Why Arcades Are Still Thriving In Japan - Cheddar Explains

Comments · 522

• IC

  @ichifish · 5 years ago

  As a resident of Japan I see a lot missing or under-emphasized from this analysis: <br>1. Japan had a huge pachinko culture and karaoke culture<br>It&apos;s declining now but until quite recently pachinko was a ubiquitous working-class entertainment. Arcades and pachinko aren&apos;t the same thing, but having a common &quot;adult&quot; form of the arcade legitimized gaming arcades. The karaoke culture of singing publically (and poorly) with friends transferred to lots of goofy rhythm/team games as well, meaning that playing at arcades was always less about mastery and more about hanging out with friends.<br>2. Housing in Japan is really, really, small<br>Kids don&apos;t have a lot of space at home to hang out with their friends without their parents or siblings in the immediate vicinity. North American kids might feel like that&apos;s true for them, but take a typical American house, cut off 2/3 of it, then get rid of the yard and now you&apos;re getting close to a Japanese home. Even though consoles were and continue to be popular, few homes have the kind of space for them to be in their own room (like a basement) or even in a bedroom (having a TV in the bedroom is less common here and far more kids share rooms). It&apos;s not easy to spend hours leveling up your Street Fighter skills when 1) mom is annoyed by the noise and 2) sees you spending an ungodly amount of time doing it. Better to &quot;go to Shintaro&apos;s to do homework.&quot;<br>3. Japan is really, really urban<br>Close to ninety percent of Japanese people live in a walkable-suburban or full on urban setting. It wasn&apos;t an &quot;innovation&quot; to locate the arcades in major urban areas: practically everywhere is a major urban area. That means kids could always walk or take public transportation and there were a lot of other attractions like karaoke or fast food in the same area. If you lived in the suburbs or countryside in the US getting to the arcade was a major hassle until you got your driver&apos;s license, and after you got your license you could go anywhere, so why go to the arcade?<br>4. Restaurants and bars don&apos;t have games<br>Back to the space issue, non-arcade venues simply don&apos;t have space for games. When I was growing up in the states you could just go to the local pizza place. They might not have the latest game, but they&apos;d have something to satisfy your itch. While that made games more prevalent generally, it leached revenue from the arcades themselves. Without that revenue they couldn&apos;t innovate.<br>5. Japanese arcades were expensive<br>A 100 yen coin is about $1.00, compared to the 25 cents it cost when I was playing games in the states in the 70s and 80s. It might seem counter-intuitive, but that higher cost helped the arcades survive: more money meant better, cleaner facilities and a better gaming experience.

  629

• ST

  @St3v3NWL · 5 years ago

  I think these arcades can exist because the immense population density of Tokyo and other Japanese cities. Basically an Arcade hall in Tokyo is supported by 32 million potential customers and is also easily accesible by public transportation. An Arcade hall in lets say Chicago doesn&apos;t have 1/6 of Tokyo&apos;s potential customers making it harder to survive.

  531

• IS

  @issuesexplained681 · 5 years ago

  Now I kinda wanna go to a Japanese arcade

  397

• KO

  @kodaloid · 5 years ago

  If I lived in a shoebox, I&apos;d wanna get out more too.

  56

• TR

  @TROXXOS · 5 years ago

  I&apos;m Japanese.<br>I want to point that some part of this video mixxed up &quot;Game Center&quot;(Arcade in Japanese) and &quot;Pachinko&quot;(Barely legal casino).<br>Pachinko is a huge market and there several Pachinko-ya next to main stations and streets and making 190 billion dollars per year even though gambling is illegal in Japan.<br>But real arcades are dying in Japan as well, and it&apos;s just 6 billion.<br>Almost all of the footages of super shiny billboards in this video are Pachinko.

  8

• AN

  @AnonymousFreakYT · 5 years ago

  The claim that the NES killed arcades is massively premature. 1982 may have been the peak of arcade revenue, but while it did drop for a couple years, it went <b>UP</b> after the release of the NES, hitting its second peak in 1994, before starting a steady decline through about 2002 where it&apos;s been pretty steady since.<br><br>As a kid in the &apos;80s and early &apos;90s, arcades were absolutely still a major force through the mid &apos;90s.

  62

• DA

  @DarkAngelRabbitX3 · 5 years ago

  I love arcades! The problem is the ones that exist in my area are commonly filled with broken or outdated run down machines. It’s a bummer to see limited options already and half the arcade is broken. 💔

  85

• XR

  @xraymind · 5 years ago

  The pandemic is hitting Sega hard that they sold off controlling interest in their arcade business in Japan.

  231

• SP

  @spiffykitty01 · 5 years ago

  my family went to japan a few years back and the arcades were amazing! so clean and the claw machines and stuff were actually winnable-- it was a totally different experience than arcades in america.

  54

• XE

  @xelefonte · 5 years ago

  <b>Arcade is thriving in Japan.</b><br><b>COVID enters the chat room.</b>

  108

• サザ

  @サザランドアンドリュー · 5 years ago

  I&apos;ve lived in Japan for nearly 8 years, and although I agree with most of the things mentioned here, I think there are some other important factors. Most arcades have a lot more than just games. As well as medal games and crane games, most medium to large arcades have purikura (print club) machines, which are essentialy photo booths that allow you to add filters, special effects and clipart to your photos. They&apos;re marketed almost exclusively to women, and most places don&apos;t allow men near them unless they&apos;re with a women. I know some women who hate games but love doing purikura. Having an extra source of income from a completely different market probably helps.<br><br>Another major change is that pretty much all modern games are more connected to the internet. As well as having multiplayer, this allows games to get regular updates. This is great for music games, add they&apos;re always getting new songs, but it also means that every single arcade has identical versions. I used to love playing DDR in the early 2000s, and I loved going to arcades in London and finding the latest version imported from Japan, or an older version imported from America. There&apos;s now only one current version of DDR in Japan, so I no longer get to be surprised like that.

  54

• NA

  @nanoplasm · 5 years ago

  One unmentioned reason the game centers in Japan can sustain, or even thrive, is because many of the games are deep in progressional content. The progress are saved to your personal account on the Internet that&apos;s accessed with your IC card. &nbsp;So your game saves can be retrieved from any cabinet in any game centers.<br><br>Recently, many new games also have a gacha/lootbox/gambling mechanism, that entice player to come back daily to roll for that rare drop with little or no actual game play (I am taking about you, FGO AC).

  24