Game over for Japanese arcades

[travelgasm]

Sad, and definitely the loss of a distinctive subculture, but the end of traditional video game arcades in Japan has long seemed inevitable. Many Japanese arcades have felt like a 1990s time capsule for many years now. You could walk around the rows of shiny white arcade cabinets and think… how many decades can Capcom keep milking variants of Street Fighter?

@anon50609448

This also could have been why they were successful, though. I don’t know about Japan, but in many places it’s a far better business model (if you can pull it off) to fleece one very rich rube than to get pennies from everyone.

A very good point. Fleece might be a little harsh, but emphasizing a smaller number of dedicated customers who live nearby and spend heavily — perhaps this is a significant chunk of their monthly entertainment budget in lieu of going to movies, playing sports, drinking in bars, or whatever — probably is more profitable than coaxing an occasional handful of 100 yen coins out of a casual passerby or tourists. Tourists basically are absent in Japan now, as well.

@Brainspore

I wonder how the “Dave and Buster’s” business model of combining arcades with restaurants and full-service bars has been doing during the pandemic.

Believe that they largely have been closed during the pandemic. They have been struggling for sure, but this type of business seems likely to come back at some point.

@ficuswhisperer

Dance Dance Revolution and Pump It Up every weekend for hours on end (and sometimes skip out of work during the week) along with all the others like Beatmania IIDX, Keyboardmania, and others. When I moved to Seattle there were quite a few arcades with a great selection of music games and sadly they almost all closed down within a few years

Why do you think these arcades were less successful in San Francisco and Seattle, or at least less long lasting, than they have been in Asia? You think it is just that rent got too high in convenient locations and maintenance was inadequate? Otherwise, you still would have kept going?

@GospelX

From a game as simple as Taiko Drum with it’s big ol drum to the more complex Mobile Suit Gundam simulator machines. These are the attractions now because the full experience can’t be recreated at home. And as much as we might complain about crane/UFO catcher machines, they’re a draw for kids and dates. There will definitely be fewer places to go when this all shakes out, but it’s not yet time to eulogize Japanese arcades.

Well said. This is the future of video game arcades and it’s not all bad, either. Shared experiences largely are on hold at the moment, but a shared experience — with a date or friends — on a physical dance, music, or sports simulator type game (and to a lesser extent, physical driving or shooting games) is not easily replicated at home and are good exercise, as well. It’s a great way to break the ice with people you barely know and make new friends, too.

Elsewhere in Asia, in particular, these types of physically interactive video games often are combined with small KTV rooms, and at least before the event, seemed to be doing quite well, much better than arcades with mostly traditional cabinet games in Japan. It will be interesting to see how the future shakes out, for sure!

[FGD135]

[lectroid]

@travelgasm

at least before the event ,

"Remain Indoors" emergency broadcast - BBC Comedy

[VeronicaConnor]

@Brainspore

Some of those game machines are pretty elaborate and expensive-looking, I wonder how many units they need to ship to make developing, prototyping and building a high-end arcade-quality game system profitable. I would have thought it would be in the tens of thousands at least… for example Wikipedia says Ms. Pac-Man sold 125,000 cabinet units by 1988.

I’m in the industry, so I can answer that. The business model of modern amusement is very different than 1980s arcades were. The machines are more expensive to develop, but cheaper to build, have much longer service lIves, and with much higher margins than they used to be. Everything is ticket redemption now, and these are not “arcade games” in the traditional sense. It’s more like branded slot machines with some sort of mechanism in them, like a coin table or a small physical activity. The machines are often leased in profit sharing deals and they’re mostly in bowling alleys and chain family restaurants. D&B is of course a major customer as well. A much better analogy is the carnival midway at a county fair. That’s basically the business model- ticket games for prizes that look valuable but are actually extremely poorly made and worth far far less than anyone spends to acquire them. It’s an elaborately disguised Dollar Tree basically.

The industry is doing fine because the customers are mostly national chains and little of the country shut down for any length of time.

There’s basically zero connection between modern amusement arcades and what we all remember as arcades full of video games and pinball machines. The business model is completely different. The “retro bars and beach corners” that Rob talks about are also a different business model. The machines are still owned by an operator and hosted by the venue, as was the case back in the day, but the games themselves are never a profit driver any more and their maintenance costs usually exceed revenue. They are operated by hobbyists with low overhead and the booze pays the bills. The games get the moneyed Gen-Xers in the door to buy curly fries and craft beer.

[VeronicaConnor]

@travelgasm

@Brainspore

I wonder how the “Dave and Buster’s” business model of combining arcades with restaurants and full-service bars has been doing during the pandemic.

Believe that they largely have been closed during the pandemic. They have been struggling for sure, but this type of business seems likely to come back at some point.

Not really, no. Most of the country, especially conservative suburban areas (which is D&B’s market) never really shut down much.

D&B has been struggling for a long time and the small amount of pandemic pressure is revealing how weak their business is. It’s a typical “big box store that expanded too much during the boom times” model. They’re over-leveraged, undercapitalized, Wall Street shenanigans, etc. The companies blame the pandemic to explain their crappy stock prices, but businesses like D&B had structural problems long before this.

The pandemic is acting as a filter for weak and poorly managed businesses, as it turns out.