Even if pachinko is related, Sega (Samy) is also big for pachinko machine market. Arcade machine is not very profitable business but I don't know they completely shut down their business in the future or not. I just point that no more shop != no more machine.
This doesn't seem at all plausible. I can't think of a country I have been to in the world that didn't have Sega arcade machines. I'd be shocked if simply manufacturing and selling the machines wasn't more lucrative.
The problem is arcade machines are just a TINY markey. The best selling game of the '90s was Street Fighter 2: CE, and that sold a grand total of 140k units.
Most other successful games like NBA Jam or Mortal Kombat sold 15-20k units.
That's just not compatible with the budgets needed in the 3d era.
As other have mentioned. I am not an expert on the subject, but as far as I am aware Arcade owned and operate by the same company like Saga World London is a relatively new and niche phenomenon. Arcade for most of their life are just being sold and operated by other parties when Arcade were everywhere ( in Japan anyway ) back in the 80s and 90s.
Gameworks was co-founded by Sega and also owned for a time by Sega Sammy; at one point it had dozens of locations, but it seems to have struggled financially for much of its life and is closing its last two locations due to pandemic-related difficulties.
Arcades in America and Europe have essentially been dead for a long time, which has to be a reason why Microsoft doesn't own any. But in Japan arcades were still thriving until recently. Unfortunately, times are tough.
I've been to arcades all over the the USA in the last decade. The new breed of arcades serve a role more like "video game bar" than the their more kid/family friendlier predecessors.
Those aren't really arcades they're bars with arcade machines, and pool tables, and jukeboxes. They're just bar distractions. People go to these for the alcohol and socializing and to cater to a specific market. The games are often a secondary excuse to visit.
When I was little the arcade market was crazy. There was one in every mall, every shopping center, and even modest sized strip malls had them. Then you'd had random stand-alone ones here and there that were significantly bigger. Every mini-golf place had an attached arcade too. I think I grew up within short driving distance of several. Now there's a couple barcades, one nearby another a longer drive, and none of which anyone under 21 can visit.
Its not a healthy market and nor one that is actually buying video game cabinets. I don't think Ive seen a remotely new cabinet in any of these. Just old classic stuff being kept together with hope, elbow grease, and baling wire. The barcade exprience leaves a lot to be desired as games people like are very old and the maintenance budget and ability of those barcades isn't impressive. The few times I've gone I'd have bad joysticks, bad buttons, machines not registering quarters, hardware locking up, and CRT screens that have aged into displaying burn-in and seemingly a lot dimmer and with more "ghosting" than I remember. They're cost centers to these bars, so they just aren't able to take care of them well, assuming spare parts are accessible (or affordable) for bar economics.
Yes these things won't go away soon, but its a small and shrinking market. SEGA can't justify the rents on those spaces which is a bad sign in otherwise arcade friendly Japan. So the transformation of arcade games into bar toys is almost complete, which is not a healthy sign for this industry. Google says the arcade industry CAGR is projected to be almost 2% during 2021-2025. That's just really terrible and the sign of a stagnated industry and perhaps one entering its negative growth rate period sooner than we might assume.
I’ve been to arcades in a fairly limited region of the US, and other than a few aimed older, they seem to be exactly like the larger of the old kid/family ones, often scaled up even farthe, but not the small, dark, dingy games-and-nothing-else ratholes that were also common in the 1980s (but less kid/family friendly.)
I was at a chuck e cheese recently (just before the pandemic) to attend a child's birthday party. At least at the one I visited, there were no recent arcade machines. Most of the machines were really crappy gambling machines. There were a few extremely outdated video game machines, but not many. It was a far cry from what I remember from my youth but maybe it was always like this?
I have a lot of found memories of Sega World in Picadilly Circus. Later as I lived in Japan, I really loved the Sega arcades. Truly the end of an Era.
Sega is a company that I always liked and always feel regret for, I loved my dreamcast and wished they had remained in the console business, I loved their arcades and wish they would still be there. It's one of the companies that most marked my childhood and early twenties.
