Slashdot Mirror
Xbox Coming to Arcades
Stanl writes "The San Jose Mercury News reports that Microsoft will be taking Xbox technology into arcades, including a statement that, 'arcade titles influence the kind of console games that fans buy.' That is an interesting unattributed observation."
Would a move like this really help Microsoft in the console market?
Sega has done this with Dreamcast games. and Arcade cabinets and hardware is MUCH more expensive than the console. It seems like a natural step.
The most succesful ones are marketed at adults these days. Think places like ESPN Zone and Dave & Busters. They can often offer games most people can't, or wouldn't, buy for long term use, multiplayer gaming and, of course, food and drink.
I remember as a kid playing the arcade version, the playing the console version. Naturally the console version was noticably of lower quality in terms of graphics, and even sometimes in features (Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat come to mind as examples I recall).
I imagine the days may be upon us, if not already here, where this is no longer the case. That said, if the console is a good as the arcade version, why does it influence it anymore? This rings especially true when I compare the popularity of arcades today with the days of my childhood. Before, they were all hopping, happening places where you had to stand in line to play a game. Today they are barely-staffed ghost towns, at least all of them within 20 miles of me. Sure you still have the Chucky Cheeses, but the days of the mall arcade, where people went just to play a game, seem numbered.
Boom Shanka
I think a lot of the early posters are missing the point here. The home consoles of late killed arcades because they offered the same quality for a one-time charge at home, as opposed to quartering one to death.
By introducing almost identical titles (they would have to change the payment scheme, etc.) in arcades and at the same time offer a one-time buy cabinet that you could easily change the game on (cheaper for the arcade), they would have people paying to advertise for them.
Say you go to blockbuster, or the local game store, and they have a game you never heard of on the arcade. You play a game for $0.25, and really enjoy it. Then you can either rent or buy the exact same quality game and take it home. This was an old dream to have, bring the arcade home (remember atari 2600 pac-man). Now when you do it, it actually IS the game at the arcade. No more need for MAME.
Just my 25 cents.
Microsoft is always trying to undermine their competition, and they do that by copying what other companies do and try to saturate the market..
Nintendo/Namco/Sega - have their Triforce arcade system based on gamecube arcitecture, and I think Microsoft is just scared and lost, as usual.
I don't think they actually have a solid plan for what they are doing- just release a few arcade games to push out Triforce's dominance, and in turn take away some thunder from beaneath the wings of Nintendo.
I think this is actually a great idea.. I agree that the old arcade in the malls are kinda out of date with all the new consoles out but the 21+ arcades, like Dave and Busters and Gameworks are GREAT moneymaking places for M$ to display their technology. I just hope the PS3 will have the same headstart that the PS2 enjoyed for so long...
Indeed. And, IMHO, the reason arcades are dying is that you can get game quality almost as good in your house. So what is Microsoft offering?:
"For the arcade product, Nvidia probably will supply the same graphics chip it provides for the Xbox home console. In part, that's because the quality of the Xbox graphics engine is considered more than adequate to power a cool arcade machine, though the machine will have more main memory chips than the 64 megabytes in the Xbox to accommodate fast-action arcade graphics."
Maybe I'm missing something, but this isn't going to be enough to bring me back out to the arcade.
(and if I want a variety of games? it's called "rental")
Pure arcades don't make money. It's the blinky environment with food and drink that make money. The social aspect of arcades. I'm not proud of it but I get joy out of humiliating others in games. All the better if I can practice a game at home and trounce someone in a social setting later. Geeky competition. There may be some money to be made here but probably only in a large scale "Dave & Busters" type setting.
On a side note, has anyone else noticed LAN gaming joints popping up in every strip center? Is anyone turning a profit?
-AC
Can anyone confirm this?
I remember seeing a beachhead 2000 machine not working and having a windows dialog box saying something along the lines of "can't find movie a."
Not surprising since the game seemed to be a quick and easy port of the pc version.
I don't know about Midway or other arcade game manufacturers, but I find one of the major problems with the arcade business to be that nobody wants the arcades around.
There are at least three shopping malls in Jackson, MS, the largest city in the state. Only one of them has an arcade (Owned by Namco), and it's in the process of closing up. Why? Because the mall owners wanted to stiff Namco out of more money for the same location, while simultaneously enacting rules cutting back on the amount of money Namco can make at this location. Metrocenter enacted a new rule which basically forbids anyone under the age of 18 from entering the mall without being accompanied by an adult during the hours of 3-Close on Friday or Saturday...pretty much the only time you could have kids/teens in the arcade without it being a schoolnight.
