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State of the U.S. Arcade Industry 2004
Gamaroo writes "1up.com has posted an article on arcade game machines, the loss of the profit margin and the future of the industry. In their words: "There was a time when an arcade operator in America could buy a Ms. Pac-Man machine for less than $1,000, let it sit in an arcade, bar or storefront, and see that game make back over 30 times the initial investment. In 2004, that kind of profit margin is little more than a pipe dream.""
The door has swung the other direction. As a child, I wasn't the richest kid in town, and I didn't play arcade games much. It was a quarter a pop, and if you aren't much good (which you can't be without experience) your quarter doesn't last long.
I remember quite vividly getting my first nintendo, and how amazing it seemed that I could play Duck Hunt for half an hour with no line, and no quarters.
Why go back?
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
First of all, games cost more now because the systems are more complicated. If you could make 30 times the current investment back on some of the more expensive games now, it would amount to over $100k. Second, Pac-Man is arguably one of the greatest games ever created in terms of popularity. Hence the reason the "game" icon on /. is what else, but Pac-Man himself. How much has Tetris made? A ton. Is there still room for profit? Yes. Does every game generate the type of profit that Pac-Man or Tetris did/does? NO!
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I remember back in the day when I'd drop a few buckets of quaters at the arcade. I could probably retire if I had all those quarters back! Now with the increase in technology and such "large" games being condensed to compact disks one would almost think that arcades "should" be obsolete. The future of the industry has changed because the technology has changed. Much in the same way the courier business had to change it's entire model in the 80's due to the big boom of fax machines. While the arcade business may independantly suffer a loss it is the end consumer reaping the benefits. That is one of the things that makes technology so wonderful.
Dave and Busters also seems to have as many if not more gambling type games as video games. Which I also think is an indicator on the lack of viability of the arcade video games as things stand now.
You probably remember him as the guy who seemed to live in the arcade and was always playing the cool new game that you really wanted to try out. Eventually, you'd get up the nerve to challenge him, but he somehow selected a secret character that wasn't available from the main screen, and proceeded to unleash every special attack under the sun to dispose of you in about three seconds. Then, he looked over, sneered, and let forth a sarcastic "good game."
I know the Fighting Game Master personally drove me out of the arcade and to the home consoles.
DecafJedi
my weblog: apropos of something
One of the reasons cited for arcade losses lately is that home consoles have comparable power to the arcade machines, meaning that there's little reason to go to the arcade when you can just play the same game at the comfort of home. It's one of the same market transitions that the MPAA fears like crazy.
...things like Mo-Cap Boxing, Martial Beat, and Police 911...and big-screen fighters.
I feel that's why Bemani games like Dance Dance Revolution and Drummania are so popular - They offer a unique experience that isn't easily recreated at home without a substantial hardware investment. Sure, you can buy softpads or metal pads for DDR, but the arcade is still where it's at for both ideal configurations and the social factor.
Everyone always says that console peripherals never sell well...So, perhaps the games needing the peripherals should be tried more in the arcade. What games are really popular in arcades? Silent Scope...Bemani titles
"Mod, mod, mod...and another troll bites the dust."
If they were able to run MAME cabinets with all of our fav games from the 80's, then they'd make some coins.
CB
free ipod and free gmail!
I can see why. I have no reason to go to the traditional arcade anymore. Between my PS2 and PC I have no urging to waste quarters at the arcade. To return to the arcade I need something different. Way back when the arcade offered better graphics and range of games. I want to see something I can't do at home, be it VR helmets/pods, floating holograms, or some other new fangled contraption.
--Gentoo Baby!
Money. Back in my day (not to long ago) the price to play a game was 25 cents. Today if you go into an arcade many games are $1.00 or more. I can't afford these prices. What do you expect children to do? (If you answered go to their parents for money you are right)
Well what does the parent (me) say. "Well back in my day, playing these machines only cost 25 cents."
