There are strong incentives to go to arcades for lots of people. If you like fighting games, competition is a very good reason. If you like racing games, you have to go to an arcade to get the full experience. If you like DDR or Bemani rhythm games, arcades are mostly the only places to play. If you like skeeball or air hockey or whatever else, arcades are almost always literally the only places you can go. And if you’re any of these people and you like meeting or hanging out with people like you, or if you’re a family whose kids or parents like any of these things, then you should go to arcades too. There are lots of groups here with strong incentives to go.
LazyFoo: Negative. You can’t license the newest arcade games in the way you are talking about. What would be the basis of paying $12,000 for SFIV or buying Tekken 6? That is precisely what I am referring to. What you speak of does not exist for these games.
Josh: Honestly another reason people go to arcades is for the social aspect. It’s a lot better/more fun to meet up and play there then it is to (no offense) hang out at home on the couch playing with strangers in someone’s house. I prefer public places. I want to come and go when I want according to those hours, not call and setup random 3 hour gatherings at someone’s house I may or may not know and have to sit on the floor uncomfortably. I seriously have never seen the appeal for that other than lack of arcades in certain areas, or people that don’t want to support the scene. Even a console/LAN place is better. Public places = better. Social aspect of this is derived from this. Competition is better dissected at a public place, no matter what way you look at it.
On top of that, you can’t play deluxe sims, most shooters, ship and gun, and dancing games correctly no matter what unless you go to an arcade. That attracts people. Very few arcades are “shady” these days, most are LBE family style places…it’s only the old school hardcore strip mall/fighting game arcades places that suffer from this stigma, but the arcade is still thriving in a much different way these days.
Yeah of course it doesn’t exist now. I was being hypothetical, as in what would happen if Capcom or whoever where to establish a Steam style system that would allow a LAN center business model.
If Capcom where to use Valve style pricing system, 47 SFIV cabinets would only cost $5000 a year (plus the costs of the actual cabs obviously).
Those SFIV cabinets would also be Street Fighter cabinets, Street Fighter 2: World Warrior cabinets, Street Fighter 2: Championship Edition cabinets, Street Fighter 2: Hyper Fighting cabinets, Super Street Fighter 2: The New Challengers cabinets, Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo cabinets, Street Fighter 2 HD Remix cabinets, Street Fighter Alpha cabinets, Street Fighter Alpha 2 cabinets, Street Fighter Alpha 2 Gold cabinets, Street Fighter Alpha 3 cabinets, Street Fighter Alpha 3 upper cabinets, Street Fighter 3 cabinets, Street Fighter 3: Second Impact cabinets, Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike cabinets, Capcom vs SNK Pro cabinets, Capcom vs SNK 2 cabinets, and you get the picture.
The current ancient publishing and distribution can’t touch the profitability, flexibility, and quality of an online distribution/LAN arcade model.
LazyFoo: It would be nice, but it’s a pipe dream, and honestly, I still will never trust anything not on Arcade PCB, and that includes Ultracades and emulated stuff…
Unlikely, very much so. But I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a pipe dream.
This model is more profitable on for all sides, it’s just a matter of somebody convincing the game publishers to hop onboard with a proof of concept. Porting old games to windows would be pure profit, and if they release a home version of the DL service that’s tons more essentially free money for namco to rerelease all the tekkens, SNK to rerelease all the KoF, Sega to rerelease all the VFs, and so on.
Maybe we should Ponder on this considering he’s had some luck. But he should get someone else to design the graphical interface 
I really want to know the reason behind this.
I live in Oregon as well. Do you know of any good arcades that have fighting games? Where I’m at there is only one arcade and there isn’t a single fighting game to be found. All thanks in advance.
The arcade around me sucks shit, but now they got SF IV and Tekken 6 and its hot as hell. I’m learning how to play with stick now from all the competition.
…contradicting the concept of a valve system for arcade cabs by giving consumers, once again, the incentive to stay home and play the same thing they would have to go to the arcade for.
