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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?
They do? Funny, I think I remember hearing that the home console had killed the video arcade. I smell desperation in the XBox division...
I get the feeling there's not going to be an XBox 2. Either someone at Microsoft will see the light, or a group of shareholders will, and they'll raise a stink...
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...an 80" BSOD!
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
What arcades?
Of the 5 malls in my neck of the woods only one has an arcade (Sega City). There's one nightclub with a gameroom, and a handful of putt-putt golf courses. Oh, and a Chuck E Cheese, which hasn't gotten a new video game in well over 3 years.
Midway just got out of the biz altogether.
Or does Microsoft just want to be the next Sega?
Arcades were the thing during the 80's when the newest technology really needed to fit in something the size of a refrigerator but kids barely go to arcades anymore. Nearly all the ones in my area have gone way under and I think microsoft is living in a dream world.
If religous zealots don't believe in Evolution, then why are they so worried about bird flu?
Arcade games by there very nature are different from many console games. Arcade games are very time limited as you usually have a bunch of people standing in line waiting. Console games don't have that limitation.
Many arcade to console conversion were very successful. I can't think of one where a console game made it into the arcades.
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
...you must agree to the game's EULA-- after you put the quarter in!
~Philly
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.
... when the "good" games were .50 to start and .25 to continue, and the really really good games were .75 to start. Nowadays games are .75 (average) and not really any different/more enjoyable than the run of the mill PC/console game.
I used to spend alot of time (and money) going to arcades, but now I'd rather spend 40-50 bucks and buy a game than 1.00 to play one for 3 minutes.
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
So I guess that arcades and arcade machines aren't dead after all?
This is a happy moment for me, but I can't really think of any games currently on Xbox that would translate very well into an arcade experience. Maybe Panzer Dragoon, the platformers, and a few racing games that, while I don't personally find them all that interesting, tend to be popular in arcades. Is this just a continuation of this article involving Sega though? Or maybe they're just going to use MAME! Realistically, without Sega's support, what would Microsoft have to offer for the arcade world?
You're only as smart as your brain.
Given that home games consoles provide much the same compute resource as arcade machines what is the added value of an arcade? I think there are two 'extras' which arcades provide.
1. Modern arcade machines tend to be more like fairground rides with hydraulics to augment the game experience and probably better screens
2. An audience.
I can see kids refining their skills at home and then going head-to-head in the arcades. Integrate this with on-line gambling and we may see a return of the gladiatorial arena
-- "Can't sleep, clowns will eat me!"
...I can see why they thought of it.
It is black-letter fact, the arcade is dead. Has been dead, in fact, for a long time. From the article itself:
Eddie Adlum, publisher of arcade magazine RePlay, said arcades have been in decline ever since the rise of console gaming. About a decade ago, he estimates there were 10,000 arcades, but that number has since dropped to about 3,000. Hit games such as ``Ms. Pacman'' once sold 100,000 machines, but today, typical hits sell maybe 4,000 to 6,000 units, Adlum said.
However, there is something very similar to the arcade which is growing moderatealy well both in the U.S. and especially in Asia. It's a kind of mutation of the "internet cafe." It seems, while kids won't plunk down dollars to play conventional arcade games, they will go out and "rent" a PC to play Counterstrike or Starcraft for an hour or three. Multiplayer games, it seems, still have draw. And thus the article goes on...
Lately, the rise of online gaming, especially in Asia, has transformed many arcades from stand-alone machines to networks of connected computers where players can play against each other or anyone else over the Internet. That transition plays to the Xbox's strength, since it is primed for broadband gaming, and it also plays to Microsoft's strong relationship with Sega, which is a big supporter of online gaming.
So they think they will somehow tap into this growing phenomenon, instead of merely blowing 50 million or so producing expensive collectors items. I'm not holding my breath, but anything is possible, I guess.
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Microsoft announced today that XBox technology would be a federal requirement for all licensed preschools. FCC Chairman Michael Powell explained that this was a good decision, a consensus decision and had no political component to it whatsoever. After everyone stopped laughing, Microsoft's Steve Ballmer explained that exposing preschoolers to the technology now ensured a steady revenue stream for Microsoft. Ballmer then announced that the first game available will be "Dancing Monkeyboy". Players will jump around trying to collect developers. If they sweat too much, have a coronary or get hit with the dreaded "Monopolist" tag, they lose.
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 don't know why no one else (who comments) sees how this works.
The idea behind this is that MS can have some development house make/market an arcade game that is designed from square one to work on an XBox.
Everybody gets hooked on the arcade game, then when the XBox/Console version is released and people go home and buy it - including buying an Xbox if they haven't already. It's pretty much the same as exlcusive titles, but people get to "Try Before They Buy" at the arcade.
-Andrew
Dreamcast was developed from the Naomi technology available in arcades in the first place.
;)
This is the reversed process. And add the fact that the hardware in the XBOX isn't new or revolutionary at all. Is basically Intel x86 + nVidia + hardware locks + a now-crappy HD + a huge ugly case. Anyway I love some of the games
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...
