell at each other, laugh together, share a beer minutes after the game.
I doubt many people went to arcades just for the games, it was also a social event for most. I bet a lot of people on /. have multiple computers and could have a friend over to play Quake in the same room against each other. Heck, my boss even bought us a PS2 for the cantine at work (SSX definitely kick ass by the way). Why go to an arcade?
More to the point, I can walk into a 25 cent arcade with $5 and be amused for an hour. I can walk into a $1 arcade and be amused for maybe fifteen minutes if I stretch.
The lack of innovation in the industry recently hits home consoles and arcades alike. We used to have dig dug, bubble bobble, pac man, lock 'n chase, space invaders, frogger, blue print, and galaga. We blew stuff up with planes, tanks, motorcycles, and cars. Games were based on time travel, outer space, cartoons, ninjas...
Now we have street fighter clones, shooting things on screen with light guns, and a few racing games. (Hydro thunder runs on W2K, I saw it crash and reboot.) The "innovation" is putting street fighter in 3D (virtua fighter, soul edge, spawn, etc).
The closest thing to an exciting new game was a rewrite of Gauntlet. There are a couple of "puzzle" type games from japanese companies (anybody remember when Tetris was in the arcades?). But these days, large corporations put out the games, and innovation simply can't survive a cost benefit analysis. Why they didn't do a cost benefit analysis raising their prices until they weren't worth our time is beyond me...
Rob
You are correct in your assessments about the decline of arcade games.
I mean, think about it: the current PlayStation 2 and the upcoming GameCube and Xbox consoles now have computing power that just about equals what dedicated arcade machines can do. And all three consoles will likely have the ability to connect multiple players over broadband Internet connections.
It's small wonder why Capcom wants to concentrate on console systems.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
Xbox will not be a bust in Japan.
The reason why it won't fail are:
1. Microsoft is willing to spend a lot of money promoting the system in Japan.
2. Microsoft has gotten just about every major Japanese game publisher (with the notable exception of Square) to write games for Xbox.
3. Even the Japanese are not so interested with arcade units anymore. Look at how fast the PlayStation 2 has sold in Japan, and you know that GameCube will be flying out the door of retailers in Japan this summer, too.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
Hey, as far as I can tell arcades are doing OK! What are dying are some types of games.
Locally there are two Dave & Buster's. These are combination food/drink/arcade/ticket games. They're doing great, partly at the expense of more old-school arcade places. After all, you can go with just about anyone to D&B and have a good time while only hardcord gamers and teenagers hang out at Real Arcades, and I wouldn't even take a casual group of people from work there to have a good time.
Thus, the market shifts to follow the types of games places like D&B want and people there play. Fighting games are only a small portion of what they carry - much more popular are games like the various racing or cooperative games (like Rapid River (sp?) or gun-based games).
I just think Capcom was less successful than most at shifting to follow the market. Personally, I also thought they were way behind the curve on following even just the fighting market into the world of 3D. I think they'll fare a lot better in the console market which still has a large group of people that appreciate what they produce.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Arcades have been going away for a while, but I think it's really starting to die seriously. There have been very few new games to hit the arcades in a long time.
I, for one, will be very sad to see them go. They were a part of my growing up. I actually learned the value of money there, because it was valuable for me to play those games.
-- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --
Earlier, I said that that the arcade games currently stand out only as 'glorified amusement park rides'. Your post reminded me that it isn't entirely the case.
The other two categories are redemption games (put in $.25, get three tickets, you're 1/10th of the way to a plastic ring), and gambling machines (ala Video Poker and Video Slots).
How the mighty have fallen. Atari certainly was a market leader, was it not? They were the first to market with a number of neat things, and one of the first to disappear (first the home games and computing divisions, then the coin-op branch).
The classic 'arcade' is pretty much gone. This will continue unless the arcade game manufacturers (which are actually the home video game publishers) decide that the arcade actually qualifies as a form of 'advertisement', and decides to subsidize the cost of arcade games.
