What killed arcades?

The Game Room
1

Was it the Xbox/PS2 or the current generation? Hard to say.

I think Ninja Gaiden last gen marked the point at which home console graphics surpassed arcade graphics but I think the 360 torpedoed the arcade market with Xbox Live, making it useless to go to the arcade to play against others. I’d rather sit at home and drink beer and play against chumps online than go stand in line at the arcade to play.

I also think the HUGE cost to play games in arcades served to kill them. I think more so than home consoles really. When I see an arcade game now it’s frequently $1 or more per play and each play lasts 1-3 minutes or so. Who wants to pay that much to play a game that’s likely inferior to the one you can play at home?

2

Arcades are dead? They still seem pretty much alive here.

Two things happened (both of these are more or less what you said):
-Everybody has the means to play whatever game they like at home now
-Games in general have reached the point where they’re altogether a more serious and involved affair than before - impulse play is likely to end in rapid defeat, which is not perceived as good value for your inserted coin.

3

I’d say it’s the same thing that killed porn theaters - you can have the same experience at home, only better.

4

The internet killed arcades. That is to say, being able to play games against people across the world killed arcade games and being able to do so at any time of the day.

And yes arcades are dead, in medium to small cities they are. My city used to have several and now we have zero. The community of people that played games regularly at these arcades all just gather at someone’s house to play games now.

5

Which is a damn shame, as local play trumps online in fun, imo.

6

Arcade games only seem to work in two venues now:

-Dave & Buster’s (or similar places), where they can be part of an expensive night out, and allow you to play larger, interactive games (like racing games where you sit on an actual motorcycle and can lean into turns and stuff).

-Bars, with all the Golden Tee track ball games and the bar-top consoles that have like 100 different mini-games you can play.
IMO, it was improved graphics capability in home systems at an affordable price that killed arcades.

7

There are arcades at both my local malls that seem to be doing fine (although their malls are not).

8

I’d say the decline started before the XBox and PS2. Two things happened, really:

  1. Home video games systems, especially the NES. It was the NES, really, that started keeping people at home playing games.

  2. Arcade games started to become more than 25 cents. Up until the early 90s arcade games were always a quarter, had been a quarter for years. Then they started charging more, as the games became better and more elaborate. Your dollars didn’t go nearly as far at teh arcade. This made sense on its own but in a market with more home video game systems it was suicide.

9

I put the death of arcades on three games:

Street Fighter II
Mortal Kombat
NBA Jam

All were excellent games in the arcade. However:

All three had excellent ports to home systems.

Once you could play the same game at home there was no reason to play them in the arcades.

It does make me sad - I was born in 1981. Some of my fondest early memories were dad taking me to the arcade.

I had an Atari 2600. Dad would hook it up every night Mom was working late. I loved those games to death.

Later I got an NES. Loved it too. Dad and I played through The Legend of Zelda while mom worked.

But by the time the home systems could do good versions of SF:II, Mortal Komat and NBA:Jam - it was over. No good reason to go to an arcade. End of an era, and it made me sad, though I’m a gamer to this day.

10

You two recent posters are really dating yourselves with those posts.

Arcades thrived long after the NES and Mortal Kombat and early home systems showed up.

The significant indicator of arcades dying was Soul Calibur 3 not being released in the arcades. And to a lesser extent, the more recent Mortal Kombat games were also all home releases only. SC 3 was a very large and anticipated release and barely an eyelash was batted that it wasn’t released for the arcade.

Sure some were upset, but we all knew we were just going to be playing at home anyways.

EDIT: Okay maybe GameHat isn’t that old, but obviously was never an arcade gamer or else he or she would know they’ve been doing just fine up until the last few year as a standalone space in a mall (as was mentioned, places like D&B did help kill arcades and are still thriving themselves).

11

I like playing on LAN, for there’s no lag, but playing over the Internet is the greatest thing to happen to gaming in quite a long time.

12

Wow. I could not disagree more.

Of course arcades thrived long after the NES came out; these things don’t happen instantly. But the price-to-utility ratio of arcades versus home gaming systems REALLY started changing around that time. It was a process set into motion much earlier on but really picked up with the NES.

And with due respect, one video game didn’t make that much of a difference. That may be, in your opinion, an indicator, but that’s not a reason. WHY wasn’t it released to arcades? Clearly they must have felt there was some reason for it.

Yes, of course, we can’t be arcade gamers if we disagree with you. :rolleyes:

In fact, stand alone arcades have been in precipitous decline for years and years. According to such sources as I can muster, betwene 1996 and 2006, 70% of arcades in the USA disappeared. That’s not “doing just fine.”

Furthermore, I’d say - and I’m not the only one to say it - that arcade games started becoming remarkably boring inthe mid to late 90s. It got to the point that it seemed that there were just three kinds of games: Mortal Kombat/Street Fighter and their ripoffs, shooting games, and racing games.