Sega World was always one of my highlights of going to London. Would always stop in there.
I remember one time I'd just sold 800 Beanie Babies for $250,000 in cash (dude flew in from Chicago with it) and was feeling flush. Went in Sega World and they had a new Jurassic Park hydraulic deluxe game. IIRC it was three quid PER CREDIT, and it was a two-player game. So it was six quid just to start. There was an employee stationed outside who would put your money in for you.
So, me and my buddy go and get literally hundreds of quid coins and go back to the game and pour these coins into the guy's shirt and tell him KEEP FEEDING THE BEAST. DO NOT STOP. So we played that fucker all the way through to the end. I think we only spent about 90 quid in total to finish it. The employee was over the moon. He said he'd been working there for weeks but no-one ever wanted to play after the first credit and he'd really wanted to see the end sequence.
I've written about them on-and-off. I just saw there is a new Beanie Baby documentary out. Shame I didn't know about it. I was the largest seller of Beanies in the world. That $250K deal was fun. I had to get an armoured truck to meet the guy at the airport to take his cash. When we picked up the Beanies the security guys freaked as they thought the Beanies must be full of drugs.
I've been a rabid Sega fan for 35 years, and I did not know this. I knew Sega stood for Service Games, but always assumed it was just the fairly standard practice of Japanese companies using Western names.
GameWorks, the American-based joint venture started by Sega and Dreamworks, closed all of its remaining locations last month. RIP the downtown Seattle arcade.
On the upside, Round 1 is steadily expanding throughout the US.
For those who don't know, Round 1 is a Japanese arcade company that also has US locations, and they import many only-intended-for-Japan arcade cabinets to said locations, including some that are only in Japanese. Their rhythm game sections in particular are basically unsurpassed by American standards, it's like stepping into a slice of Tokyo.
I thought the Koreans took over the rhythm game arcade business for the most part? All the surviving arcades I’ve been to in the states in recent years have only had Korean rhythm games on hand. I hope Konami hasn’t given up on the genre, or maybe the future is just beat saber (now owned by Meta).
Gonna be honest, I've never heard of Korean rhythm arcade games. I thought Koreans were mostly just into PC (and mobile) games. I would've thought I'd heard of this considering I read about Korean gaming culture, but apparently not enough.
Rhythm games are huge popular in Korea, probably more so than Japan right now. Units in the USA are often mistaken for Japanese, but the use of Hangul and the K-pop tunes should be dead give aways.
Pump It Up is a Korean DDR-style arcade. Round1 also seems to be bringing Chrono Circle to the US. Same manufacturer but different mechanics, it looks like maimai + Wacca.
Round 1 is way more than an arcade though. Most have bowling lanes, billard tables, ping pong tables, darts, food, box style karaoke rooms, and tumble rooms for small kids. Much more that just an arcade.
Wow, I was about to ask if anyone knew what this meant for GameWorks.
Even if I was too young for the golden age of American arcades, I’m glad I got to experience their twilight. The vertically-integrated, destination-class concept was clearly the end-state for the industry, but it was still a blast to go.
We still have barcades, which are fun, though they tend to be exclusively retro-gaming, appealing first and foremost to Gen X nostalgia. Looks like I'll need to go to Tokyo to get behind the wheel of an Initial D arcade machine again.
GameWorks opened in downtown Seattle around the same time that wizards of the coast opened up an arcade/card playing space on the ave (near the big university in the city). It was a weird resurgence in the late 90s, but neither stood the test of time.
What’s crazy is that the closure came as a surprise to many - I and most of my friends didn’t see any notice of it at all. I would’ve gone to the Seattle location one last time to get in some Third Strike.
