Will arcades ever return to relevance?

Wasn't you talking about how you smashed some guys teeth in because he said you was not playing fair... Not sure you have any moral ground to take!

@aigis when will you learn....THAT YOUR ACTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES

I like rpgs, what can I do. My mind must be dirty as well

@the_hellblazer said:

@aigis when will you learn....THAT YOUR ACTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES

im sorry >.<

I went into an arcade in Myrtle Beach over the summer, and I couldn't believe that all the games are now either claw machines and phone games put on a big screen. Who goes to an arcade to play Candy Crush Saga?

Most malls don't even have arcades anymore.

Dave and Busters would actually make a ton of sense to have in malls, but I've only seen 1 that was located in a mall (not coincidentally the only one I've been in). I can see the parallel to arcades, lots of multiplayer 4 and 8 player type racing games, but they don't necessarily have classic arcade games. Which is a bit of a shame. The most surprising thing I saw was an 6 player (I think it was 6 players, may have even been 8?) MarioKart setup.

Online really injured the arcade scene alongside the general dumbing down of gameplay. A lot of arcade series' have moved to online e.g. Street fighter V, KI etc.

Arcades still thrive in worldwide markets. They are one of the reasons Tekken is so popular. Overall, I think arcade game design should still be the gold standard, as many developers seem to forget that they are developing a game and not something else when they make some of these cinematic and/or AAA budget games in general.

Arcade were still huge in the mid-90s. Arcades were still generating more revenue than consoles up until about 1996. It was in the late '90s that consoles overtook arcades, and arcades began declining.

Home consoles were one of several factors. Another factor was that the technological gap between arcade and home systems began to narrow, with the Dreamcast and subsequent systems (though arcades still held a narrow advantage up until the early 2000s). The rise of online gaming was also another factor, with the shift away from outdoor gaming towards indoor gaming. And the game industry's shift away from shorter arcade-style gaming (gameplay mechanics, accessibility, punishing difficulty, replay value) towards longer adventure-style gaming was also another factor.

Arcades are still popular in Japan, where arcades are still bigger than consoles to this day. Something that largely went unnoticed in the West is that Japanese arcade games began adapting to the industry's shift towards longer adventure-style gaming. Here's an interesting article about the ways in which Sega adapted arcade games to the modern era, keeping both Sega and arcades relevant in Japan:

SEGA Retrospective: The Deeper Arcade game – An oxymoron that became one of SEGA’s pillars

However, most of these innovative Sega arcade games will most likely never see the light of day in the West.

No point. RPG's replaced arcades

outside of kid playrooms or pizza places, no. Home consoles eliminated the need for them.

@hammerthrust: virtual reality will bring back arcades, no everyone will or want to pay for a decent vr setup and with a decent vr setup , I mean an omnidirectional treadmill , suit with pressure points and haptic feedback for things that aren't there (yes it does exist)

"Will arcades ever return to relevance?"

Meanwhile Tekken 7 arcades are making hundreds of thousands of dollars for arcades.
It depends on where you are and what types of games you are playing, really. In most major cities in the west, there is going to be an arcade with the latest games, and usually a dedicated scene to follow it.

I loved the arcades as a kid, I can't tell you how much change I threw into the many great machines we had back in the day.

My favorite was the sit down Star Wars cabinet with its amazing vector graphics and digitised sounds. Even to this day if I happen to be somewhere and I find an arcade I go looking for it in the hope I can relive those memories one more time.

The kids of today don't know the fun of gathering around a game with your friends and playing each other, sitting on the couch wearing a headset screaming abuse at a stranger just aint the same.

@hammerthrust:

No.

Xbox live: Get Over Here!!!!

Arcade: AHHHHHH..HELP MOMMY!!!!!

Xbox Live: Performs Fatality...

Fin

@hammerthrust: what is it with you and RPGs

Don't know about you guys but I'm having blast of fun playing online with friends - I don't see the need to interact face to face with people to enjoy hobbies.

If the future will allow us to enjoy drone games using our computers or consoles I ensure you people won't go outside to fly those things neither.

In Japan, Arcades are still in high demand and there are people in Japan who still prefers to go out and meet friends. Here in the U.S, Arcades are dead but in another way, there's a place called Dave & Busters that acts like an Arcade area but it also has Bars and restaurant.

@davillain-:

Yeah, but Dave and busters success is because it's a giant play pen for kids to run around while adults drink.

Classic arcades were tbagged by Xbox live.

@davillain-:

That place sounds cool. I wish we had something like Dave & Busters in my country.

Even when Dreamcast had online, it didn't hurt Arcades but yeah, when XBL came into the fray and made it more fluid to use, going outside was a thing in the past.

Dave & Busters is a cool place to have fun but it's as close an Arcade area as you can get.

Yeah man, malls was the place to be for some good competitive VG action. The bigger the mall the more quarters lined up on deck ready to go. Those were the dayzzz but like most back then we were hoping for a day where you could get the authentic arcade gaming experience at home, that was the dream and in 1999 and there after, we got that and then some whereby the home VG action complete with online MP made going to arcades dropping quarters unnecessary. :D

Home gaming has always had different genres to cater much longer single player experiences (final fantasy, zelda, fallout... whatever), cinematic are just a natural evolution for single player games that would be played at home at our own leisure. Unless you were talking about vs. matches or fighting games, single player arcade games were originally designed to basically just take your quarters. (i.e. the game was really only a 1 hour experience at most, but it included insane difficulty spikes to keep you feeding it quarters for "continues"). They weren't going to have "cinematics" because there was no time for that shit, they wanted players to "die" within minutes - to insert a quarter to continue - or move on to the next player inserting a quarter to start from the beginning. Is that what we really want?

