How did arcade devs make money exactly? The arcade buys their PCB or cabinet, but then does every coin from a certain game get collected by an agent of the company or something? How does that process work?
>>12005804>The arcade buys their PCB or cabinetI think that's how the devs made their money isn't itThen the coins go to the arcade owner since the cabinet is his nowunless I'm misunderstanding your question
In Japan Namco, Sega and Taito operated their own game centers, so coins from machines also went to them.
>>12005804If you "bought" an arcade, you are obligated to pay a fee for usage.
>>12005804Not your personal search engines. When you have retarded and simple questions that can be answered in a few seconds of search engine, do so
>>12005804>how did arcade devs make their moneyPoorly, the answer you're looking for is poorly. Given the whole business crumbled once home devices were keeping up with arcade machines graphically
>>12005872I have 5 arcades within a close radius of my house. Society and the family unit and infrastructure of towns and cities killed arcades in most places. Kids are essential for them but they became dirty and seedy places hard to get to with little to no cooperative or competitive play, and units catered to an older audience who no longer wanted or felt comfortable going outside or socializing.
>>12005871>How dare you try to have an on-topic discussion on my Internet
>>12005885I live 20 minutes from the largest arcade in the world. People drive hours and hours just to see it, others make it a part of their vacation plans when they fly in. But that's just the thing, they had to fly in/drive hours just to see an arcade cabinet. If you're in a major city you probably have AN option.Do you really think making Ridge Racer Full Scale and selling it to arcades for 100k a pop and designing it bespoke for each space it was installed on was profitable and sustainable for either party??? The minute the home console became competent with 3D the entire thing started collapsing in on itself
>>12005906Galloping Ghost?And no, just having Ridge Racer isn't going to change much, but having the unique experience at least has something going for it. I listed all the reasons why arcades are fucked in most places, and it's a societal thing. You hear about Sega or whoever closing up in Japan, but that's because they are closing the places which became orientated around an older audience and ostracized families and kids for the most part. Family-orientated areas still make bank and are packed during peak hours. Nintendo is killing it with Pokemon Frienda right now because it is a unique experience you have to go out and play, and they have the locations and infrastructure to do it. Even if a place like USA or Canada wants to do, say they have a plan to synergize with Toys R Us or whoever (I think they closed, not sure, but whatever) and bring tons of families in to an arcade in the store who in turn get sucked into buying toys and adding to business. The family still have to drive like 30-50 minutes to some strip mall or take ghetto public transport together and deal with the people there. You also can't leave your shit lying around and have to worry about thieves or who your kid is playing with and people who don't respect rules etc. Then you have aol sorts of wierdos also there like you see aroUnd games nowadays wearing cat ears and shit or filming everyone and themselves as they shout cuss words. Kinda rambling but you can surely get the point. There is nothing you can do to save arcades in most places and it isn't the fault of home consoles, it is due to society, urban planning, etc.
>>12005872>PoorlyIn the USA this was the case. The game devs were wagies and being an operator was rough because full new cabs cost as much as a car. Many arcades rented the machines and the margins for everyone involved were paper thin.
>>12005905Not so much a discussion as a question that has an easily searched set of answers though.
>Make game>Sell it to arcades>Offer to service it>Machine gets credits>Company gets reputation amongst players for being good devs>Also gets reputation amongst operators for making machines that make money>Buy more from manufacturerIt's that simple
>>12005930Yeah galloping ghost
>>12006037Can you actually play all the games there? I have seen videos of shit like the old Sega mechanical games and shit, do they actually let people play them, or is it a case where so little people actually play those games that they don't have to worry about them breaking? There is one a little ways away from me with vintage machines but they only turn them on and let you play for a set fee.
>>12006041They're all just turned on ready to play, free play. Only things that are off are broken. They repair shit regularly but things are also old and some of the foot traffic is dumb normies not supervising their kids that don't have any appreciation for what they're fucking around with and they get too rough and fuck up a machine, I wish there was a way for them to be stricter about that but the normalfagd are probably a big part of the cash flow and it's very maze like so it'd be almost impossible to supervise people anyway. There's like 1000 machines though, they bought out the whole business strip they were originally located in and tore down all the walls to expand
>>12006174>They're all just turned on ready to play, free play.For a place that large, that's a smart move else they'd lose pockets of income among the cabinets, and it cuts down on wear and tear and time too.>"This machine ripped me off, I want my money back."
