I had the most ridiculous thought just come through my head yesterday... I can't remember what I was doing at the time, but it somehow came to me. Could an arcade payment model work in today's economy? Traditionally home gaming has been about paying full price for a game, and getting however much that you want out of it. With the advent of free to play, it's showing the world that a completely different payment model can work.

Think about a game like Street Fighter 4. In Street Fighter 4, you can turn the challenge feature on while playing Arcade Mode or whatever, and people are open to challenge you to a game while you're playing at any time... just like a real arcade. There's no better game to apply this concept to. Capcom could take out everything except for Arcade Mode, multiplayer and settings(and even then some settings you can't access), and gamers can download the game for free. It would work exactly the same way an actual arcade machine does with credits. One credit for one play, the game's over when you lose against the CPU or another player(or finish arcade mode). You can't play at all if you don't pay. There would be no way to turn the challenge feature off.

The advantages over an actual arcade cabinet are fairly obvious.

- #1, no travel time... it's right in your home.

- #2, it can be considerably less expensive if you stop playing before you spend more than the full retail price of the game.

- #3, you never have to worry about broken controls and unmaintenanced cabinets which is often the case at arcades run by people who know nothing about games.

The disadvantages are fairly obvious too.

- #1, inferior controls. Unless you have a fight stick of some kind, it's never as good as playing on an arcade machine with fully working controls.

- #2, you can't see or talk to your opponent. Technically you can talk to your opponent in Street Fighter 4 with mics, but you have to deal with people that don't know how to set up their mics and it's just not the same as talking to someone in person because people can be jerks online with no reprocussions while at an actual arcade cabinet those same people would act entirely different.

- #3, connection issues and payments can be an issue... what if you disconnect while playing? That would be annoying to have it eat a credit because of that.

- #4, you can spend more than the retail cost of the game itself quite easily. This was not an issue when arcades were popular so I don't think it's really an issue at all now, but it's worth mentioning anyway.

I don't think a model like this can work well by itself... I mean it's plausible that it can work on its own, but to offer this option alongside a traditional retail offering I think could be advantageous. With the coming PC release of Street Fighter x Tekken, it would be a really neat experiment if Capcom were to offer both options.

I think a "free to play" game could work under this model... ditching the cash shop in favor of an arcade payment system, but I don't think most traditional games can work like this. Not every game can fall under this model. Some games that aren't fighting games can work, Super Monday Night Combat for example was just released and it could work with an arcade payment system since it doesn't have a single player component.

Really the key is two fold for a game that would be put under this system. You'd have to have a very limited or non-existent single player component to the game, and you should in most cases require a multiplayer component... whether it's blind challenges that can be issued to you at any time or just paying a small amount per game for a multiplayer match with the absense of single player.

Would you be open to such a payment model? Do you think it can work, or is it just too old fashioned for 2012?