If home arcade games are just as good as the home versions, then the only reason (aside from nostalga) to go to an arcade is to see the latest stuff before they are released as home versions.
Your avid arcade game collector knows that the arcade industry has been on the decline since 1984. A number of reasons have been given. The main reason seems to have been a glut of copy-cat games and an end of originality in the arcades. (This was briefly broken by the Street Fighter genre. Briefly, mind you.)
Modern arcade games seem to be a kind of advertisement for the home game. I obtained a Killer Instinct PCB a year ago, only to be bombarded with a intro screen announcing it would be available for the "Nintendo ULTRA 64". Probably one of the most blatent examples.
Then, there's the glorified amusement park rides. Either your racing games, or your motorized/pnumatic/hydrolic controlled simulator type of environment. That's about the only way an arcade game can differentiate itself from the home game.
At the start of the arcade business, that was not true. The "home version" was pale in comparison to the arcade original. The arcade showcased the latest in technology, which was years away from what was available in the home.
Today, the situation is quite difference. In fact, the X-Box seems to put the final nail in the coffin. Arcade game manufacturers may very well stop creating arcade games on custom hardware. Instead, they'll compile for an X-Box style platform. Why? For the ease of conversion to the home game. That's where the money is. The arcade game is just the 'advertisement' to create the buzz.
Sega once made an unsuccessful attempt at something similar. Remeber the Sega Saturn? Well, it has its arcade counterpart, the Sega Titan hardware, which a number of games were based off of (example: Die Hard Arcade, Batman, Winter Heat). But it failed to catch firew, and a small number of games were targeted to the Titan platform (which had an easy route to make the games work on the Saturn).
It is very likely, however, that Microsoft is going to win where Sega failed. The X-Box is a 'sure thing' platform. Create your arcade games for the X-Box platform, and you'll have an easy route to make a home version.
What arcade collectors may not realize at this point, is that if Microsoft pull things off right, the existing arcade standard, JAMMA, could go the way of the vector game, into arcade history. X-Box could very well become the next arcade standard -- and home platform standard.
I'm not looking forward to it, myself. But I'm willing to believe that home and arcade game manufacturers are. Of course, Microsoft seems to have a habit of getting version 1.0 of everything wrong. But with no real competition, I think it puts a nail in the coffin of the arcade industry as we know it today.
The Xbox is pretty much doomed for failure in japan - by the time it comes out, the PS2 will have been in the japanese market for almost 2 year, and the Gamecube will have just come out. Japanese gamers are wary of an american console, thinking it will be the next 3DO, a console which bombed horribly in both countries. Japanese console developers haven't signed up en masse, and big names like Square haven't definitely announced any product.
As the only console games I play are RPG's, and the occasional game of Dance Dance Revolution (all very japanese games), I doubt I'm going to buy an Xbox any time soon - which is probably the case for most of the hardcore gamer market. As for the rest of the american market, I think the Xbox will do ok. It'll all depend on the games.
Anyway, the Naomi (dreamcast equivalent) and System 246 (PS2 equivalent) boards are already in use in arcade systems - and the Naomi 2 (4x power of dreamcast) is coming out pretty soon as well. Microsoft has no standard arcade Xbox based system, and hasn't made any overtures of creating one, IIRC. Because of this, arcade ports are much more likely to be made to the PS2 and Dreamcast.
BBK
So - this is game design we're talking about - get rid of the "boss".
IMHO game design started to go downhill when the "boss" concept came into vogue. The term we used was "quartersucker", in that the game was typically designed to allow you an easy romp through most of the level before utterly slaughtering you at the boss stage.
A positive monotonic learning curve is a good thing - the game gets harder as the player gets better, and it does so at a reasonably uniform rate.
The games of the 80s featured this - but the difficulty usually maxed out at some point where the CPU was incapable of throwing more stuff at the player and maintaining frame rates (or keeping track of everything in the 64K RAM typically available to CPUs of that day.) Difficulty typically maxed out after 15-20 minutes, after which time the length of play was limited only by the player's bladder capacity and/or number of lives.