I've been to the Japanese arcades many times, and I'd noticed changes cross the era of machine. A lot of the newer machines are either trying to be some kind of new arcade moba or card-based experience (half or more of which seemed to flop, with entire empty floors). More single player oriented experiences feature a game loop where a small, core element consisting of about 5 minutes costs a 100 yen coin regardless of outcome. For example, the Initial D game where every single race costs 100 yen or the Pokemon game where you pay 100 yen to get into a battle and another coin if you want to actually catch the wild pokemon you beat. It's a move away from the classic model where you would usually pay on losing all your lives which could cost more but was more dependent on player skill. It was a more interactive, more participatory, model. A meritocratic one where being able to beat an entire 30 minute game session of a scrolling shooter on as few coins as possible would be an impressive source of bragging rights. The change absolutely feels like the mobile micro-transaction model extended to coin-op. To me, it narrows the gap between an arcade and a pachinko parlor, so I simply don't feel as compelled to go to arcades.
The perennial fighting games and giant robot battles still pull crowds from their appreciators, as something of the core of the arcade business. That, and the two floors of UFO crane games still seem to hold fairly strong sway from what I've seen. The pandemic situation made things worse for arcades, but like many things that you've heard of many times before it only accelerated an inevitable decline. I think the move here would be first to downsize, then maybe specialize.
The first episode of Netflix's High Score covers the 1970s and early 1980s video games, including arcades. The guy who made Ms. Pac Man started by making arcade mods that increased the difficulty of games. It was a killer business model because arcades were getting lower revenue over time because the playerbase would get good at a game within months. It isn't correct to say micro-transactions moved into arcades. It's more accurate to say arcade MTX have moved into the home.
Arcade value prop is at an all-time low. It's too bad, because rhythm games are a lot of fun and impractical for homes.
It's more accurate to say arcade MTX have moved into the home.
I don't follow your thinking. "Making the game more difficult" and "microtransactions" are both ways to squeeze more money from players but man, they are very different.
Putting money in every time you want to play is the ultimate micro-transaction. Gaming has been trying to push its way back to that golden era of profit since the home console genie was let out of the bottle.
For me, the difference is crystal-clear and razor sharp.
"Putting money in every time you play" leaves the play experience itself pristine. The cost of each game is consistent.
"Microtransactions" pollute the gameplay experience itself. I don't know how much each game will cost. I might get hooked on the early stages of the game only to discover that accessing the rest of the game will require either impractical amounts of time, or some unpredictable and arbitrary amount of money. It also completely shatters the 4th wall for me, ruins the immersion.
You do have a point. I have little trouble recognizing that micro-transactions and coin-op difficulty creep are both profit driven modifications made to games, and also that I'd be better served by the life of a hermit than a time machine to the 1980s if I wanted to escape the effects of human greed, particularly on much more important things than video games.
I think it's important too to distinguish between a micro-transaction for something like a skin or a hat that has a cosmetic effect, versus "pay to win/pay to not grind", versus "pay every 5 minutes regardless of whether you win or lose" etc. My remarks on micro-transactions and difficulty creep is less about how profitable they are, but rather how the changes feel to me.
In writing my first post, I had a thought to compromise between the old school approach and the current paradigm: what if every game loop cost 1 credit if you win, 2 credits if you lose, and 100 yen buys 2 credits? If the challenge fits into my flow state so that it's at the upper limit of my competence, I would have an explicit 50 yen incentive to win in an engaging challenge. The game devs and proprieter would still make some guaranteed income on my play time. If no one has ever posited this idea before (and I'd bet someone has, and probably tested it, and maybe it doesn't work well for them), I feel like calling it "win to save".
It could even be an interesting study - players of games often won't keep playing if they feel they can't win, so the designer would have to be careful not to nickle and dime the player by setting them up for expensive failures. On the other hand, an engaging way to keep players paying could be to set them up for challenging victories that are very quick and efficient, to get them into the next loop faster... There's a lot of dimensions to this, more than I'm willing let alone able to put into one comment.
I agree arcades are a fantastic place for rhythm and dancing games. I hope you have a great day.
Spent three weeks in Tokyo for my honeymoon a few years ago. I know of no experience that for me can rival the type of joy of spending late nights in an arcade (not saying it’s the pinnacle, just a unique experience). Even my wife who is a non-gamer found it a thrill. Perhaps with the shut downs it will consolidate to a few profitable centers that can remain. Individuals can’t afford Dancerush Stardum or those gundam games.
