Arcade viable in this day and age?

[romeo11523]

I own a video game store in Northwest Ohio called GAMER and recently got approached by a friend that had a couple arcade machines at a local college they ask him to move. I got a call asking me if he could set them in my store and profit share, of course I said yes and so he has been bringing them over the last couple weeks. All this sparked my interest again into arcade gaming and so I bought a SF2 cabinet from a private seller. The games have been doing pretty good for not advertising we have them but I'm wondering about taking things a step further and starting an arcade but everyone that I deal with here in Ohio says "It's a dead industry, don't get into it!" So I figured why not ask where I would get better opinions!!!

We currently have SF2, Tekken 5, ITG 3, Guitar Freaks, KI, Point Blank and Technika 3. I have an investor that has helped me build my business thats kicking around the idea to stake me in this endeavor, I'm looking into SF4, DDR, Guilty Gear, BlazBlue, Touch FX (Fruit Ninja) and various others to start with. My question to you guys is, do you think there is still interest in this to support an arcade? I know our mall arcade went out as soon as they pulled everything out except ddr and redemption machines, would an arcade be able to exist with exotic games like SF4 and Touch FX? I appreciate anyones opinion on the matter!!!

Thanks,
Ryan

 

[SNKorSWM]

Do you live near a Chinatown? Are there plenty of Asians in the neighborhood?

 

[mainman]

Short answer not really. Starting up a arcade in North America in this day and age is not economically viable. Not only will it not turn a profit the business will not even sustain itself. Street fighter 4 for example is going to cost a fortune. Lets talk about the core of the business which are the games. Guess what few companies develop arcade games anymore in the quantities needed to keep a constant diverse selection. Playing games released over a decade ago will eventually loose their nostalgic appear. Catering to a narrow crowd by putting nothing but ten copies of one or two titles on the floor is bad. Ten copies of third strike and SF4 does not make a arcade. Opening in a mall is your best chance.

 

[SSS]

they are viable, but only within a close proximity of Portland.

Do you live near a Chinatown? Are there plenty of Asians in the neighborhood?

STOP POSTING.

 

[Normdog]

Opening in a mall is your best chance.

Where I live, I only see arcades in (or near) the mall or in amusement parks. They're just not around like they used to be.

 

[RoadBuster]

Arcade Legacy, in Southern Ohio (Cinci) does fairly well. Of course, the business model is a bit different than the old arcades.

 

[Dion]

The games can't really be your primary source of income. Barcades do pretty well for example. The only standalone arcades that do REALLY well seem to be the really big ones that are setup like museums. Fee for admittance and then like a nickle per game. Funspot comes to mind.

 

[Yodd]

Arcade Legacy, in Southern Ohio (Cinci) does fairly well. Of course, the business model is a bit different than the old arcades.

Yeah, Jesse and Arcade Legacy was the first thing that came to my mind too.

Flat fee to play all the arcade games you want. Structured pricing around either having a 1 or 2 hour pass or all day long. He has a very nice selection of games. Older and newer.

Now inside a mall.

Fabulous used console game and system selection with very good pricing. Plus monitors/tv's to hook stuff up and check out before you buy. His selection and pricing is better than most dedicated used game stores in the area.

Huge ass projection system on the back wall.

The ability to book up the arcade for parties and groups.

Special family deals.



Seriously, anyone who is thinking of starting up an arcade and are within driving distance should visit Arcade Legacy @ the Cincinnati Mall.

http://arcadelegacy.wordpress.com/

 

[DanAdamKOF]

You need to advertise the fuck out of ITG3 and Technika 3 to the music gaming community in your area/surrounding areas.

The best ITG machines I've seen are the ones where the community gets involved and makes reasonable modifications to it, not like obnoxious skin relpacements but stuff like making charts for the game that you'll only ever see on that machine. Be sure to keep the pads working well, at least make sure the innermost sensor is sensitive on each arrow, ideally all four would work well. Music game players are quick to condone a machine in bad shape, even if it looks nice if you can't play on it then it'll just be an eyesore.


T3 is awesome and speaks for itself.

 

[codecrank]

The games can't really be your primary source of income. Barcades do pretty well for example

I agree. You need something else, maybe your game store/video arcade is perfect the way it is. People come that come in 1) love video games 2) have money to spend 3) have time to kill

Game-only arcades mostly exist in large cities anymore. I live in a city of 350,000 and both Mall arcades we had closed in the last 10 years. it's hard to draw people who have access to cheap/free quality games on their phones/pcs/consoles.

