State of the Arcade Industry
I’ve lived in Hong Kong for about 10 years, and a lot of that time was spent in smokey arcades, trying to get in when most were “16 and over” and we were 13 just wanting a taste of Street Fighter (the first one, with just Ryu and Ken).
Since then, I’ve gotten a taste of how arcades have developed in North America, first just being incredibly behind and unoriginal and then moving towards large centres like Dave and Busters or Gameworks.
There’s a (rather long) article on the State of the Arcade Industry over at 1Up that covers a lot of things I’ve thought about over the past few years.
Personally, I’ve always thought the online and direct competition component to arcade was going to be important. The advantages of arcades are that you have players colocated and you can use custom controllers and environments. I want to see MechWarrior with full blown control panels and encased seating where you talk with your friends in the same arcade and play against people in another city. Charge people the way you charge Lazer Tag instead of pumping a billion quarters.
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