I don’t know if consolidation is going to be a good thing. Game developers need a player base to be profitable, and that usually means games available to the public.
It is very sad. I've moved to Japan recently and a lot of the arcades either have shut down or now have way more 'commercial' games that are essentially gambling and those gundam like games. I'm sure they are fun but they aren't "real" arcade games to me :(
I grew up, and spent most of money, at the arcades. Luckily, a friend introduced me to MAME 22 years ago. I still play Golden Axe, Alien Storm, Altered Beast almost every day after work.
I actually prefer MAME to the real thing. Wireless controllers, pause, auto fire settings and whatnot.
Victim of COVID for sure, but I wonder if they were also a victim of the indoor smoking ban enacted in 2020. Japanese arcades were full of smokers when I was there. The smoking ban might well end up being the most significant legacy of the cursed Olympics.
The fact that there's no (legal) way to get some of those games out of Japan and into the hands of people who want to play them is a good indicator of a lack of wanting to do the work on the seller side. There's an article from Wired [1] a bit ago about the harrowing efforts of getting dancing game cabinets and the like out, and the DRM that goes into keeping them region-locked such that it's hard for gamers in the US to get to them.
I went to GameWorks in Seattle at one point for a party and roughly 1/3 of the cabinets were cobranded with companies like King or PopCap, played like slot machines, and were more at home in a Vegas casino than a kids arcade. The others were a mixture of Japan imports from Sega and such that had been semi-localized (or, for a few, not even localized at all, just laid there for the Ultra Weeb gaijin and homesick Japanese exchange students) and "classics" like super hang-on and mortal kombat.
Fact of the matter is that most modern arcade cabinets are just glorified consoles running a single game with a shitload of DRM on them, or windows/sometimes-linux machines running a single executable, stripped down to the bare minimum, then let sit in an arcade. If Konami can put the work into selling a game on a console, unless there's a really compelling reason to make the gameplay loop fit an arcade feel and not sell it as an "Arcade Console" game, they're not gonna put in the overhead of putting it into an arcade cabinet. Unless you've got some serious gimmick like a funny ridable controller [2] or a DJ style button set [3] then you're basically just selling a console game.
Arcades hold a large portion of my childhood memories. It was the place where I made friends from outside my social circle of school and neighborhood. I suppose in some ways it was an afternoon night club for kids.
I have no idea where if anywhere kids today can find the same connections outside of parent subsidized sports and art programs. (Which really do not have the autonomy and real world social interactions arcades provided me.)
I could hardly wait for my paper route money to come in so that I could meet up with my friends spend it at the arcade!
Possible shopping centers have provide a similar experience but I feel the writing is on the wall and it does not bode well for these either.
I worry that pseudo friendships such as those found online or soon in the Metaverse being the only option for our youth, will have long lasting negative consequences on our society which appears to be in decline already.
I remember the fun of going to a couple Sega arcades in Tokyo in ‘98 when there on business. At one of them they had people out front handing out mini packs of Sega branded tissues! They gave me several, it was a cool souvenir I shared with a few friends.
Space Harrier was a good game. Afterburner at least _looked_ good.
In retrospect, Out Run is a much weaker game, sillier than I remembered -- especially when you consider Konami's outstanding (if madly difficult) WEC Le Mans came out the same year. Good soundtrack though.
I wonder if they could sell it to consumers instead of focusing on malls and places. There are certain type of Arcade that offer better experience beyond console and computer gaming.
But I guess that is too courages move for a Japanese company.
Arcade1up is slowly filling this gap. They've already done an Outrun cabinet for example. It seems Arcade1up's quality gradually increases with each release so there is hope they might do some Sega games justice in the future.
Wow, they've released a lot more titles lately. The one issue is size, these fit in the home a lot easier, because they're much smaller. The bottleneck seems to be LCDs; commercially reasonable 4:3 LCDs top out at 17", which is on the small end. Arcade machines commonly had (CRT) screens from 19-25".
