RSS
Final Nail For the Arcade Video Game?
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
It's been said for many years that the coin-op video game industry was a dying or even a dead market ever since the first true boom period of the industry started to sputter back in 1983 before totally collapsing in 1984. At that time, the industry managed to balance out for a while then have another grand period in the early to mid 1990s when Street Fighter II, Mortal Kombat, and NBA Jam took the world by storm like few games had since Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, and others. Once again, however, this was short-lived, and the arcade market once again faltered once the PlayStation and XBox consoles became huge hits.
2008 saw what many said was another resurgence. On the backs of hit game titles such as Big Buck Safari, the average earnings-per-week for dedicated arcade video games hit $213 according to Play Meter Magazine, the largest such average in a great many years, even rivaling the heralded "Golden Age" of the arcades from the early 80s.
It was short lived. Play Meter's polling for 2009 saw a shocking drop in average earnings per machine in every video game category. Average earnings per machine for dedicated units dropped from $213 in 2008 to a ghastly $69 per week per machine in 2009. Even the Deluxe-style machines such as the popular Fast and the Furious driving series dropped from an average of $194 per week in 2008 to $115 in 2009. These are all numbers that, after operating expenses, repairs, licensing, and location splits only ensure that any new equipment bought wasn't even paying for itself through the past year.
The advancement of technology has also caused a huge issue with almost any arcade games more than a few years old. With the digital transition in home television making the old CRT-style tube televisions something no longer seen at your local store, CRT tubes used in arcade equipment since day one have suddenly become harder to locate and far more expensive to purchase. As these monitors fail in the field or even in home collections, people will be forced to covert older machines to flat panel monitors or shell out more cash than ever. For many arcade operators, it likely won't be worth it to pay the money needed for either option on most machines.
Super Auctions, the arcade auction company who has made regular trips to the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex and other locations for decades, has scaled back not only the number of overall arcade auctions they hold across the US, but as 2010 came to be actually shifted all focus on their website off of arcade and video games, now calling themselves "entertainment" auctioneers and making note of Hollywood prop auctions and the such. It's not hard to see to why, really, as the days of an auction hall full of decent arcade equipment and projects has been long gone for years, now mostly filled with 60-in-1 bootleg machines made in a garage somewhere, average condition classics that only end up purchased back by the original sellers, or junk of little value to operators or collectors.
There are still places to play arcade video games out there, both old and new. I recently spotted the latest hunting game, Big Buck Hunter Pro: Open Season at Denton sports bar Vitty's and Denton nightspot Rubber Gloves recently had their classic Joust and Tron machines repaired and returned to action with the Moon Patrol and Karate Champ machines near the front door. But with the huge drop off in earnings of the new games and phasing out of important parts and part sources for the older games, one has to wonder if the world of coin-op video games will pull through this time around.
Only time and gamers will determine that.
Related Articles:
Comments
