I think the issue is home technology.
In the good old days, when most of us had something like a C64 or a spec 48k, a trip to the arcade to empry our pockets of cash was worth it. Why? Because our home systems could not offer anything near the experience the arcade could. The graphics were better, the sound was better, the whole thing was light years ahead of what was attainable to the average person in thier home.
Anyone remember eagerly awaiting a port of a classic arcade game to the home system only to find it was AWFUL because of the limitations of your home computer? Outrun on the Spec 128k.... man was that bad!
Even when systems went 16bit, the arcade could still offer more.
However now the door has swung the other way. At an offordable price ANYONE can own an Xbox, Game Cube, PS2 and the graphics and sound are easily as good as in the arcade. Get a mid/top range PC and things are BETTER than the archade. So that brings things to a level playing feild...... almost.
The thing is, with the roll out of affordable broadband, lets face it, gaming has changed AGAIN. Single player games ARE still fun, but at the end of the day, there is nothing like logging on and playing in a team of 8 to 16 against an opposing force, working as a team, chatting to REAL people.
The archade, while having link up games, can not compete with this.... or maybe it should try.
What the archade CAN still offer is the extra realism. Sit you in a racing seat that moves with pedals and wheel to hand. Put you in a cockpit that rotates 360 deg on x,y and z axis. Give you a jet ski to sit on that bounces with the waves on the game.
While some of this is available for the home, most is not (at an affordable price) and in my mind, THIS is the ONLY edge archade games have left.
This I think is why Cyber Cafes and LAN centres are on the increase, and Arcades are on the decrease.
Perhaps some of these classic link up arcade games could be made to also talk via a cable net connection, so that say 8 racers in 1 arcade could in theory race against 8 others some where across town. Perhaps with this, arcades could embrase the "clan" culture.
Would this tip the balance? I think not, but it may keep arcades alive just a little bit longer.
Hmm.... A total imersion system with VR Head Gear, tread mill, and gyroscopic gun, in a motion capture field... playing something simular to Halo/CS/UT against other players in the same archade and across the web........ now THAT I would pay money for
..or I might just go and play Laser Quest... hmm
) champion.
