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

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...