I don't think lack of arcades has damaged the quality of gaming much at all. It's just that the developers looking for "quarters" have moved over to micro transactions and the mobile gaming side and away from arcade development. Mobile is a far larger market than "arcades" ever were. I guess we could say the fighting and beat 'em up genres aren't quite as diverse and deep as they were in the arcade heyday, but they are still fairly represented with some of the old franchises still kicking around - at least in terms of fighting games. 2D beat'em ups are mostly dead, but then 3D beat'em up's are thriving. Yes, many of them don't give us the difficulty options of the past, but that is more of a choice developers are making rather than having to do with lack of arcades.

do you want him to relive the trauma?

it seems like hes declared war on RPGs

With VR arcades can regain relevance.

Exactly. I remember what a big deal it was just to get lousy ports of Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter II on SNES. Then there were the SNK games which you basically couldn't get decent port of unless you had a Neo Geo. I think they tried to port some of those to SNES but they were even bigger jokes than Mortal Kombat or SFII. But after the PS1 and especially PS2, it seems like everything after that revolved around the home version of games to where if they made an arcade game the PS2 version was basically an "arcade perfect" port.

Hardware wise, arcades used to have a huge edge on consoles/PC gaming. That is no longer the case, even the most modern arcade games seem like the are lagging behind the PC/console counterparts (i.e. they are going with lower end hardware to keep costs down). So all that could theoretically be left would be the "head to head" competitive angle, but there are actually way more games to play online than ever existed in arcades. Still, I wouldn't have predicted total death to arcades like has basically happened in the last 10-15 years. I would have thought people would still like to hang there, that nostalgia could keep them running, but I guess not.

Its more than a war, hes saving all of gaming

Arcades have been replaces by free to play mobile games. They won't return to what they once were, at least in the West.

Since Millennials find slots boring, I could see Casinos becoming arcade like in the future for younger generations of gamblers. We'll see.

Do you have any stats/sources on how well Tekken 7 is doing in arcades?

gotta admit I miss bat shit crazy posters, we should always have at least one on the books. This guy has stepped up and took the void MDK12345 left.

hes awesome isnt he

Wow looking through this thread gives a sense of how little people some here actually know about arcade games.

Arcade games wont return to relevance, there dead in the UK.

Insanely difficult hardcore games still thrive in Japanese arcades. And not just because they eat up yen. Many skilled players can clear these insanely difficult arcade games on a single credit. Arcade games are shorter, but they tend to be more well-designed, with more finely-tuned gameplay mechanics, than most console games, since the quality of the gameplay is what keeps players coming back to the arcades.

In terms of revenue, the arcade market during the '80s to early 90s was bigger than the mobile market is today. While there are more mobile gamers today than any other gaming sector, most of them aren't paying customers. And mobile games aren't a replacement for arcade games, since mobile games aren't designed for hardcore challenge the way arcade games are.

@2Chalupas: home gaming never had to abandon game design core principles that arcade styled games adhere to. The removal of real game aspects (e.g. score, grade *difficulty*) isn't an "evolution" of game design, it's a marketing choice designed to attract more people. For people who want to play challenging and interesting games, this is a huge setback.

While we're on the topic, "insane difficulty" doesn't necessarily mean the game was designed to take your money. There are people who consistently 1cc (1 credit complete for you guys) novel games. The difficulty complaint just makes it sound like games aren't for that person. You know how to prevent yourself from having to spend more money? Figure out what you did wrong, practice, think about it etc.

Most of these new games coddle people way too much.

Arcade games were designed first and foremost to empty you pocket of it's cash. It's the only reason they were there.

@X_CAPCOM_X: whats your opinion on the rpg?

@aigis: I like rpgs. Rpgs are harder to design though. The best rpgs challenge you throughout the game rather than reward you for play time alone. Rpg elements in many games often add an extra element that keeps you hooked and gives an extra layer of complexity. So rpgs get the ? from me.

Edit: The worst thing that is implemented often in rpgs are rngs. Rngs also appear in other genres too. Essentially what these do is make some strategies have a chance of working

@boycie: so were console games. Evidence: you buy them. More evidence: dlc.

And yet arcade games can be cleared on a single credit by skilled players.

@boycie: @Jag85: some arcades even lock content behind a single credit finish.

But mostly they wouldn't of been. And even if they did most arcade game are about 20 minutes long, not long either way before the next punter is putting more ££'£s in.

No lol. EDIT: It's more like 40 to an hour.

Most people lose in less than that amount of time, and then the next person is playing. That's fine -- nothing wrong with that. They just aren't people particularly interested in 1cc'ing the game with the high score. For those that are, the game has something to offer them too.

This is how arcade games have the wonderful ability to appeal to any gamer. It's why MvC was so popular. Easy to get into, but the skill ceiling is high.

Remove yuppies from the equation and you might be able to bring the arcade experience back.

The better arcade games are the shorter ones though imo. Street fighter games, Tekken games, most shmups and rail shooters can usually be completed in about 25 to 35 minutes with one credit.

Other ones more geared to wider audiences have longer play times, which isn't actually something I would call good arcade game design, but it's still ok.

I loved vector graphics games such as Star Wars, Battle Zone, Tempest and the best of all, Asteroids.

Nope not anymore...better ways to game nowadays. :P

Playing MvC 2 on quadruple speed (or whatever) at an arcade is still fun as hell. Arcades are dead because we are antisocial and prefer to play at home not in public at the mall. I would go to an arcade if they had some advanced VR/AR that wasn't on home consoles/PC.

That's what dragged everyone to the arcade was at the time home consoles couldn't handle those games. Porting street fighters to snes was a milestone. Now with the internet we want to stay inside our homes even more. Countries outside the US have way more cyber cafes where people gather. It's going to take some advanced technology to bring arcade back to it's glory.

Other than places like japan where it is still relevant, nope