>>12005965>today I told the people in the old video game forum not to talk about old video gamesYou're insufferable. Go away
>>12006419Nta, but you should go away. The OP asked a very specific question, and it provoked a series of answers that shed light on an important industry.
>>12005930>galloping ghostJust read the game list from that Hot damn, it's an entire romset
>>12005804A lot of arcades I knew in the 90s actually rented machines from bigger warehouse companies. Like they would rent say Street Fighter 2 from a join for $200 a month and they get to keep all the coins in the machine. It's how they had a rotation of fresh games and the ones that didn't do well would be gone quickly
>>12005804>The arcade buys their PCB or cabinetUsually this wasn't the case. Manufacturers almost never were able to distribute their games directly to operators, so 90% of the time they sold to distributors who would then sell/rent the games to operators (or home collectors, which didn't become common until arcades died at the end of the 90s). In the case of renting, the operator would sometimes split collections with the distributor in addition to the business owner, as some anons have already pointed out.
>>12005804Arcade PCBs and cabinets were extremely expensive, that's how. Not only did the PCBs tend to be more elaborate tech than home games, they were sold as commercial use moneymaking devices, thereby allowing them to charge a premium.
>>12006430>Nta
>>12005804>How did arcade devs make money exactly?By selling cabsA Street Fighter 2 CE cab cost $1300 in 1992 (nearly $3000 adjusted for inflation)
>>12006492lol because I really am a different anon. People don't want you here. Can you deal with that?
>>12006535I didn't make the thread. Accept it.
>>12006551haha projection is fun sometimes I'm finding.Seek help btw.Might I suggest Sly Spy? It's a James Bond game, but not legally. It's grrrrrrrrrrrrreat.
Was at the mall today with my kids>Not really an arcade machine but a VR roller coaster device in the middle of the mall hallway>15 credits to "play it">1 credit = 1 dollar>3 year old kid pretty unplugged the USB headset and was smashing it against the ground>His dad next to the machine on his cellphone not paying attention
>>12005906>Do you really think making Ridge Racer Full Scale and selling it to arcades for 100k a pop and designing it bespoke for each space it was installed on was profitable and sustainable for either party???Believe it or not...It actually was profitable. The arcade industry was big enough and popular enough in the early 1990s that selling something like Ridge Racer Full Scale was viable. It earned Namco a nice profit. The 1980s to mid 1990s was the Golden Age of arcades.
>>12006213Galloping Ghost was the first one to popularize the free play model in the USA.There are interviews with the Galloping Ghost owner "Doc Mack". Doc Mack said back in the mid-2000s, he tried to save the arcade industry and get other arcade owners to switch to Freeplay. Doc said it was the best way to get people interested in returning to arcades, and to reuse older cabinets.But other arcade business owners laughed at him. They said he would be out of business within 6 months to 1 year if he used a flat fee Freeplay model. They said that using quarters was the best way for arcades to succeed.Of course Doc Mack proved them all wrong and 15+ years later his arcade is now the biggest arcade (in terms of number of cabinets) in the entire world. People are now emailing him every day asking for advice on how to open a freeplay arcade.The funny part is that there are few holdouts that refuse to acknowledge that Freeplay is the best way to go. These owners have YouTube channels and try to promote their arcade, but get upset or refuse to answer comments when people ask why they don't switch to Freeplay. It's really funny.
>>12005905Asking an easily-googleable question isn't discussion>>>/google/
>>12006507>A Street Fighter 2 CE cab cost $1300 in 1992It cost more than that. Around triple. The average price was between 4K to 7K for brand new cabinets (depending on the game). Capcom and Sega loved to charge a premium. So they were on the high end.
>>12005804they did not atari went broke devs were utter minions bavk in the day and were lucky to even get work people who could silkscreen PCBs and design them fot all the status
>>12006464The last time I was at Galloping Ghost, the Gradius II machine felt sticky when I touched it. I looked down at the coin return slot and saw that someone had jizzed in it.>>12005905Who are you quoting? Go fuck yourself.
