Comment by deveac | Hacker News Reader

Comment by deveac | Hacker News Reader

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>I disagree, those are not arcades, they are bars and nightclubs that happen to have retro games spread throughout.

Agree. They are arcade-themed bars. They admit in the article that the revenue stream from their arcade games can't pay for the game and let them even come close to staying in business. They sell beer, food, music, and dancing using arcade inspired nostalgia as a hook.

>True, consoles were a big competitor but there was nothing like getting in that line to put your token on the machine.

Disagree here. There was something like putting your token on your machine, except better. Having the machine in your living room, with arcade quality graphics. I don't believe that arcades could have simply kept their prices lower and still remained competitive. The cost of their new machines increases over time, as does rent and all of their other bills. I am certain that the increase in price they charged was purely a function of their costs, especially as it happened across the industry as a whole.

Edit: Incidentally, the misconception in the second line of yours that I quoted is the purest and most distilled expression of your first point. Nostalgia is a powerful force eh? ;)

For the second quote you go off on a tangent about costs. I'm just saying that sitting on the couch at home with your friends is not the same experience as putting your money on the machine to compete against someone you may not know. If you prefer the home environment with your friends then that's cool. I for one preferred the competition to be had at the local arcade.

I agree to a point with your thought on the costs. But to me a good bit of that is the fact they kept using more and more expensive machines that required an increase in pricing. There's no way someone can tell me that a classic stand up machine with a PC in the cabinet costs as much to buy/maintain as those huge behemoth cockpit games. These new machines may have been an attempt to counter consoles since most people will not put a race car cockpit game in their home, but for the most part were boring. Who wants to rock a fake horse forwards and backwards in a crappy rendition of a horse race? If the industry, in the US for me, had stayed away from that nonsense then I would have gladly gone to the arcade despite having a nice console at home. Right now I would love to be able to take my kids to an arcade like I remember having fun in despite having a nice console at home. But those arcades hardly exist any more. Even in local bowling alleys they have those stupid cockpit games.

>For the second quote you go off on a tangent about costs.

Tanjent? That's funny. I was responding directly to your citing cost as a factor for arcades dying:

>But the arcades started dying when somebody had the silly idea that people wanted to play cockpit games or big interactive games for more than double the price.

It's right there.

>There's no way someone can tell me that a classic stand up machine with a PC in the cabinet costs as much to buy/maintain as those huge behemoth cockpit games. These new machines may have been an attempt to counter consoles since most people will not put a race car cockpit game in their home, but for the most part were boring. Who wants to rock a fake horse forwards and backwards in a crappy rendition of a horse race?

If this were true, then we would have arcades with lower end, more cost efficient games instead of the ones you're pointing out. But we don't. I submit that it isn't because every single former arcade owner individually misjudged the market and stocked the wrong machines in their retail space.

>If the industry, in the US for me, had stayed away from that nonsense then I would have gladly gone to the arcade despite having a nice console at home.

On this, I also humbly submit that you are in the extreme minority.

But many of those lower end arcades existed but were hard to find. Some still exist today. Most of the arcades I was familiar with as a teenager were run by large companies that apparently made deals with arcade manufacturers for bigger and more expensive machines. I didn't get to experience much of the independent owners like Flynn's Arcade.

I don't think I said that every arcade owner made the mistake of misjudging the market, but I do think a large number of them did. I also lump the industry as a whole in this group, including the manufacturers. I simply think that the industry reached a point where it did not understand its own market. But I have no source to back this up though, just my opinion.

I agree I'm in the minority for my desire for a good old-fashioned arcade but this thread and the article we're discussing suggests that I'm not in an extreme minority.

As I stated elsewhere, this is all based on my experience and should be taken as such.

I knew arcades that hosted competitions and were really vying for the market you're talking about. Almost all of them did have music games (DDR, Beatmania), but those were incredibly popular and lucrative when they came out. When the popularity of those games died, many of these places went out of business.

Even with music games, these were places where most of the floor space was dedicated to the latest fighting games, old school shmups, etc.

There's simply very little demand in the US for the type of arcade you want.

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