OP
OP
All you gotta do is look at the size of one arcade cab coin bucket.. That thing holds some serious quarters!
how much longer would arcades have lived with no consoles?
- Thread starter vintagegamer
- Start date
All you gotta do is look at the size of one arcade cab coin bucket.. That thing holds some serious quarters!
i know what they say on a national scale with the crash in 83 or whatever, but i never saw that around here. my experience growing up in arcades was every mall had at least one arcade until the mid 90s, if anything i would say playstation 1 killed arcades because that platform was just so damn good.
when i lived in tampa bay in the late 90s there were family fun centers all over the place, and while they were mostly dedicated to redemption games most still had a decent selection of the classics.
locally there is still a wizards kingdom here, theres an arcade within an hour with twenty or so classics, and the laundromats and bars still have some good games, locally i could go right now and play some pinball, ms pac, raiden dx, outrun, lucky and wild, 18 wheeler, etc.
just to the south of us the city has a mall with a namco arcade with simpsons 4 player and marvel vs capcom among others.
i would say arcades never quite died, but they are certainly on life support as far as dedicated classics are concerned...
when i lived in tampa bay in the late 90s there were family fun centers all over the place, and while they were mostly dedicated to redemption games most still had a decent selection of the classics.
locally there is still a wizards kingdom here, theres an arcade within an hour with twenty or so classics, and the laundromats and bars still have some good games, locally i could go right now and play some pinball, ms pac, raiden dx, outrun, lucky and wild, 18 wheeler, etc.
just to the south of us the city has a mall with a namco arcade with simpsons 4 player and marvel vs capcom among others.
i would say arcades never quite died, but they are certainly on life support as far as dedicated classics are concerned...
I didn't mean to sound angry in my post if that's how it came off. I just am passionate about the subject I guess. I have an arcade location of my own so that's part of the reason I care so much.
I do wish that we could see numbers now like we did in the 80's but it's hard to say how we could get there. Marketing could certainly help - relying solely on word-of-mouth for arcade titles takes forever and doesn't always catch on. As some have already mentioned, arcades need to play to their strengths to get somewhere, which is a social environment that has tournaments and unique games you can't get at home. That doesn't necessarily mean a unique cabinet, just a kind of game that is addictive and stands out graphically as that is needed to draw people in. A stronger line-up of unique games is needed since it's been far too heavy on the racer/light-gun adoration. Classic style games could still work but I think they need to do more to stand out since it's so easy to get those simple kind of games on your phone.
I do wish that we could see numbers now like we did in the 80's but it's hard to say how we could get there. Marketing could certainly help - relying solely on word-of-mouth for arcade titles takes forever and doesn't always catch on. As some have already mentioned, arcades need to play to their strengths to get somewhere, which is a social environment that has tournaments and unique games you can't get at home. That doesn't necessarily mean a unique cabinet, just a kind of game that is addictive and stands out graphically as that is needed to draw people in. A stronger line-up of unique games is needed since it's been far too heavy on the racer/light-gun adoration. Classic style games could still work but I think they need to do more to stand out since it's so easy to get those simple kind of games on your phone.
Thanks for sharing your numbers. But you also cherry picked the most profitable games. How many games never got enough play to recoup costs or just broke even?
Games that didn't cover their costs didn't stick around in most arcades in the 80s. That's one of the reasons why some titles are so rare.
My answer: I don't think there was any one reason why the 'cades faltered.
Consoles I believe were a big portion of it, but look past the consoles and look at us as a society and where we spend our time - the answer is "no one place for any long amount of time". I used to spend all day at the mall, hanging out, hitting the arcade, maybe get lunch somewhere, etc. Now people hit up the malls then immediately gotta run somewhere else.
Then you have the consoles, home theaters, "man caves" and what not - why go anywhere when you can avoid the traffic, ignorance, etc and just entertain yourself at home.
One thing that may start reversing the trend is the cost of gas - where people may have gone farther for entertainment, the malls and local town shops may get a resurgence of business now that people aren't running around as far as they did.
Consoles I believe were a big portion of it, but look past the consoles and look at us as a society and where we spend our time - the answer is "no one place for any long amount of time". I used to spend all day at the mall, hanging out, hitting the arcade, maybe get lunch somewhere, etc. Now people hit up the malls then immediately gotta run somewhere else.
Then you have the consoles, home theaters, "man caves" and what not - why go anywhere when you can avoid the traffic, ignorance, etc and just entertain yourself at home.
One thing that may start reversing the trend is the cost of gas - where people may have gone farther for entertainment, the malls and local town shops may get a resurgence of business now that people aren't running around as far as they did.
Robotron Jon
Well-known member
I was at an auction a year or two ago and a sit down daytona USA deluxe had 1.5 million ticks on the coin counter. That's a lot of money for one game = $375,000.
I think consoles and arcades coexisted very well up until 1995. Something about that year, I don't know, the magic was gone and it never recovered.
I think it was around then that games started to cost $1 each play, more or less. I don't mind quarters per play, but not entire dollars; I'm sure I wasn't along thinking about the money.
I can't think any arcade game that couldn't be done almost perfectly on a console and it could be owned instead of pay to play past 1995.
I think it was around then that games started to cost $1 each play, more or less. I don't mind quarters per play, but not entire dollars; I'm sure I wasn't along thinking about the money.