>>12007068>The last time I was at Galloping Ghost, the Gradius II machine felt sticky when I touched it. I looked down at the coin return slot and saw that someone had jizzed in it. Why do you say this in every arcade discussion thread? Why? Seek help.
>>12007042>The funny part is that there are few holdouts that refuse to acknowledge that Freeplay is the best way to go. These owners have YouTube channels and try to promote their arcade, but get upset or refuse to answer comments when people ask why they don't switch to Freeplay. It's really funny.Damn. I didn't know that they pioneered that business model or that they were doing that well. That's wonderful news. And yeah that is funny, but ya gotta understand that many of those guys are *necessarily* living in the past so it's tough to get them to change up their ways.Nevertheless, if it were me talking to a struggling arcade owner, I'd tell him that asking people to exclusively feed quarters or tokens on these old machines is asking for trouble. While on the other hand, asking for a flat honest fee for access to functional games is a better draw because now the customer knows that the games work-and you already got their money. It's win-win. But with quarters and tokens, you're begging for more malfunctions, requests for refunds, theft, and a general loss of income because without a flat fee, people are tempted to save a few quarters. That is, if they're accustomed to walking around with coinage anymore in this debit world.It's a hard pill to swallow, but unless it's for a period film, a museum piece, or a personal collection, the coinage model....sucks in the 21st century.
>>12007129100% agreed.There's this Arcade YouTuber who runs his own arcade. He made video complaining that no customer were paying to play the Bad Dudes (1988) arcade cabinet, and that he was going to need to pull the cabinet from the arcade. IIRC he tried to blame the new generation of kids not being interested in old games.But then half his comments were filled with stuff like>"Dude you charge 50 cents for a single play on Bad Dudes. This is 2025. Are you crazy?"Or>"Just switch to Freeplay. People would be more willing to try older games. Stop charging for each cabinet."Personally I think a lot of these owners grew up in the 1980s and just want to create their own personal 1980s dream arcade. They don't listen to customers or feedback. Stubborn fools!
>>12007129Be that as it may, there are still businesses in the US and Canada that have arcade games and consistently use the coin-op business model. They are either: -hip, trendy barcades that use arcade games as loss leaders to get grown ups to hang around and buy more drinksOR-mall arcades or FECs that mostly feature merchandisers and ticket redemption gamesIn either case, the main way they make money is not by having normal people playing traditional arcade games.
>>12006995VR turned out to be a bubble. 7 to 10 years ago, everyone in the arcade industry thought VR was the future of arcades. They hyped it up. Sold alot of VR machines to arcades across the country.Turns out there's a huge chunk of the population that either doesn't like putting goggles that other people touched on their face, or they get motion sickness.Whoops.Then Cov1d happened.Double Whoops.VR bubble burst. Now it's just like any other arcade machine. It's around but people don't love it. VR isn't groundbreaking or amazing like people thought.
>>12007164>half his comments were filled with stuff like>>"Dude you charge 50 cents for a single play on Bad Dudes. This is 2025. Are you crazy?"Ha! I would have left a comment like that. Charging that much for Bad Dudes (Vs. Dragon Ninja) back in 1988 would have been insane enough. I mean, I personally refused to pay-at first-the dollar entrance fee to play one game of After Burner II, but now? If that guy charged a buck for that, it'd get no play too-and that particular game is in high demand. >Personally I think a lot of these owners grew up in the 1980s and just want to create their own personal 1980s dream arcade. They don't listen to customers or feedback. Stubborn fools!You're correct of course, and while I sympathize with those guys, most of whom are my age, yeah they are stubborn, which can be a good thing, but on this they're being foolish. Try to cut 'em a little slack, anon, they're doing the best they can and someone way back probably sold them on some 1970s/1980s quarter algebra that promises them infinitely more profits if only the games are forever locked into pay-per-play.
>>12007169I respect that those business models still exist and in an ideal world, I wish all arcade cabs were set for quarters. However, for some of those operators who cling to the notion that they're keeping it all-original so therefore they might not choose to go free play is counterintuitive since real arcades of the 70s and 80s didn't serve or even allow alcohol. So, I think those guys of all people should convert to the free play model because they got their hands full of drunks anyway. That's just for starters.>In either case, the main way they make money is not by having normal people playing traditional arcade games.I'm unsure as to your meaning here. Not being snarky, is that a typo?