The boss concept introduced a discontiunity into the learning curve, allowing all players to enjoy the game up to a certain point, then ending the game (or forcing the addition of more quarters).
With modern CPUs, we could remove the upper limit on difficulty imposed by the 8-bit CPUs of the olden days, and do away with the boss and the continue concept. Gameplay can become "infinitely" hard; limited only by the player's nervous system.
Think of the 100-meter dash - a "game" that's thousands of years old. There's an upper limit to how fast even the most steroid-enhanced runner can run 100m. But nobody knows what that is, which is why we still revere folks who set records. (Or Konami's "Track and Field" with a CPU fast enough that your final score won't max out when you use a vibrating buzzer to tap the buttons for you - the game becomes a test of engineering skills ;-)
Getting around the problem you describe ("boring easy levels") is easy enough - just allow the player to start on a harder level, and give a bonus (score or time) for doing so. (as in Atari's Tempest, 1982).
Getting around the other problem you describe ("starting over from the beginning every time you get killed in 10 seconds by that goddamn boss") goes away when you get rid of the boss.
My candidate for "worst offender" in the "continue / boss" category: Rabbit Punch. Great game, funny as all hell. You "continue" through the entire game, utterly failing to build up any skill whatsoever, until the final level, at which point you can no longer continue, and have to restart the level from scratch. There's a special spot in hell waiting for the game designer who did that.
The little guys might be dying out
Capcom a little guy? Capcom games (SF *) are the most popular games when I'm at the arcade. People still are pumping quarters into the latest version of SF, which is why the news that Capcom is opting out is pretty scary: if the most popular arcade games arent good enough, then how can any of the other companies continue the arcade biz?
--
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
Really, it's not a big loss. When was the last time you saw an arcade game made by capcom that WASN'T Street Fighter or some derivative of it? In fact, Capcom's games lately have been utter copy-cat trash (take a look at the obscene # of Capcom fighter clones that are available for the Dreamcast).
Capcom USED to make good games. Remember Final Fight? Remember Mercs? Those were good times.
But then one day, Capcom released Street Fighter 2. That was a great game at the time. Then they released Street Fighter 2 Turbo, then Street Fighter 2 Championship Edition, then about a bazillion other Street Fighter 2 clones. What happened? Did the creative staff up and leave?
You wonder why they weren't making any money? It's because they weren't making any good games. Now, I'd care if Sega or Namco stopped making arcade games. That would be a sad day indeed. Those two companies do a lot of copy cat stuff as well, but at least some of their games show SOME creativity.
I've been thinking for a number of years (especially with those head-to-head driving games) that arcades would be a nifty place for networked games - but a GLOBAL network, not just inside a single arcade.
You could have arcades being part of a franchise, or you could have multiple arcades cooperating with each other, where all of the arcades are hooked together with fault-tolerant high-speed connections, and the games are set up so that you can choose to play anyone at any of the other arcade locations.
Throw in the opportunity for players to interact with each other (good time to brush up on your foreign language profanities), and some funky controllers which would be too expensive to buy for home use, and I think that a visit to the arcade would still be pretty enjoyable.
Of course, if the games DIDN'T cost $1/min, that would be even more enjoyable...
I have to say, I mourn the death of quality arcade game manufacturers. Fortunately, Capcom was not one of them. Sigh... my first job was running the game room in a ShowBiz Pizza (think Chuck E. Cheese with a bear instead of a mouse) the summer after I graduated from high school. By the end of that summer, I could rack up high scores on Spyhunter and Robotron 2084 without fail. I still remember some of the advanced levels of Bump N' Jump like the back of my hand. If only we'd had a Star Wars machine, I might never have left.
:-) Sigh... I want my Robotron back.