I went to an arcade the other day with my brother and nephew. The games cost 1 UKP each and typically lasted about a minute - 3 minutes maximum. When I used to play arcade games a lot more you'd get more for far less money - 3 to 5 minutes for 10pence. It's not something I'm likely to ever do again. I'd rather spend the money on a couple of drinks at the bar and then get a game for my PC or console.
There was a time when an arcade operator in America could buy a Ms. Pac-Man machine for less than $1,000, let it sit in an arcade, bar or storefront, and see that game make back over 30 times the initial investment
Once upon a time, games were good. But can they expect teenagers / young adults to take games like Dance Dance Revolution seriously? If they would make some decent games, that might help.
Not to mention kill off home consoles. This is like the RIAA bitching about losing sales on cassettes when people are buying more CDs.
Likely because the games were actually FUN back then. Sure they were simple little platformers, but you could go for as long as you had the skill to survive. Not to mention the fact that everything now is almost a dollar or more to play for 2 minutes, thanks to timers and 'checkpoint' play there's just no way to feel satisfied out of the money you put in.
I'd gladly throw $20 or more at an old quarter arcade from the early 90's (and would gladly do so again if they had some today), but today's 'arcades' simply aren't. You have a few hulking machines taking up all the space because shooters need distance from the screen, driving games need chairs and such, and heaven knows what else (silent scope et al that need rediculously large gear).
Where $20 used to go 60-80 games (some games were $.50 *GASP!*), it'll now go maybe 15-20, and anything that's still the same old cabinet type is just a fighting game with no creativity or amusement to it at all. No thanks.
I completely agree. Nowadays, the only way arcade machines get my quarters are if they are "old-school" (childhood nostalgia value, from the golden age of arcades: Pac Man, Tempest, Galaga, Robotron 2084, etc.), or Golden Tee. Home console gaming lets me play my games on my terms when I want to. Arcades these days are full of genres I generally don't care for: driving (cars, boats, snowmobiles) or fighting games, which are three minute multi-button mash-fests.
As the article alludes to, the only way the arcade industry has any hope in the US is to add the online element, and especially a way to have the player feel like they are actually competitive within the game. There's no point to have a player ranking system where there's just no possible way I'll ever be better than 2324th place. A tiered system would really help to get the player more involved. I know I'd play a lot more if it got me from 24th place to 9th place, than if it got me from 2320th place to 1387th.
So, 25c machines with simple, yet addictive gameplay, and online action for more complex games are necessary for the arcade to survive beyond 2010.
Arcade gaming used to be an easy worth while hobby. You could go to the local Arcade, Movie Theater, or even Grocery Store/Convienient Store, and spend a roll of $10 in quarters on it.
Now I have to LOOK for video games, and all I see anymore are the sick and tired genres of "Light Gun", "Driving", or "2/3d fighter". Back when this stuff was profitable, every game seemed to have a little uniqueness to it.
Its not hard to see why things are the way they are
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
The arcade is more social because you can meet new people, show them how good you are, and humiliate your opponent(s) (like in multiplayer games).
And if you lose you can beat them up.
When you play at home you don't get as much satisfaction.
Yacine.
There is only one reason for arcades now. Games that require special peripherals beyond keyboard/mouse/gamepad. They could be basic driving games, or they could be things such as Dancing Pads for DDR.
I may drop a quarter now and then to play a good racing game in an arcade. I'm not going to drop a hundred bucks for a steering wheel/gear shift/pedal set for my PC/console.
The problem is that those "special peripherals" cause the game to be $1.00 a pop. Many of the games are timed, so a poorly skilled player is paying $1.00/minute to play the game. I bought a DDR mat on eBay for $20 and the game for $20. My wife and I have probably played 500 games on it.
