Arcades are dead because players don’t support them. A lot of people only want to play console, so they don’t see a point of going to the arcade.
Operators don’t want to spend $6000-8000 on a new game because people decided they did not want to go.
Fault goes both ways here. Arcades will pick-up here again with no BlazBlue or Tekken 6 console release for awhile, and Tatsunoko vs Capcom is only on Japanese Wii for a bit.
Arcades that do thrive are usually kiddie places, bowling alleys, etc. Cheap rent, or being in a populated area allows them to survive as well, but you need a player base. Too many people want to use their own sticks, so the best option is to create Jamma/PS2 converters for people to use their own stick. That helps, but people will always complain about something. People need to support their arcade if there is one, I’ll tell ya that. I can’t understand why people think it is better/more professional to play on console sitting on the floor or with sticks in laps…it will never be as good, but that’s the way the scene is now.
People now days just don’t want to leave there house, so they will never understand the feeling you get when you are at arcade playing people right next to you. They just wanna sit in there house and masturbate to some random fps game with ridiculous graphics and yell at bitches over x-box live and talk about how they “pwn” shit. Fucken disgusting but what are you gonna do?
I agree that old feeling of challenging somebody in an arcade is a lost experience, but you have little reason to refer to console gamers in such a derogatory light. Nor should anyone look down on anyone else because of their preference for a stick or a pad. Its divisive and pointless. The rest of the world sees us all as ‘loser gamers’ anyway so we best learn to get along.