I spent half my youth either in or begging to go into arcades. I remember the first time I saw PacMan, the week it was released in the US. I remember the first time I saw a Missile Command. There used to be a Lunar Lander in the Aladdin's Castle in the mall near where I lived. I got in trouble I don't know how many times for sneaking a mile and a half up the street past the junior college to blow my quarters on the Centipede at the Shop-a-Snak mini mart, or the Galaxian at the Majik Market across the street. And when I was in college, I was lucky enough that the one "leftover" arcade game the vendors installed in our cafeteria was Bubble Bobble. Now THAT was a game - maybe the best game ever released.
I'm not going to lose sleep over Capcom not making money off of Super Ultra Street Fighter 2 Turbo Alpha Zany X-Men Spice Girls Crossover Mega. Gimme a break. I haven't seen an original arcade game in years. Though Dance Dance Revolution comes close, even if it is just memorization. At least it's different.
FIRST OFF...
The arcades across America are being hit hard for what I believe are three major reasons.
The first reason being the increasing popularity of the computer as a top of the line gameing machine. It used to be that you went to an arcade for top of the line games. Now you go to anywhere from Software Etc. to Kmart and pick up wonderfull games such as Half-Life, Sacrifice, and of course Unreal Tournament. The graphics on a computer moniter far surpas those of the arcade monitors.
2.No new arcades are being built. As Older arcade owners retire.. The tricky business of when to buy and sell cabinets is going to be lost to but a few individuals who learned the trade. This directly affects capcom because without arcades to purchase games, you have no one to make them for.
3. Public Intrest. In many cities arcades are banned, or HEAVILY regulated. This is partly because there is supposedly a minor increase in crime around arcades. What this does is cause potential proprieters to abandon the idea to to all of the strict ordinances against the arcade market.
SECONDLY...
CAPCOM was never King. The King and Queen (lol) were BALLEY/Midway, who kept up the arcade with a constant influx of awesome games from shooters, Pins, and Racers that attracted the general public and Hard-Core gamers alike.
Medieval Madness
HydroThunder
Cruisin line of arcade racers
Let's not forget Namco for makeing the # 1 running game for the past three years.
TIME CRISIS II
Write your city council to have all of the ordinances banning arcades removed!
DW
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
This could just be a sign that the traditional arcade has given way to the home system just as flip movies in penny arcades gave way to the modern arcades today and made room for VCRs and Television and pinball and so forth.
Eh...
The problem is, the gap has come down dramatically with technological advances, making it so items like the Metal Gear Solid 2 trailer for the PS2, which is all rendered in realtime, blow away a lot of arcade material, or at the very least equals it.
With the cost of playing, coupled with the fact that the PS2 and other consoles now generate comparable graphics and sound that equal if not exceed their arcade brethren, the home console is becoming a more attractive proposition for a games player. Shell out a buck or two a go, or shell out 50 or so for a game you can play infinite times. Home technology has finally caught up.
It could be worse though I guess. At least Capcom are still going to makes games.
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I remember back in 1997 or 1998 when arcades promised to start offering "compleatly new types of games."
Ok, sure I said, no prob, crap, I've been reading about them for ages and VR and motion sensers are about due to come into modern arcades.
Heya, first few games in the new "mega arcades" where a bit original. Hell, even house of the dead on those gigantic ass screens was original.
Shit, then the entire fun factor was over with when you released that at $1 per play, $1 per continue, MINIMUM (well, some games are $.75, but those are a rarity, ugh!) you where running out of money way to fast.
Oh yah, and gameplay was sacrificed for money making. Of course money is the objective, but they where so blatent about it. Forcing the player to die often times (House of the Dead2 comes in to mind, certian boss's where pretty much guarnteed to hit you) and even going so far as to have monsters be unbeatable for short periods of time while they got their licks in on you (not in plateformers either, I am talking about area51 style games here!!) made it quite obvious to the player that the game was AFTER their money.