I'm not paying $1.00 a pop to learn to play a game. They're too damn complicated to be paying to learn it. There wasn't much to learn in Pac-Man or Galaga, and you definitely didn't have to waste a bunch of quarters to find out that up-down-fire-fire-jump would do a super ninja roundhouse, where up-down-fire-jump or any other combination will just get you killed.
with the popularity of FPSes, why not have arcade machines (w/ comfortable seats and controls) lined up? Give like 5 lives for 25 cents to play Counterstrike, Unreal 2xxx, Halo, BF1492 or whatever...
Just have each terminal present the list of games being played and enable it to connect to the appropriate server.
it would sure beat lugging your whole computer system to a LAN party... and there wouldnt be any cheaters.
mmm... Alyssa Milano...
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
I remember sitting in an arcade while my parents went shopping, I'd have money say $10 and would love to play the games there. Games of Frogger, Rampage, etc.. cost 20c and I could play for the hole hour or so. There were lots of other kids around me, and we were all 'playing together'. Then the newer games game along, fancy 'teenage mutant ninja turtles' and the like, they cost $1 and the other games had been jacked up to 3x20c .. suddenly my time in the arcade was shortened. I would spend the time, looking at the machines.. too expensive for me and most other kids to spend our idle time on. Some kids left. I left. The atmosphere was gone. There where some kids of course but they had, 'new' money, and would spend it have a quick game and leave. The gaming industry tried to follow the consoles with these fancy new games, but the consoles still had their inherit advantages of being 'free' to use, and at home, (or the friends house). When the social culture of going to the arcade changed, came the end of the 'profit'. Arcades started doing, SUPER sessions, where you had free games for parties and such, these were great, the atmosphere was there again. But not for 3x20c. And not for the 'cash cards' the 'hope you won't notice you're money going away' cards.
Bring back CHEAP idle time games for kids, and you'll have that stable revenue again. IF there's that social atmosphere, and not one of disapointment.
I agree with you: the old school arcades rocked. There was nothing like standing in a dark smoky room with the sounds of video war being raged all around you. The real reason those places began to collapse though is not just becuase the games got more complex (any RPG beyond Cadash would never work in an aracde) but also becuase the atmosphere of those hole-in-the-wall arcades changed. You have a bunch of teenagers running around a darkened room, their pockets filled with cash. You just knew crime would become a problem and it did. The arcades began to be populated by gangs and older kids who would steal the cash off the littler kids. Arcades became a place were children should be afraid to enter. That's what led to the rise of the family arcade places (which were no fun for teenagers.) That's what probably hurt the arcades most - they became dangerous. Then gradually as the NES and the consoles began to not only match but outdo any game you'd find in the arcades (during the atari era the console games were cheesy compared to the arcades), people could no longer justify putting $50 in machines when they could just buy the carts. So one by one the places shutdown. The only thing keeping the arcade business running now, I bet, is the children who can't afford a console, the supermarket arcade machines (play video games while I shop), and the arcades that try to recapture the feel of what the arcades were in our youths (i.e. nostalgia).
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
Now days, playing pinball is another of the few reasons to go to an arcade, IMHO.
The reason is the same as has been mentioned for DDR, etc.... Speciality hardware that can't/isn't duplicated at home (affordably).
While there are video-game pinball simulations, they really aren't the same as playing on a physical machine. The video-game-pinball becomes closer to a twitch-game, where if you twitch at the right moment you get a predictable result. In contrast, the physical pinball can have spin and other effects that influence the ball behavior and make the game much more interesting.
When I go to a bar or other place with coin-op games, I almost always will stop and play pinball. I hardly even think of playing a video-game.
McFly777
- - -
"What do people mean when they say the computer went down on them?" -Marilyn Pittman
While I agree that I don't enjoy playing as much by myself, I do not agree that I play with other people to learn more about the game.
The way we learned tricks in games has changed over time. It started with learning from the masters as you talked about here, but it also began to spread through your networks of friends and the through the growth of strategy magazines.