>>12007164>There's this Arcade YouTuber who runs his own arcade.Which guy is that btw?
Freeplay is the ONLY way for retro arcade cabinets to still get used. No modern arcade like Dave and Busters is going to have customers lining up to play Bad Dudes from the 1980s. The younger generation won't use their limited money to play old games. Anything older than 2005 is probably beyond most kids today and uninteresting to them. Not unless it's free.
>>12007274at the bar here, people are thrilled to be putting a token or quarter in the easiest to emulate arcade games. They often are effectively free with all the discounts and freebies on various days. People dump their extras on me faster than i can spend them on pinball.
>>12007274But I don't want the younger generation to play old games either so everyone is winning here.
>>12007274>Make a stamp rally type card every week or month that involves playing on certain machines to complete and get a prizeor>Upload a vid on social media or show staff a vid of you playing to get a special coupon>Certain games get renewed interest, people can chat about them or see others playing to see how to do it, people find new things they like>Make it a thing for people to complete a list of all games in the arcade>Hold competitions>Do history toursThere are numerous ways to do this, but it's pretty much only Japan and sometimes Taiwan that actually do them.
>>12005906The thing is they used to be everywhere, not just some one-off novelty for normalfags to gawk at.
>>120059061. It was more like $250K to 300K for a Ridge Racer Full Scale, but they still made money off them. 2. You weren't around for the peak of the arcade era (Or maybe you didn't go out much during that time?). Arcade businesses were EVERYWHERE. Malls, shopping centers, bowling alleys, grocery stores, laundromats, hospitals, dentists offices, pizza places, restaurants, dentist waiting rooms, museums, etc. If they spare room, they would shove an arcade cabinet there. Sometimes it was just 1 or 2 cabinets, sometimes it would be a room of arcade machines, and sometimes even bigger. Seeing a Ridge Racer Full Scale machine was not THAT super rare of an occurrence. Some Large arcades had them, Theme parks had them, Some Namco arcades had them, several Sega arcades had them, Even some private arcades had them, military bases had some, and even airports had a Ridge Racer Full Scale. This is how it wad during the peak of arcades until around 1996 or 1997. It's only today 20 years later do Zoomers want to play these machines and make up stories about how ultra rare Ridge Racer Full Scale was. And write random articles about how only a handful existed. This simply isn't true. Namco probably made around 100 ridge racer full scale machines. The problem is that arcade owners all trashed and destroyed the old RRFS machines. The idea of "preserving" old arcade machines wasn't really a thing back then. Back in the golden age, arcade cabinets were plentiful and considered disposable. After 2 to 5 years, it wasn't uncommon for arcade owners to simply throw these machines in the dumpster once they stopped earning big money. No one talks about this much. When Time Crisis 2 came out, what do you think happened to the Time Crisis 1 cabinets? When Time Crisis 3 came out, whag happened to the TC2 cabinets? Customers never seem to ask these questions. They went in the dumpster...Unfortunately.It's only recently do people think about preserving these once plentiful machines.
>>12005804See >>12005871
>>12005930You're right, anon. Western society doesn't cater to families anymore. An indicator of societal decline.
>>12006239He's not wrong. OP could have framed his question to accommodate discussion better, but he didn't. Just because these nerds don't need an excuse to nerd out doesn't mean OP shouldn't be a reasonable human.
>>12008396I can confirm this. I worked for an arcade back in the late 90s to early 2000s as a teenager. The manager ordered us to take old arcade cabinets out back and smash them. They gave us an axe. I Had to break apart an old Pac Man. Then toss the bits in a nearby dumpster. Worst one was a deluxe Sega indy 500 like in my picture. Except it was just 2 machines instead of 4 machines. I really didn't want to do it. The hydraulics were broken and the game board malfunctioned. Manager said it didn't earn any money anymore and wasn't worth repairing. I asked him why do we have to smash it. Just leave it next to the dumpster. Manager said that even though it's broken, he didn't want to help his competitors. There were 3 other arcades in the nearby area and he didn't want to risk one of them taking the machine, and fixing it and using for themselves. We also weren't allowed to take them home. He wouldn't give the machines to us. We have to break it with an axe and tear it apart. I quit like 5 months later. Anyway the arcade closed down like 2 years later. Good riddance. Guy was a greedy asshole. So many machines were treated with dishonor. Used and abused.