Sure, sure, that thought is always in the back of your head, but while you are in some fantasy world blowing shit up, it should NOT be forced to the front of your mind by the game!!! I want a friggin fantasy land where I can kill shit left and right, if I have to pop a few quarters in now and then to keep the game a 'going then so be it, but hell, I am there for an adventure folks, I do not want to have my charecter lose life in what is plainly an attempt to rake in a few extra $$$'s on the part of the arcade company!
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Try substantially less than 10 minutes.  Many of today's current games don't seem to want to reward excellence with more play time.  Regardless of how many times I came in first place on Taito's downhill skiing game from a few years back, I never got to race again.  I'm sure that an operator can set the option allowing another race but as it was, my dollar lasted about 2 minutes.  Not a good value IMHO.
I think the games are too expensive - spending a $1.00 on 5 minutes of a game, then by the time you figure out the feel you spent $5.00
I see less and less people at the games, it's easyer now to get a Dreamcast or PS2 and play all you want, and now they include modems and internet connections it's better that the arcades.
I still think the best computer entertament is LAN games, get 4 PC install Hidden&Dangrouse and snipper your friends down. Such a good felling when you hit the CTRL and the next thing you hear is "AH SHIT!!!"
hmm... for fun I enjoy launching DDoS attacks against 127.87.42.5
With the widespread availability of affordable gaming systems (both PC and console), it's understandable that the arcade business might suffer a few losses. The price of valuable floor space (especially in malls) is becoming extremely expensive, as is the cost of these arcade systems. Accordingly, the game prices are going up a great deal - a $0.25 is a rarity, and it's not uncommon to spend $1.00 playing a 10 minute game.
/. about turning a cheap PC into a dedicated emulator in a custom built box.
Simply put, this is just too much money for too little entertainment. I live somewhat near a theater and arcade combo (with bumper cars and mini-golf). Going to see a 2-3 hour movie is much cheaper than spending about an hour in the arcade!
If one is a serious gamer, the time spent playing games every week is mind-boggling. Purchasing a cheaper console (Dreamcast, PS 1, etc) is FAR more economical than playing one's favorite arcade game every night. In addition, emulators are everywhere for those with PCs, playing the old classic arcade games. For those true geeks who like the boxed stand-up arcade set, there have been posts to
The ONLY real advantage in a real arcade system is unusual hardware - especially racing games and VR games. However, even that gaming hardware is becoming increasingly affordable.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
I wonder if those cool XBOX screenshots of the snowboarder with those sun dogs streaming off his glasses were the final straw?
SDMI: Finally! Music that won't rip or burn! Brought to you by the fine folks at RIAA.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
For me, the main ones are the increase in cost, as well as the greater availability of pc systems.
For a quarter, I might place a few games that I suck at, and wind up blowing 5 or ten bucks, because each games is only a quarter. But if it is a dollar up front, then I'm going to be far more careful with that money, and maybe only play it once or twice.
Let's face it, what makes a pizza place or a bar more money: a pinball machine priced at a buck that no one touches, or a machine with people around it at a quater a pop.
Now because of inflation, a quarter does not go as far as it used to. But sorry guys, things do NOT cost four times as much as they did in the 80s. So the guys got greedy, and people kept jacking the prices, and now we have things priced out of the market.
For the cost, the games got to be harder, etc so that you can maintain your cash flow per hour. A five minute game for a quarter is pulling in 3 big bucks an hour for revenue maximum. This is probably not very economic. With games costing thousands, or whatever, the numbers get interesting.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I find it funny that nearly the exact same comment was made here by someone who was working at Origin when Dungeon Master came out.
The interesting thing was that the other comment was not in the context of originality being killed off, but rather that it was in the context of the bar being raised as far as what kinds of quality people expect. Even more importantly, the game that prompted his comments was extremely innovative -- it more or less birthed a subgenre of 3D, real-time RPGs with drag-and-drop inventory management. Even Diablo, which most people call a graphical version of Hack, also has a clear Dungeon Master influence in it.