All I can add, idk if its been said but even if you save arcades, fighting games just aren’t that popular. I live in a city of a few hundred thousand, and we have about 5 to 7 arcades (depending if you count the ones in movie theaters). Arcade games used to be of superior quality to home consoles. Now, the console can do the same thing, plus you aren’t limited to one game. The only draw in an arcade game now to the average passerby is peripherals. The most popular games around here that keep these places in business are DDR, Pump it Up, Initial D, and Beatmania games. They all have one thing in common. They offer an experience you can’t get at home (although guitar hero and rockband are probably hurting these now too). I can emulate almost every fighting game ever made at home. I do not, however, have a full carseat with pedals, shifter, and online play. As much as I would love to see arcades come back, even if they did they wouldn’t be full of fighting games.
As for bigger cities, I’m sure its possible for small arcades full of fighting games to survive, but even then you probably aren’t well off even though you are within range of millions of people.
and what do you want to happen? Capcom to to put a stop to console releases?
LAN centers still survive because people come for the social aspect and to get lagless play vs other players. You can’t get that at home, and switching to a LAN center model won’t make the current arcade scene worse.
Edit: and Steam style system actually does give the arcade something home doesn’t. Steam LAN centers get access to 100+ that would cost a fuckload if you bought them at home.
Your ideas are neither realistic nor well thought out at all. Basically they’re stupid and suck. You also don’t know how to format your writing correctly.
I would just like to save the dinosaureses. I’ll be on my way now.
The Tilt in Lloyd Center in downtown Portland is quite good. It’s hit and miss on finding people to play with there but they’ve got a pretty solid MvC2 scene (a little behind Seattle) and some good CvS2 players (the best of which won the NW major). Your mileage may vary in finding them there, but if you look hard enough you can probably scare 'em up.
There’s also a Tilt at Gateway Mall in the Eugene/Springfield area, although I don’t think anybody who’s any good at fighting games plays there any more. There’s also one at Vancouver Mall a few miles across the I-205 bridge from Portland.
Ah! I would love to travel to Mexico to see live dinosaurs. Maybe I’ll get to someday… 
Cool. Thanks for the info. Unfortunately I probably won’t make that trip for a while, as I live 3 hours away from Portland, and I don’t have a car, but I hope to go someday and I’ll look forward to it. Thanks for the info.
I think most people here would laugh at this, but this is true without a doubt. This Tilt I used to go to got rid of ALL the fighting games and relocated to a smaller suite upstairs at the ass end of the mall by Mervyn’s. Parents would get scared taking their kids there since there was always a bunch of gangster-looking people playing SF and other games. The guys at management concluded that fighting games cause violence and demanded they get taken out, despite there being more obviously violent games they chose to ignore like House of the Dead. Even the Red Robin close to Sears and Macy’s had to get rid of their CvS2 cab because of that fear.
… And this is yet another good reason to despise hip-hop culture.
I’m not so sure a lot of these groups are that large, though. When it comes to music games, for instance, DDR is old news and Rock Band is the hot shit now. I can’t see how arcade racing gamers would be anything more than a niche. But overall, you do have a point here!
Perhaps arcades may be able to survive, but only in large cities? I just think back to how here in Ohio they died out earlier than in most other places, and how the ones still alive are the Dave & Buster’s types. Given how much of the success of Japanese arcades was due to location, that idea would make sense.
You can save arcades by fixing the damn machines. If the fix doesn’t get fix after six months then it deserve to close down. Harsh, but learn to fix your machines. If you do this you’ll get people like me to actually play on them.
At all of the arcades I’ve ever been to, the dancing and racing games are almost always in use. They make up a very significant percentage of an arcade’s revenue.
Either in or somewhat near large urban areas, yeah. For example, TGA is in Rhode Island, within driving distance of a few pretty good sized cities, but it’s definitely a rarity, and it’d probably do considerably better if it were actually in a major city.
Why the fuck would anybody go to an arcade to play online when you can do it in your own home with your own private connection? Arcades are suppose to be sociable. Talking with better players is half the fun.
Dude, sit down and shut-up. Maybe when you’re 16 you can actually DRIVE to a popular arcade instead of having your mommie drop you off at the local movie theater.