Of course, older games often look better on CRT than LCD, but CRTs obviously aren't going to happen, unfortunately.
One of my best friends LOVES Sega and in 2017 we got the opportunity to not only visit Japan but the Sega arcade as well. Such great memories, it will be missed.
Arcades used to have the next level graphics games with the best controls vs consoles. Now the gap is almost completely closed. Which is why you see a lot of arcade games with crazy controls that you cannot have at home.
I think of Mortal Kombat at the arcade before there was any version to play at home.
Nothing can ever compete with that. The finishing moves were like this occult knowledge that you would see certain kids have and think of them as some kind of martial arts masters. No internet to tell you how to do them. Would just have to try to watch the master and figure out what they were doing when they did the finishing move.
Scarcity of game play the coin created along with having to be social at the arcade. Just an awesome experience as a kid.
I worked at a small arcade machine maker in the late 80's. We had an option in our arcade machines to adjust the violence slightly for the German market.
You only find some 20+ year old aracade machines in cinemas and in adult enternainment venues and the like.
Due to youth protection laws there is no difference between gambling machines and arcade machines, which turn those places into 18+ entertainment stuff.
I had this explained to me as Sega selling their remaining shares in Genda Inc/their joint venture. Genda was already the majority owner/maintainer of the arcades.
Now no longer having an affiliation with Sega, Genda's rebranding under the GiGo brand, but there's no real administrative change.
Although there are tons of ways to build an arcade machine by oneself (usually by emulation on a Pi), I wonder if there is enough customer base for Sega to sell them to individual customers.
oh there’s a pretty sophisticated network for buying arcade cabinets in the US, Sega cabs included. Wired did a writeup on this a couple weeks ago [1]. they really aren’t cheap though. there are a few reasons for the big players to not want these sold on the open market though, like licensing/copyright headaches, which will probably be amplified as people reverse-engineer the game and mod/add their own content.
Just like the difference between movie theatres vs home theatres, arcades can be a very different and more (or less) social experience than playing games at home, but the appeal might depend more on what your home is like than what the arcade is like.
You might live in a small space where you can't keep a functioning Dance Dance Revolution setup without noise complaints from downstairs, but you can dance at the arcade, maybe with an awestruck audience if you're really good at it.
You can take your SO to the arcade on a date and giggle as you race down a mountain together with a steering wheel and pedal setup, even if he/she isn't into that kind of thing most of the time and wouldn't have fun playing Gran Turismo with you at home.
You can hang out with your friends each week and play with them even if your home environment is too strict, chaotic, or unpredictable for that.
But if you have everything you need at home and can couch-co-op Halo with your buddies on a big screen TV, you might not see any appeal in the arcade.
It's the original pay to play/win gaming model, back when arcades actually had people in them. Anyway arcade is a unique genre of games often characterized by more fast paced chaotic gameplay, "infinite" levels, extra focus on leaderboards, more eye-candy style of visual design akin to casinos, etc. It can be a pretty fun space
In general, arcades are just fun. They’re a place to go outside the house. But, arcades also get to experiment with unique hardware & interfaces that a home console or PC can’t match.
Sega Joyopolis in Tokyo was a next level experience. It had arcade cabinets that spin 360 degrees on X & Y axes, which makes flying games fantastic. It had racing cabinets with full sized Mazda Miatas & similar cars on full motion platforms. There was a snowboarding half pipe, where the rider is strapped into a full sized snowboard on a pendulum arm with a VR headset. Another ride was an enclosed pod with VR displays that ran along a rollercoaster track. And, the most unusual thing I remember, there was a holographic virtual pop star performance.
Although I don't think as many people use Vocaloid to write songs anymore - the appeal is basically that you don't have to hire any singers, but that's not a problem once you get enough fame you can afford them. So now the games are a nostalgia play.
Nostalgia I guess. If you're old enough to remember the world before ubiquitous internet, you likely have some fond memories of arcades. We didn't always have everything available at arms length instantly. Many of us saved up money for the one-per-week (or month) trip to the arcade. The delayed gratification and shared experience made it a phenomenon that has few parallels any more.
