Namco Blames Wii for Arcade Closures

milsoRgen noted a story about Namco Bandai is shuttering between 50 and 60 arcades in Japan and blaming the success of the Wii for the closures. "A lot of the types of games that people played at an arcade can now be done at home," said company spokesman Yuji Machida. To be fair they also blame the high cost of gasoline as well.

Comments

It's not just the wii, though

[jpfed]

Dance-pads, guitars, and guns have shown that people are willing to buy alternative input devices of many stripes, which had been a niche for arcades.

Re:The market there was too saturated anyway.

[WarlockD]

To be honest, I doubt its the gasoline prices. Allot of arcades over in Japan are usually within walking distance of schools and residental areas. They are just freakishly expensive.

Take the Gundum Pod Game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNSodeMJ2u0

The thing takes 500 Yen. Thats a little more than $4.50 a GAME. Oh and you can't just play it once, you have to play it multipal times to raise your skill so you can get better mechs. Sure it was networked and you could play with other people in pods, but games like this make the PS3 look like a worthy investment.

If they made the games cheaper, I think arcades can last longer there. But I doubt it as most of these "pod" like machines are pricey as it is.

PS - Missed a br:P

You have no idea...

[interactive_civilian]

They really are everywhere in Japan. To the extent that, when I saw the summary say "shuttering between 50 and 60 arcades in Japan" my thought was, "Oh no, how will the other thousands and thousands of them survive?"

I wish I could come up with a real number of arcades open in Japan, but my google-fu is weak today. However, given my experiences there, 50-60 does not sound like a big number of closings...

Arcade closures in the US, too

[AtariDatacenter]

According to Play Meter magazine (the magazine for the arcade/amusement industry), the arcade industry took an even bigger dive in 2007 (from its long decline starting in 1984).

Family Entertainment Centers (FEC) locations were down 60% year-over-year. OUCH!

Re:Arcades were still operating in Japan?

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Seriously, compare a CPS-2 setup or something to an American made counterpart of the same era. They just simply don't compare.

and then there's the cabinets themselves, American cabs are these flimsy hulks of wood with low res monitors that break when you sneeze at them. In 1996, there was a major sea-change in arcade hardware. JAMMA was fine... in the 80's. 3 buttons, low res monitor, and mono sound. Fine. But come oh, 1994, 1995, hardware gets to be a whole lot better. VGA graphics, stereo sound, complicated input systems(not just multi-button fighters; light guns, optical and analog inputs) and something had to be done. So the JAMMA people got back together and came up with the JAMMA Video Standard, JVS for short. USB I/O(output for things like coin counters), stereo sound and 31kHz VGA high resolution monitors. Now, in 1996 there was only one company in America making arcade cabs and it was the Valley-Dynamo company(who got out of the cab making business all together), and all they made were low res, JAMMA compatible systems, completely ignoring the new JVS standard. Compare that to Japan and Korea where in Japan, you had Sega, Konami, Capcom, Taito, Namco and Andamiro making these sturdy metal candy cabs that still have long lasting monitors that just keep chugging along AND if not in the year 1996, had atleast by 1998 produced cabs that were JVS compliant.