Furthermore, Northpark Mall shafted the Cyberstation's lease (also owned by Namco), because they just didn't want an arcade. The complaint was that "the arcade went against the family atmosphere" which the mall was trying to obtain. They offered a renewal for an exorbitant amount of extra money, but the manager turned down the extortion rate and went on operating the arcade in Metrocenter (until recently anyway).
I went to all of the Wolfchase malls in St. Louis, and *none* of them had arcades anywhere. I checked later, and it seems that most of the arcades are in smaller complexes and shopping centers that are out of the way. Nobody seems to want them around anymore. Perhaps it's somewhat of a "fashion taste"? Are arcades *so* 90's now?
Games like Dance Dance Revolution and Mo-Cap Boxing are demonstrating quite clearly that the arcade industry has life left in it. I disagree with the assertion that the arcade industry is dying, and say instead that outside influences are killing it purposefully.
"Mod, mod, mod...and another troll bites the dust."
The problem is that no one has put arcade games, internet games, and rpgs together. The best example I can think of is Pokemon.
It was very nicely tiered across their line of products. You could take your handheld characters and use them to battle in 3D on the console! If you know anything about Pokemon, you'll understand what's next... It would have been the perfect arcade game! They attempted something like it with snap? but it was too low key. As an arcade game, they could have had big screen Poke-battles at the arcade, and connect them with the internet to other arcades. Then you could have standings, and lots of other stuff. And of course, you would take your original cart home and train up your monster after you lost horribily.
I think Id or EA could pull something like this off using PCs instead. Quake isn't really a general public style game--it's too violent. Something like Warcraft or Diablo would work. The key is to involve the spectators as well as the players! Lots of PC games would be cool to watch if you could see the big picture [a whole Quake, Warcraft, Diablo level at once] They would see things the players wouldn't notice.
And of course you could use massive plasma screens with high-powered video cards. [32-way GeforceFX anybody]
Arcades are being handled all wrong by the videogame industry now, because the sole reason they existed (technological) is no longer valid.
Arcades should be morphed into a role that the movie industry uses Theaters for: New Releases.
First the industry needs to develop a group of standard cabinets/hardware that would be able to play similar genres easily. There would be a racing deluxe racing cabinet that could easily house and play Need For Speed, Grand Turismo, etc. There would be a cabinet for fighting games, trackball games and so on. The system would basically be a industrialized MAME cabinet. Delivery of content could be over broadband (so the arcade does not have to do much) or be installed via CD-ROM. The hardware would easily be changeable so you could have different cabinets dedicated to fighting games with 4, 5 or 6 buttons, two joysticks or whatever is needed.
Second, the companies would need to do some advertising to get the word out that game "X" is in arcades.
Third, the Arcades would house many many games, not just a select few. So if I walked up to a fighting cabinet, I could be able to play any Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Tekken, etc. Even those from many years ago. This would help broaden the appeal of the games.
Lastly, games would be released to the Arcades first for a certain period of time before the game are re-packaged and released to the home market. Not all games would follow this route, but I know that games like Vice City would rack in a some dough if it was in 3000 arcades three months prior to home release.
The main reason that arcades and games still exist now is because vendors are now offering games that do more with hardware and atmosphere, than just a game in a generic cabinet. Games like F355 Challenge can and were done on Dreamcast, but the experience is different playing it with 3 monitors and 180 degree viewing. Same goes for those dance machines. The problem is, the prices of these games are becoming insane.
Now, how the industry would morph Arcades in this role is another problem, for another day...
-Brian
Sydney arcades as well. Our friday and saturday nights in the late 90's in Sydney consisted of practising on the Saturn until about 9pm in VF2, Daytona and Sega Rally. Then we would head down to the arcades near the cinemas/China Town in Sydney and challenge for the VF2 machine. I actually got quite good at it.
When I came to the US in '97 I expected to find the same thing, but other than a mall in New Jersey found nothing similar. I was expecting to play some great American VF2 players who hung out in the arcades in the US to play and challenge for the machine. But there was nothing like that. I was pretty disappointed at the time about it.
omico--