I can't think any arcade game that couldn't be done almost perfectly on a console and it could be owned instead of pay to play past 1995.
D_Harris
Well-known member
And that's just the reported income.
Nevertheless, even though there were consoles and pc games in the '70s the quality wasn't there. But they started to proliferate as the number and quality of games increased and[b/] the novelty of arcade games wore off largely due to the lack of unique titles coming out.
All the creative bases had pretty much been covered and Karate Champ was at the beginning of a change in direction that persists today on the arcade platform.
There is basically nothing new under the sun except better graphics which is really the only thing that keeps the arcade games at the level they are today, which is not even close to what the way things were in the "Golden Age".
Darren Harris
Staten Island, New York.
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Dave and Busters has forgotten one very important thing in this industry. You HAVE to spend money to make money! I've seen it over and over again in the process that I'm currently working on within the company I work for. Location X will do perhaps $1000.00 a week on the crap in the place. I go in, granted with ALL new equipment, and all of a sudden the same location is doing more like $2500.00 per week.
When I go into a Dave and Busters now I see a bunch of old games that need to be replaced.
Yeah, your right... A game thats capable of paying for its self in 6 weeks is sub-par.
Raw Thrills has saved this industry. If it wasnt for them and GlobalVR things would be very bad here. As far as I'm concerned Raw Thrills has only developed one stinker, Nicktoons Nitro and I even told them as much. Not sure why they wasted wood and hardware on that game.
Terminator Salvation - Sub par? LOL!
spmahn
Member
Yeah, your right... A game thats capable of paying for its self in 6 weeks is sub-par.
Raw Thrills has saved this industry. If it wasnt for them and GlobalVR things would be very bad here. As far as I'm concerned Raw Thrills has only developed one stinker, Nicktoons Nitro and I even told them as much. Not sure why they wasted wood and hardware on that game.
Terminator Salvation - Sub par? LOL!
I've never played Terminator Salvation, so I can't speak on that, but I've played their racers, Need for Speed, the Hydro Thunder one, etc. and I thought they were pretty lousy compared toogames that are even decades older like Cruisin' USA or Daytona or newer games like Outrun 2.
I think you meant Fast and Furious
The thing is, take a good look at every Raw Thrills racer and you'll notice that it's basically Crusin' USA with updated graphics and a FnF license. You don't do laps, you just go straight through a fantasy course with some secret paths and they've added some nitro boosts. They have sold thousands of FnF games all over the world making it a much better seller than any racer since Rush 2049. And the earnings on each FnF they have done have been pretty solid as they keep improving upon it.
There is also Super Bikes, the motorcycle version of their FnF games. It's essentially a modern Crusin' with motorcycles. The first one sold over 9000 (insert DBZ internet meme here) units, the second one will probably reach that number before too long.
Terminator was my best earning game for an entire year until I got SSFIV Arcade Edition last month. Before that my top earner was FnF Tokyo Drift. As much as I would like to see Raw Thrills try out some other ideas in the market it's undeniable that their games do well in arcades and as Gamefixer said, they have pretty much saved the industry in it's modern form. If they weren't releasing these games at the prices they do then there really would be practically nothing new out there as the Japanese companies still don't get it with price. If Terminator Salvation had been done by Namco they would have charged around $18k for it and it would have half the content; RT charges about $8k for it in it's Deluxe form. Namco's latest driver Dead Heat they want about $7800 for; RT undercut them with Super Cars as that is in the $6400 range and has seven times the number of tracks available.
RT has another new driver coming along by the guys who did H2Overdrive called Dirty Drivin'
http://arcadeheroes.com/2011/05/19/from-the-makers-of-h2overdrive-comes-dirty-drivin/
I would be more excited if it weren't a racer but it's a game with personality that looks like fun and I'm sure it will earn very well in locations that get one later this year.
D_Harris
Well-known member
Terminator Salvation - Sub par? LOL!
I saw TS being played more than any other game at China Town Fair when I was there a couple of months ago just before they closed down. Even more than the fighters which the place was known for.
Darren Harris
Staten Island, New York.
arcadezone
Member
You guys are all wrong it was MTV that killed the arcades.
I think you meant Fast and Furious
The thing is, take a good look at every Raw Thrills racer and you'll notice that it's basically Crusin' USA with updated graphics and a FnF license.
With good reason. Cruisin was a fantastic game. It was created by one of the best minds here in the States, Eugene Jarvis. Raw Thrills is ran by Eugene and a few others from midway.
And that's where it starts. What happens to the old games that haven't earned their keep yet? Never made enough to pay for themselves?
You're 'upside-down' on those games. By some accounting method, the loss has to be shifted somewhere. Where? On the next 'big thing'? What if that one never pays for itself either.
That's what happened to the arcades.
Many operators get stuck in this downward spiral that starts when the games start earning less then they did when they were brand new. I'm sure that every game in a D&B is not only paid for but has also paid for 10 other games in the place. The bean counters start seeing the cashboxes thinning out (because the games are old and they dont get as much play as before) so they dont buy any new games, because they think that the new ones wont make any money based on the old ones not making money.
Thus... You have to spend money to make money. If the bean counters at D&B would loosen the purse strings and buy some new games for them they would see revenues increase all across the board, not just in the new game(s).