13

Not much more to add, other than to say I agree w/ Gamehat’s post almost completely. I too was born in '81, and was an avid arcade fan up until the point those 3 games came out, pretty much. Once I had SF II, Mortal Kombat, and NBA Jam on SNES, that’s pretty much when I stopped going to arcades all together. Rather than my friends and I plunking down $.25-50 each for each time we wanted to play against each other, we could buy the game for $30 and play all night long for 5+ sleepovers, plus all the day-time playing.

After the release of those 3 games, the only new stuff that really started popping up was Cruis’n USA and motorcycle/waveracer simulation games that cost $.75+. The arcades around here just kept bringing in more expensive units to try and replace the customers they were losing to the home consoles.

The other things that became popular were the shooting games, the ones where you’re holding an actual pistol and shooting at an arcade screen (House of the Dead, Silent Hill, etc.) I was never into those games to begin with, but they stuck with the trend of costing $.50-$1/play. Not long after of course the consoles started producing their own peripherals to capitalize on the shooter market they were losing to arcades.

Every once in a while the arcade would get a hit (the one that sticks in my mind is Primal Rage), but that’d be ported to the best available console at the time 3 months later anyways. It was better to save your change and just get it once it was ported.

ETA: Damn, guess that “not much more to add” disclaimer at the top went to hell once I started typing, lol. :slight_smile:

14

So what’s so different about Japanese gaming culture that they still have 'em? It’s not like they’re ALL full of pachinko machines.

15

Sounds like you answered your own question. I actually went to an arcade recently for kicks and was sort of blown over by what a giant rip-off it was. The games are ridiculously hard - in some cases I’d barely last 30 seconds between putting in my tokens, trying to figure out the god damn controls, and having the “Game Over” screen pop up. Also those ticket prizes just aren’t nearly as cool or enticing as I remembered them being as a kid…

16

No way dude, arcades were dying (dead?) well before Soul Calibur 3. Hell, they were dead well before Soul Caibur 2. As others mentioned, it really was the 16-bit generation that started the trend, with the decline continuing during the PSX/N64 era.

17

Having lived through nearly the entire arcade phenomenon (I was there when Atari was king of the world), I staunchly disagree with the notion that there was one great, terrible event that “killed” arcade gaming. What exists now is just the end result of a long, steady evolution with plenty of ups and downs and has adjusted to a reality that’s vastly different from 1978 (or even 1998).

If I had to point to one really big factor, it’s that the types of games that were once the arcades’ bread and butter…beat 'em ups, platforms, shooters, racers, simplified sports, etc…are now either free online or available at a bargain price on the portable systems. (Never leave the portable systems out of the discussion, especially considering the colossal strides they’ve made since the first Game Boy.) There will ALWAYS be a demand for simple, easy-to-learn, fast-paced, cathartic, fun gameplay, whihc is what arcade gaming is, there are just far better sources than the arcade now.

So in a sense, it’s a double whammy for the arcade owners: They’ve lost their traditional customer base, and the new generation of hardcore players…y’know, the guys who actually enjoy spending hours practicing plays on Madden or fine tuning their Gran Turismo supercar to perfection…doesn’t want to slog to the mall just to play some inferior version.

Ultimately, I think most of the surviving arcades will follow the “if ya can’t beat 'em, join 'em” mentality and get their own consoles (which this one local place I used to go to a lot did recently). Actually, this may be the best strategy. Think about it: Who do you know who owns a PS3 and an X-Box 360 (never mind a Wii)? But an arcade owner, who regularly shells out upwards of $5,000 for a single cabinet, would have no trouble getting not only every system available, but the proper peripherals. And believe me, there are a lot of players who would definitely go for that. (I swear, if I ever have to hunt for instruments for Guitar Hero or Rock Band again…)

And if all else fails, there’s always Island Fruit. :slight_smile:

(Hey, don’t laugh. That’s probably the only reason Tilt still exists.)

18

It’s a good thing Radio has a solid alibi; it just got out on parole for that Video bit it pulled back in the early eighties.

19

:smack:
Let’s try that again:

It’s a good thing Video has a solid alibi; it just got out on parole for that Radio bit it pulled back in the early eighties.

20

I’m the same age as GameHat and I have to say, you’re probably too young to realize what arcades were like before. The number and variety of titles that were released in the span between 1980 and 1993 (basically Pac-Man to NBA Jam TE) was astonishing. After that, the variety of games really dried up. Sure, there were a few big hits, but they all began charging more than 25 cents and some, like Time Crisis, charged a dollar.

All you see now is a few fighting games (and with Mortal Kombat and Soul Calibur console-exclusive at this point, even that is starting to dry up) and a few light gun games. Music games are big too, but those cost even more than a dollar, and thus, are rarely seen outside big arcades (of which there are vanishingly few).

There you go being all formatist. Why blame all videos when the video star was the one doing the killin’? Are you saying all videos are killers? Who are you, Jack Thompson?