Can anyone confirm this?
I hate replying to myself, but another problem with arcades is that alot of them (and this isnt really new) went from quarters to tokens. At the start, it was 4 quarters = 4 tokens, and if you bought like, 10 dollars worth they gave you extra. Then it went 4 quarters = 3 tokens, and they upped the amount of tokens needed to play. Now they have "credit cards" that you "buy" and add money to, and games are like, .35 or .65 cents a credit (which means that you'll almost ALWAYS have a balance leftover, so you put more money in to recharge it)...
Now, I can understand that they want to keep their customers, and if you can only spend the "money" in one establishment well you're not going to "hop ship", but there are many times that I've decided not to spend a few bucks in arcades, simply because I wasnt sure how much time I had, and I wasnt going to get stuck with useless tokens (think, at a mall or whatever that is not close to home that you go to maybe 1 time a year if that, or possibly the first and last time you go there for whatever reason)...
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
Microsoft is in fact very much the 800 pound gorilla when they have a chance to use their Windows/Office monopoly against you but when they have to go stand on equal footing with someone and compete they are so friggin lost it's really kind of comical.
At one time I think this (Arcade games influencing what kind of console games people bought) was true but this is grossly out of date IMO. If anything then today it's the reverse of that.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
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]
is the only arcade out here that is not losing money hand over foot. The best part is they won't let anyone under 21 in except for dinner with their parents. When ever I get the yen for a console game fix I go there. It never lasts more than an hour, then I can get back to some serious gaming on my PC. Someday consoles will get there, maybe soon, but they aren't there now. Just check out EQ, or UT or any so-called cross-port game. Though Mario Kart is a kick in the a$$.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
The article states that Sony and Nintendo are also working on arcade versions of their systems. Is anyone crying doom and gloom over this and claiming that Sony and Nintendo are idiots who must be desperate? No? Okay, why is (almost) everyoine saying that about Microsoft?
Do I need to even ask? No. I don't. It's the typical unthinking knee-jerk "M$ is a bunch of stupid poopy-heads and Bill Gate$ eats babies!" panty twsiting that goes on here every time a article about Microsoft gets posted.
Is the arcade scene dead? In the USA it pretty much is. But it's alive and well in Japan, the one market where the XBox is not doing well at all. The arcade scene is good enough in Japan that Sony and Nintendo also think it's an idea worth looking into.
I'm not a pro-Microsoft nutjob. They do lots of things that piss me off (XP is a disgrace, Media Player 9 is evil beyond compare, MS Bob was a joke, I dislike their embrace and extend policy) but this automatic anti-MS spew is laughable at best and sadly pathetic at worste.
By now most of you mods have decided to mod me down as a troll. But take a momet to think about this. Are we doing ourselves any favors by acting like jackasses every time Microsoft does something?
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
The argument that they will be trying to generate interest for the home versions of these arcade games just doesn't hold water. If you are trying to generate interest in your product, you should probably try to reach as many people as possible for as little money as possible. The number of times that a person visits an arcade in a month has got to be low. Why take such a financial risk to generate hype for such a small audience?
Watch MS write it off on their taxes like they did with XBOX development. "Yeah, we're new to the biz. We had no idea Motocross Mania: ARCADE was going to bomb." This just sounds like planned failure from the get go.
Granted, the mouse that Microsoft makes is of equal quality to any other name brand mouse of reasonable quality I can think of. Let us go back to the days when each system you bought came with a mouse that was slightly different though.
You've seen them of course. Compaq mice, Gateway mice, and HP mice. Many others and most, if you flipped them over were made by Logitech as I recall. Not all of course but many of them.
Then a few years ago something happened that was worth noticing. Computer makers (practically all of them) began throwing in a standard Microsoft mouse (sometimes with their name on it "DELL by Microsoft" is sitting on the one right in front of me at this moment, often in the color the CPU and keyboard were made in).
I personally don't think that all these computer makers started doing this because the Microsoft mouse was better than the one they were using before this time. It seems unlikely that they would all come to this conclusion at the same time.
I think it's possible that the Microsoft mouse was cheaper maybe or that they were going to get a better deal on their Windows licenses if they went that way.
This is what I suspect. I of course have no evidence of this but I know that I used a couple of different brands of mice in the years before I started getting handed mountains of MS Mice every time we bought computers where I work. Then after a while I got to where nothing else felt quite right. I actually tried to go back and use one of my old Logitech 3-button mice once and found the experience almost painful. Is it muscle memory? I don't know.
Anyway I'm thinking that if the MS Mouse was cheaper than it was in all likelyhood cheaper because Microsoft was losing money on it (which they could afford to do thanks to their enormous income from Windows) or it was in some way negotiated as part of the license deal. They make a good mouse true but I don't think for a second they have the share of the "mouse market" they posess right now without their income from Windows and/or their leverage with the PC makers.
Maybe that's just part of the present day "don't trust MS in anything thinking" but it feels right.
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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--