>>12009412worst.larp.ever
>>12005804>buythey rented the machines, and also paid the publishers a percentage of all the take they made from people playing.
>>12007818if you don't get younger people interested then the hobby dies with you.
>>12007874These are awesome ideas. Everybody's too cool for Bad Dudes (including me, a person who was actually in its target demographic when it was new and never cared about it even then) until competition gets involved. Take away the uncoolness of the clunky old thing by tying it to a contest, and suddenly the people who would scoff at its clunkiness will instead begin scoffing at the crappy strategies of their competitors and bragging about how good they are at it.
>>12009760>paid the publishers a percentageOnly in Japan. That didn't happen in America.Americans have a "Screw you. I bought this thing. I will do what I want with it mentality."
>>12007874Galloping Ghost Arcade in Illinois hands out wrestling belts to the top record holders/champions of certain games. As long as you carry the belt, you get free admission to the arcade.AFAIK Only rules are:1. You must bring the belt with you to get free admission. (without it, admission is $25 per visit) 2. You must visit a certain amount of times per week/month to keep the belt.3. You must accept ALL challenges from any customers in the arcade at ANY time to defend the belt. If you lose, you must hand over the belt.For example, So if you are a Marvel VS Capcom 2 champion, then you must accept challenges from anyone to defend youe title. Same thing for racing games like Daytona USA and even other classic games. People are into it and think it's fun.
>>12005804>How do you bait larpers into shitposting ridiculous bullshit? How does that process work?
>>12005804I was a video game technician back in the 80's. Yes I'm an oldfag.My uncle owned a video game company and his brother in law owned a chain of dime store department stores throughout the south where we created arcades in the entry vestibules or in under utilized free space in the stores. I also worked as a game tech/arcade attendant for Funway Freeway in a new very 80s style mall.We're talking the very first classic games from the golden age of arcade games.Arcades were huge but didn't last long when home systems capitalized on the popularity of arcade games.The games were a modest investment but the coin poured in like water.My job was to travel around to stores emptying coin boxes and doing repairsIt was basically a little bit of coin that made a huge pile of money. Bags and bags of quarters. Back then the bank provided canvas bags for bulk coin and the bags could get heavy.The games basically operated on autopilot and required very little repair or maintenance. Aside from the initial investment for the game itself it was almost pure profit unless it was a storefront lease operation like corporate arcades. Even then in a corporate arcade there was practically zero investment for a storefront because the space was only games and a coin/token machine. Usually a few colored lights and some music and it was an easy moneymaker.Arcades were like a car wash on steroids especially on the weekends at night when the malls would be packed with kids going to see movies and just hanging out.No cellphones back then just girls in skin tight jeans and tube tops.The world will live in now is a toilet.It's no wonder guys can't get laid.
>>12009412Bad news kiddo. >>12009909 just stole your >>12009576
>>12009909Who was making the profit?
>>12009576Smashing older arcade machines was common back in the 80s and 90s. You are just too young too remember. Maybe you weren't even born yet.
>>12009935Not that anon, but I also worked in that industry for a few years. The profit was split between the business and the arcade operator. The split is negotiated. So if there's a pizza place and he wants to put some arcade cabinets in the front of his store. He would call us up and we would negotiate a deal. He provides the building. We provide the arcade cabinets and maintenance. We split the sales usually 50/50.
>>12009947That makes sense.
>>12009939>parroting other bullshitting children was common back in the 00s and 10s.The 20s even.
>>12009852That sounds pretty cool. I'd do that. It's on my itinerary.
>>12007237>I personally refused to pay-at first-the dollar entrance fee to play one game of After Burner IIat my local arcade that was the first game to ever be $1Dragons lair, driving games, and space harrier were $0.50 but the lineup at afterburner motion cabinet was insane. Top Gun was the biggest movie in the world and this game nailed it. well into the 90s any time I ran into it, it was still a dollar and people still played it regularly (if it wasn't broken, which was sadly often the case).