Today, I don't know anyone who plays games and doesn't go to GameFAQs. It remains to be seen whether we are just too lazy to do this on our own, but places like GameFAQs are probably the staple of where most of the gamers learn the tricks these days.
I believe that the important issue of arcades is the SOCIAL aspect. The lure of becoming the expert and the arcade game to show off your skills is nowhere as prevalent as it is in the arcades. The crowds that develop around a master can't happen at home. The competitiveness in a racing game or the cooperation between two shooters is a great lure.
However, even this is under attack by consoles, with World-Rankings, Xbox live tournaments, and the growth of 4-player gaming.
One related issue I believe is urban design. People are no longer required to leave their homes for an arcade experience. GOING To the Arcade for the 'marginally better' experience CERTAINLY isnt worth driving your car across the city (a long trip) just on a 'whim'. North Americans spend alot of time in their cars navigating our sprawling communities -- this encourages 'cocooning', people building their own private domains for all things. People just cannot be bothered to leave their homes and navigate the stinking, expensive, unsafe, endless roadways to get to the aracde.
If our urban spaces were designed more wisely, an arcade would be 'closer' and more accessible. The benefit of social interaction (with strangers, neighbours and friends) would be more easily realized... not to mention access to all the best games.
With Sprawl just getting to the arcade is a chore.
In most modern games the rules are basically as follows:
Figher : Kill everything in sight
Shooter : Kill evrything in sight
Racer : Get in front of everything and go really fast
/.'ers still drop a quarter into a Galaga, Pac-Man, Time Pilot, or Space Invaders machine whenever they see one?
Remember how popular Pac-Man was? All you had to do was eat dots. But you had to figure out a pattern to avoid the ghosts and you were rewared with humorous little movie clips. Remember how popular Donkey Kong was? All you had to do was rescue the chick. But you had to figure out how to avoid the barrels, fireballs, pies, bouncing rivets, etc. Even for home games, one of the most popular was the Atari 2600 game Fantasy Adventure. This games had the worst graphics ever but it had great playability.
This quality of playability is why MAME is so stinking popular. We can still play these old games. How many
If console makers want to rebuild their market they need to make the games easier to control but make it more mentally challenging to play. I still play the Mario Brothers games on my old Nintendo Entertainment System. Who needs an XBOX?
Insightful?? WTF?? Who are you people?!?
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This isn't the sig you're looking for. Move along.
Next thing I know, I see a guy pull his mask off and spit fire on his opponent, burning his flesh off. I said to myself 'I must learn this game or die trying'.
At first, I was almost scared away by (and hated) the Masters of Mortal Kombat, but I kept plugging away, hundreds (thousands?) of quarters later I became one of the Masters.
Felt good to be able to walk into an arcade and have everybody call you by your favorite characters name, to be able to crush the newbies with only a couple of combos, the feeling of joy when the screen went dark and the announcer proclaimed FINISH HIM!
Hell, the only reason I am into computers today was because in the early nineties I asked a guy how the hell they learned all of the MK moves, he said "the Internet" - the rest is history.
and as Far as the internet Goes, started with Mosaic and Netscape 1.0, come full circle and back with Mozilla. Dayum!
Listen, just because the food is better than what you're used to at Long John Silver or Olive Garden does not make it "excellent." D&B food is shit, plain and simple.
Then again, I'm sure the "Tequila Lime Chicken smothered in Montery Jack Cheese" you got tasted mighty fine to your pallet.
If I remember correctly, it's 21+ at certain times of day but not others.
One of the guys I used to go with completely agreed with your viewpoint, though. He used to say he wanted to open a place almost exactly like D&B, but with exactly one stripper off in a corner pole-dancin' -- just to make sure that children would never, ever be allowed in there.
Do you think the fact that arcades are often less than profitable has anything to do with the fact that to play a game you often have to pay a dollar for a very few minutes of game-time? I have been to many arcades and often I see machines sitting unused for large amounts of time. Wouldn't it be more proffitable to charge a quarter a game? I bet people would be much more inclined at that point to pump in the quarters. It is just hard to convince oneself that they are going to be getting their moneys worth when a game costs a dollar to play.