Yeah, you should be able to see the appeal of bespoke machines inappropriate for the home easily. Not everyone has a golf simulator in their home to hone their swing, yet people go to a place where they have one.
Same thing with arcades; not everyone has a DDR machine at home, yet people love them and want to play them.
The video game arcade grew out of earlier electromechanical amusements, primarily pinball(which has had a small renaissance in the US). The joy of pinball is a combination of "bright lights and chimes" - attractive theming giving it a monumental feel, the physics of the game being complex and chaotic, and a "beat the operator" element of skill where good players can play for longer and are even rewarded with more credits. Every time you come in to play a pinball, it's slightly different because the parts were readjusted or the ball had grown worn.
When video arcades started to grow popular at the end of the 1970's, they retained most of these elements: An arcade game was a "destination" for game enthusiasts and had the best technology available at the time. They didn't have real physics like pinball, but they were very reliable, giving the skill element a new wrinkle - the operator mostly wasn't a factor, so you played against the game design as the developer intended. While free credits for high scores were eliminated, time extension was still a common part of the gameplay. Playing for high scores or going longer on one credit are the underlying factor to being "into" arcade games - they are fundamentally short "instant fun" experiences and you have to fight them to get more out of your credit.
There's a strong element of "performing" an arcade game - not just consuming it but making the most of every nuance. Not all arcades are designed fairly, but the best ones allow you to clear the game on one credit if you are very good. It can be very satisfying to spend time practicing an arcade and then be able to perform it again on demand.
While consoles got better and closed the gap on technology, the arcade got a second wind in the 90's as fighting games and larger format games like Daytona USA became central, preserving the monumentality of it and opening up more multiplayer experiences, which helped the arcade retain a social feeling.
Since video games are so prevalent now, and allow for cheaper, longer-format and less intense experiences, arcades have become a niche, but their style of gameplay remains popular.
For example, take girls who aren't gamers, there's no way to get them to play console games. They see that as the domain of dudes. So there's no chance to take them out on a date where you sit in a room playing games from a console.
But these very same girls love the arcade experience. They are partial to the arcade experience because they get to be out in the open, in their best outfit, consume alcohol and/or food, smoke, socialize and even though they might not enjoy the games themselves, they like the social aspect. It's like going to a club where the crowd is a bit nerdier and not quite the meat market that are dance clubs.
Same with billiards. Not that fun in dad's den. But fun as hell in a pool hall. More social. More vibing.
You don't go to arcades cause it's cheaper. You go cause you want it to be a communal experience.
Even if you're not there to mingle with guys or girls. Maybe you want to show off and beat some game. It's much funner when you got a bunch of people rooting behind you than if you owned the cabinet and just played in dad's den.
I think it's like why people go to the gym to exercise even though most of them would theoretically be better off buying a set of resistance bands and making a YouTube playlist to follow at home. There seems to be something inherently compelling about a physical space that society has designated as being dedicated to a specific activity.
While it hasn't been the case recently, way back in the day arcade machines had much better graphics than anything you could play on home consoles or computers.
As others have alluded to it's not just to play a game it's also a social thing.
I can't think of any other social activity I was involved in outside my home as a teenager. I was shy, quiet, no friends etc. but at an arcade there was a common interest. Watching someone else play or 2 player game with someone you didn't know.
The smell too arcades had a certain smell the plywood cabinets, sweet smells of food, and for a certain period in time cigarettes.
Yes, archive.org :-D.
You can find plenty of arcade games, all running in a browser version of MAME.
You can also find games for other platforms, such as home computers or pc, them too running on a browser version of some kind of emulator (MESS, Vice etc.)
Since we are talking about Sega, have some Sonic the Hedgehog.
Regardless of where one stands on warez, it's often the de-facto only source for obscure titles.
There are/were fairly-complete warez torrents of MAME sets. The ones up to the early 2000's were of reasonable size, but after that, the sizes balloon.
Best to get a stand-up MAME arcade which were the rage some years ago.
