/vr/ - Retro Games

>>10110218
You do have a point about inflation playing a role. Some games went from 25 cents to 50 cents to 1 dollar to 1.50 dollars in tourist arcades. But you are forgetting that Sega, Namco, Konami, and the other Japanese arcade manufacturers had to ship their cabinets from overseas. America was importing the cabinets from Japanese factories and shipping them in from Japan. So it cost more for Japanese games.

American games were still cheaper because they were made in American factories and didn't need to be shipped in from another country. So stuff like Mortal Kombat, Primal Rage, etc...still cost 25 cents to play.

Also, Japanese companies were just being straight up greedy. They were charging crazy expensive prices on their deluxe arcade cabinets because they could. I could name several arcade machines where Sega and Namco were easily charging 5x to 10x the price to manufacture it.

I follow some of the arcade scene in Japan, and a major reason arcades are dying is because the Japanese arcade manufacturers are killing it themselves with their big Greed. The arcade manufacturers are forcing arcade businesses into "revenue sharing" agreements where arcades must agree to split the profits from running the machine 50%/50% with the arcade manufacturer. Otherwise the arcade business will not be allowed to buy the arcade machine from the company.

The Japanese arcade manufacturers are mimicking how Western Theaters and Movies Studios interact. Similar to how a Western movie theater agrees to give Western studios a cut of ticket sales. Where Disney takes a huge cut of the ticket sale profit.

Japanese Arcade businesses must also pay monthly fees for online network access directly to the arcade manufacture so they can gain access to game DLC and other Game updates. The arcade company uses the network to monitor how much money each individual machine is making. All these fees have killed many small arcade businesses in Japan. Only the biggest chains can survive now.