But to get back to the subject at hand, it's unfair to cite graphics as one of the "originality killers". I love pure, text-based, non-graphical Nethack as much as the next true geek, but there's something to be said for including graphics to drool over. They help immerse you in the world. Consider "Out of this World" and "Ultima VI". Both were innovative (OOTW provided a platform game that completely revolved around the story, included puzzle solving, and avoided lots of cut-and-paste level design. U6 created a giant above-ground world that was all one scale.), both have graphics that would be considered so-so by today's standard, but both have graphics that you can still point at and go, "That's more than just programming. That's art." (As a random aside, OOTW probably isn't the best example, given that there are only two names in the credits, with the second guy only helping with sound effects and doing the music, IIRC. But it still illustrates the point of good art.)
So yes, some people will use gee-whiz graphics as a means to avoid producing something original, but you also have people using gee-whiz graphics as a means to produce something both original and beautiful.
Someone please explain to me how game manufacturers benefit from charging a dollar to play a game. There was a Sega Star Wars Arcade game here at a local place that cost $1 per play. It sat empty 99.9% of the time. After it got a bit older and there were problems with the monitor, the price was cut to a quarter a play and now you have to wait in line to play...despite the fact that there is a nasty mark on the screen.
When I was very young (6 or 7 years old), I would get $1 to play each time I went to the arcade. I had to stand on one of the little boosters to even reach the controls. I could enjoy myself for quite a bit of time despite my limited game playing skills, however, now that dollar would last 5 minutes as it would be fed into a game that is DESIGNED to kill me/beat me/take my money after a certain period of time.
The article has been updated with a reply. It's not entirely bailing, but cutting back. They conspicuously use the word "software" and avoid the words "hardware" and "boards." The most interesting thing is that I was under the erroneous opinion that Japanese Arcades were in great shape.
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These places will never die out because of the secondary use of arcades.
If anyone has ever been downtown Melbourne, Australia, then they will see 100s of video arcades packed with machines. These machines take cash. The machine can be easily fixed to say that they have had $1000 passed through them for every $1. When put onto accounting books this looks legit. I would be willing to bet that this is an excellent opportunity to clean drug money, because every second arcade deals smack right outta the change booth. If this doesnt make any sense, then you need to get outta your glass house, away from the computer screen and down into the street where this sort of thing is common place.
Does it go on forever?
Well, you got places like Pladium which of course costs a fortune and has contracts with specific vendors. And then you got a bunch of dinky arcade hangouts in the heart of downtown. That's it.
When I grew up there was the local pizza place with some arcade boxes and the local convenience store etc. Now there is none of that. Why would kids drop in coins when they can play way better games on way better TVs at home. It is also depressing when the average game is now $1 or more. It used to be 25c!
And if the kiddies wanna spend loads of cash just go to Sega City or Pladium which are way more than an arcade anyways.
Sad but true, the arcade days are numbered.
--- tracer.ca
Like arcades used to, it's offering things that you couldn't get at home and, so, is giving people a reason to go to the arcade. The House of the Dead machines are always full when I go to one of my local Playdiums (Playdia?) so I wouldn't say that just because you can own it at home, people aren't going to go out and play it. I certainly do.
Also, I may be a dying breed, but I like pinball and I can't play the new pinball machines anywhere but at an arcade. There, at least, is a market (tiny as it is) that consoles can't usurp.
I think that the first hint of this evolutionary step was when my father took me to BattleTech, in Chicago. It was one of the first VR 'centers' ever created where ~20 people competed against each other from within their own capsules. (basically BattleMech) If I remember right, the game ran on Amigas and was considered the most advanced technology like it, back in the late 80's. Does anyone here remember that?
Obviously, it was just a hint of what was to come, and I really think that home systems have overridden this market. Don't forget that 3DFx was one of the top companies making chips in this arena (for Sega), and later abandoned it in favor of the home PC market. hmmmmm, and where are they now?