[quote name='kainzero']I'm bored and I just got to thinking.
I think the death of arcades was due to arcades themselves. 25 cents is too little to really maintain and make a worthwhile profit off of a cabinet. Raise it to a dollar, maybe even 50, and people will complain and go elsewhere. I remember when my local arcade raised the price on MvC2 from 25 to 50. Everyone there played elsewhere, I just quit playing. Japan is 100 - 200 Yen per game, which is roughly a dollar to two dollars. Hmm, could that be why they're still alive?
I'm reading this Smash thread where someone wanted to have a tournament where the entry fee was raised from $8 to $12, with included venue fee being bumped from $3 to $4. Everyone complained, saying that it was too much and that the venue was being greedy and profiting off of the poor entrants.
Seriously?
Oh man, I remember entering those tournaments in Mission Beach where I think it was $15 for 3 hours, just so I can play casuals against the best in SD. I don't think I did very well. =)
I'm just stuck thinking that there isn't enough money in the scene to really make it grow and that people don't wanna pay enough to really make it happen.[/QUOTE]
part of it's gotta be the culture. back in the day, everyone played fighting games. it was the hot shit, it pretty much had most of the media coverage, people you knew who you didn't think even played video games knew street fighter.. it's just different now. and it's hard to explain it. everything else is clear cut (desire for lower costs and more availability of comp), but i don't really know what happened with the culture. less players, less media coverage, less games being made. were fighting games just a fad? did the decent-to-shitty players just give up on the grind? do new players really dislike fighting games that much because they lack a rewarding single player experience? maybe fighting games aren't pretty enough. it seems like the prettiest ones seem to be the most popular with casual fighting gamers.
i think that if fighting game scene didn't have the drop-off that it did in the late 90's, arcades would probably be more prominent than they are now, even with online console gaming available.