I think an insertcoin ( http://insertcoinslv.com/ ) franchise would be most likely to succeed, we now have 2 generations that grew up with video games and are old enough to drink

 

[Lemony Vengeance]

There's an independent arcade open in my home town called The Game Grid that may look like it's doing ok in the pictures, but I don't ever see more than 2-3 people in there. I noticed that they had a SF4 cab so I asked about it.. and the story they gave was very disappointing: They picked it up as a kit and the patrons PROMISED that they would play the crap out of it and they did, until the console versions were released.. then it was nothing. you could really tell the owner (the guy I was talking to) was really broken up about it.

I think that what you have going for you, an independent Game store with arcade cabs, is really the way to go. This way, you're not relying on the cab selection and the flow of cash from patrons to support the business.

 

[romeo11523]

I have an empty suite beside my store now thats coming up for lease, I never would split the two. I am just curious if it's just the games the guys put in them. I was totally told to stay away from doing a video game store too, especially opening in a town that has 3 Gamestop's in it but here I am 2 years later and still going with business on the rise.

 

[hexcrass]

I know our mall arcade went out as soon as they pulled everything out except ddr and redemption machines, would an arcade be able to exist with exotic games like SF4 and Touch FX?

I think what you meant to say was "I know our mall arcade went out because they pulled everything out except ddr and redemption machines."
~I think you should do whatever you want, don't let anyone scare you out of doing something awesome. I think most of the arcades that fail/failed fail because the owners don't give a crap about arcades and just put in whatever without thinking much about it.

An arcade full of redemption games is going nowhere because the only people that like those games are little kids, but little kids aren't the ones that decide to come back and spend more money. (for example)

 

[Dion]

I highly recommend that if you do a standalone arcade that you DO include some sort of redemption. There's a reason why arcades used more and more redemption. Little kids love redemption and little kids make mommy and daddy go to arcades to play redemption. Plus the bitches like tickets, too....

 

[hexcrass]

I highly recommend that if you do a standalone arcade that you DO include some sort of redemption. There's a reason why arcades used more and more redemption. Little kids love redemption and little kids make mommy and daddy go to arcades to play redemption. Plus the bitches like tickets, too....

Little kids will play whatever is there.
There's also a reason why more and more arcades closed. Redemption games might be fun once, but they have no replay value.

 

[Yodd]

Redemption games suck and occupy too much of the Arcade Ops time.

I guess they have their place in a really big arcade and if you an extra staff person to be dedicated to it.


I would go with a split arcade and used game store.

 

[Moon Jump]

I just got done posting a block of text on my site about this after the whole "What ever happened to American Arcades" story was posted a couple of days ago.

Advertise! If you've got music and fighting games head out to the internets and find where the players hang out. Go to Bemani Style (now that DDRFreak is dead), SRK, whatever site Tekken fans go to and get the word out! Put your arcade on Arcade Fly and Aurcade. Two of the best arcade locators out there. It's pretty much like an online yellow pages just for arcades. Start accounts on all the major social media sites. Take some video and throw it up on YouTube. I do arcade tours all the time and I'll often get people comment where they didn't know the place existed. People today are fucking lazy, unless you plaster sites with tons of adds, people might never bother to find you out.

Ask your customers about what games they like to play. It really depends on the area your in. Some places will thrive on fighting games, others on music games, classics and pinball. Redemption really is where the quick money is at, but if you don't have a lot of kids coming in and it's mostly teenagers then I'd think again.

I'll also agree about getting the more expensive games being risky. As Lemony said, Adam over at The Game Grid got hosed on Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition. He got one of the two player units and not even a few months after he got it there was a failure with the hard drive and he had to send the game back to the distributor to get it fixed. It took him a few months for the game to finally come back and when it finally did come back it was too late. The game was already released on the consoles and the community that said they would support him just turned around and stayed home.

But getting the community active and finding out what they want will help you. Like DanAdamKOF said, if a place has an ITG machine and the community keeps up with some good songs and you keep the pads nice and clean and all the memory card readers up and running then the people will come to play. Back during my DDR playing days we'd go to an arcade that was further away from where another larger arcade was. The reason why was the owner Ted (RIP old friend) really listened to what the players wanted. He had a section that was off to the corner set up with fans and low lights for less glare and kept everything running great. Sadly, the FYE they were sharing the rent with shut down and they couldn't keep the place up without it so they closed.