First off the article did an amazing job of pointing out the situation of the arcades right now. But one thing that I personally feel affects the US arcade situation is lan parties and/or the reason American gamers enjoy them so much. The lan parties occur in largely suburban/small city/ college campus locations, where people in the US tend to live. Lan parties allow users to us exactly the same hardware/software/ect that they practice on, something I know many gamers enjoy, however this requires you to haul your gear blocks, or miles. additionally lan parties consist of mostly friends and friends of friends, making the odds of hard feelings over a loss alot lower. Arcades on the other hand offer a large number of multiplayer games in a small space, something of value in japan, they work well in a more urban environment, and they offer a chance to compete against strangers, and build rivalries. And then dont require you to move your own gear, something thats pretty hard to do via train/foot. Does this mean I think that arcades are doomed? Hell no. But I do believe there is partial overlap in there potential participants. I love arcades, I love lan parties, but I do think that the arcade is much more at home in Japan than the US, and vice versa with lan parties.
"I am the Flail of God!" -Genghis Kahn
That factor has sort of evolved over the years and is now the Dancing Game Master. Dancing games are pretty much the new fighting games nowadays, and so who rules the arcade? The lone master of DDR who seems to have an overabundance of quarters and other tokens to put on the machine and reserve his spot in the game, as well as an overabundance of females to cheer him on.
And he's even worse than the Fighting Game Master in the sense that he usually has the physique to back up his game (as dancing games generally require a decent amount of physical shape to play), so there goes any idea of taking the fighting to the real world. No, with the Dancing Master you're stuck in his long and beefy shadow, and there's no hope of overcoming his might and the posse that he has formed out of those who he has beaten...
Stupidity certainly takes it's toll. The games I see letely tend to be in locations that almost assure that they will no be played. Almost every WalMart around here, for example, has several games in an area between the entrance and exit doors. I have never ever seen anyone playing any of these games, and I never even go look at what is there. Yet they will still be in these awful locations next time I'm in the store. I'm not going to try to make a case that WalMart should have video games in it, but if they are going to bother at all then they should be put in a location where they would get some play, not in an area that gaurantees they will not. And plenty of other playable games get similar bad locations that make them sit idle. The fact that these games are idle so much does not justify a higher price for those who would play them.
Downright lazyness on the part of the operators is certainly another issue. While this is worse on pinball, where even if you can find a pinball game you usually can't find a fully functional one, it is often a problem with bad buttons, controls, and monitors on a video game too. People have gotten turned off from the whole experience and customers have been lost, likely permanently.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
The default difficulty level in Soul Calibur is embarrassingly easy. Go into the options and crank it up.
:)
If you thought the game was easy, you'll probably have a bit of a surprise.
But seriously, get some friends - Soul Calibur against another person is where it's at.
My English teacher once told me that two positives don't make a negative. Two words for her: Yeah, right.
Tempest! Omega Race, Robotron, Zoo Keeper, Dig Dug, Joust. Yep, those were all good.
I read an article a few months ago about the original Atari developers, and how they were forced to be creative because of the limited hardware resources they had to work with.
If you look at games today, most of them start with a design like "How can we simulate a guy moving through a jungle, shooting anything that moves"? You then build rendering engines, figure out how much of the terrain you need to model, and what can be repeated. Do physics to try and simulate impacts, etc without using too much CPU.
Back then, the design was more like "What can we do in the 17ms we have left before the vertical retrace kicks in"? Lots of abstract games, lots of original ideas that probably evolved as much from what drawing routines would work in real-time as from what game-concept was in mind.
Hardware bloat encourages software bloat. If a resource is available, it will be used. That's why we don't see really NEW ideas in the video game world anymore, everyone is trying to build a better mousetrap without thinking about ways to get rid of the mice.