>>12010343>the lineup at afterburner motion cabinet was insane. Top Gun was the biggest movie in the world and this game nailed it. well into the 90s any time I ran into it, it was still a dollar and people still played it regularlyThat's impressive. Like you said, it nailed the Top Gun thing. It was immersive. Then you had Terminator 2 feature it in a pivotal scene that had to have added to its demand. I mean, I know I played the game even more to relive that movie at the same time.-t. got After Burner I (upright) and I pretend it's the cockpit one
>>12010348it's funny you mention T2 arcade. I have very vivid memories of where and when I was when I first saw afterburner, and the first time I saw T2.Afterburner was at "guys and dolls pool hall", november 1987.T2 was at "wonderland Arcade", which was also a November day this time in 1991. I was talking to some buddies reminiscing about where the old arcades were and what games they had, and it kind of made me want to make a google map arcade history website, where users can drop a pin and list the games they played there. Even the asian grocery stores and 7-11s that had 3-4 cabinets, I would love an interactive map like that.
>>12007112>Why do you say this in every arcade discussionEvery poster besides you is a bot. Didn't you know that?
>>12010173>bullshittingNow I know you never worked in the arcade industry. What do you think happens to old arcade cabinets after they are removed from the floor? Besides the few businesses that take the time sell their cabs off, many businesses throw the cabinets in the trash. That's the reality.
>>12010360>I was talking to some buddies reminiscing about where the old arcades were and what games they had, and it kind of made me want to make a google map arcade history website, where users can drop a pin and list the games they played there. Even the asian grocery stores and 7-11s that had 3-4 cabinets, I would love an interactive map like that.It's been tried. Unfortunately several problems have occurred. The businesses that had arcades no longer exist either. Many of them are simply gone and replaced by newer businesses. The laundromat where I used to play arcades as a kid is gone. It's now a small restaurant.The best you can hope for is an arcade locator website. These exist...kinda. But you have to constantly double check their listings. Arcades change their machines on a month to month basis. Sometimes even faster. So it can be frustrating when you are trying to hunt for a specific game. Only to find out the arcade removed that game many months ago.
>>12010953Yea i could care less about modern arcade locators, most are barcades with hipster filth and 400% more hoppes in their craft beer.Even if the building was torn down it would be nice to do a pin drop. I was at an arcade cabinet auction and we were talking about such a website, but too much work for too few of the boomers who still remember or care.
>>12010937>Now I know you never worked in the arcade industry.lol. Sure you do kiddo. I owned dozens of cabs that I placed in various venues and did repairs for several arcades. I'd regularly buy games that arcade owners no longer wanted to maintain, fix them up, and place them elsewhere. I did this for several years, as opposed to a few months in your imagination. Selling old broken machines was the norm. Your fantasy larp about being paid to smash old arcade was never the norm, even in the heads of crazy children such as yourself.
>>12011159>Your fantasy larp about being paid to smash old arcade was neverChuck E Cheese literally does this even today you dumbass. All their arcade machines go into the dumpster. Go on ANY arcade forum and ask if I'm right, and all the old fags and current CEC employees will confirm it. Your cute little indie arcade business you ran years ago is not the same as larger or corporate arcades.
Also anyone who unironically uses the word "LARP" is retarded and a samefag.
>>12011213>Live Action Role Playing>it's actually Online Freeform Role Playing
>>12011224Goes along with rollback network c.o.de
>>12011207>Chuck E Cheese literally does this even todayNot retro. You will immediately cease and not continue to access the site if you are under the age of 18.>Do ANY thing to indulge an underage larperlol. no.>>12011207>Your cute little indie arcade business you ran years ago is not the same as larger or corporate arcades.lol. Cope harder my little larpling.
>>12011159Of all the topics you could have argued about you chose the ONE thing we can confirm and arcades still do. Not very smart are you? Tsk tsk.
>>12011269>Chuck E Cheese>not retroWow you are truly stupid.
>>12011269Since when is Chuck E Cheese not retro?
>>12011287>>12011291>>12011562>since when it today not retroCry harder my little larpling.
>>12011574Not him, but they had acade games since the 70s.
>>12011667And it was a dark beer cave. It didnt become kid friendly until later on. Arcades were dark shady places back then.