I also like the idea that Next Level, Galloping Ghost and Arcade Legacy are doing. Rather then having the games on coin drop they charge a membership fee to enter. All the games are on free play and they can get away with having console games running in arcade cabinets. Considering how much the newer fighting games cost it's much cheaper just to get a used PS3, some buttons and joysticks and slap it in a cab with some custom art.

It's all trial and error. Seeing what people want and what works best. I've seen places come and I've seen many go. The few places that hang on have a community that keeps coming back or they have an angle like being a Barcade or like yourself you've got used and new games along with the arcade stuff. Don't be afraid to try different things, ask the players what they like and be sure to advertise the hell out of the place!

 

[Neo Ash]

IMO arcades as we all love them are a thing of the past. I was recently remind of this when I walk past the "arcade" in a mall. The arcades that are left are just a shadow of what they once were.

I do thing it would be a great idea to have some cabs in a video game store. If the shop has a lot of retro games that's even better. I think the key would be keeping the credits cheap, somewhere between 25 and 75 cents. If it's cheap, people may actually play more than one would think. There's also a little nostalgia to that as well.

Would a ton of money be made....no. Would it be cool...hell yes.

 

[romeo11523]

On certain days of the week we get waiters on the technika 3 and tekken 5 cabs. We do carry retro games, all the way back to Atari and 3/4 of our business comes from those games. I haven't gotten the KI repro cab on the floor yet but I have a ton of customers waiting for it to be there, I had one today when I unwrapped the board that was spastic about it. I am not going to let anyone discourage me from doing anything as I stated about my game store but I'm being cautious. Myself and I'm assuming a lot of you guys know the feeling of playing on an arcade machine, problem is, a lot of people don't know that feeling or could care less. Although I will say, if we demo technika the people that play it generally return to drop some quarters. I am going to be very selective in what I get in and I'm aware enough with enough resources that I should know what people will drop quarters for. I am also seeing that when I buy certain things that even though I only want part of what I get I can generally sell what I don't want for enough to pay for it and some of the next part, good deals. I'm also looking into importing a sextuplet of astro city cabinets and ordering headers, then applying boards that use different games ie: atomiswave and naomi, so that I can try various till I know what customers will sit on.

Below is a picture of the retro case which sits in the entryway, usually customers stop at it for 10-20 minutes just looking.

 

[loegan43]

Awesome looking retro game display. I have to agree with the majority here, it's going to be pretty tough to succeed operating a conventional arcade, but you never know. Good luck, wish you success.

 

[SNKorSWM]

If you can hold tourneys and similar events there, it would be a better form of advertisement.

STOP POSTING.

XD

 

[The King Prawn]

Little kids will play whatever is there.
There's also a reason why more and more arcades closed. Redemption games might be fun once, but they have no replay value.

I would like to hear your reasoning for this advise. And I'm serious. Send me a PM if you're too embarrassed.

 

[Dion]

Little kids will play whatever is there.
There's also a reason why more and more arcades closed. Redemption games might be fun once, but they have no replay value.

I completely disagree.

Redemption didn't kill the arcades, they prolonged their viability-----Playstation was the beginning of the end for vids in arcades, first time games were almost identical to the arcade port.

Redemption games have good replay value since they are usually skill based. Yes, vids are skill based also but unless played against someone else have finite patterns to learn.

The redemption game experience cannot be recreated in a home environment (not easily or cheaply anyway). Therefore they have better replay value than vids. How long has skeeball been around again???

Yes, they are needy machines that must be attended and running a redemption counter does suck, but if you want to run a STANDALONE (games only income) arcade you will need redemption in 90% of the situations. New vids are hardly made by anyone and their hardware sucks to maintain. Older games are good for nastalgia but wear quickly. To sustain GOOD business you need an alternate form of income or a very good mix of games. Not just what YOU want to play.

 

[CheapNeoGeo]

I have an empty suite beside my store now thats coming up for lease, I never would split the two. I am just curious if it's just the games the guys put in them. I was totally told to stay away from doing a video game store too, especially opening in a town that has 3 Gamestop's in it but here I am 2 years later and still going with business on the rise.

If you think that there is support for it in your area and are not afraid to take a risk then I say go for it. I know the closest arcade to where I live is about an hour and a half away in Nashville, TN and they seem to do well, but it not just arcade games they have a console area and also have events. Good luck in whatever you decide.

 

[romeo11523]

I'm not sure if there is enough support in the area for it but I know we pull people into the store for retro from all over the state and some from other states. I wouldn't think of splitting the two up!