>>15679911
Where I live this was never a problem. Arcades still disappeared here because they were simply too expensive for kids to be able to afford, or for adults to be able to justify. Once you got to like a dollar per play, it was just obviously way too much of a ripoff. And that was like 15 years ago. Hell, even by the late '90s, sure the tech was slightly better in arcades, but it was no longer a big leap to what you could play at home. And most arcades mostly had older games anyway, so a lot of the games you could play at home without downgrades, or at least without significant downgrades.
Arcades need to be cheap enough that you can justify paying per play a game that you could buy forever and play as much as you want at home. The justification is partially the social aspect, but that only goes so far. And yes, I know people say that if you're good it costs less to beat the game at the arcade than to buy it and play at home. But I still don't own the arcade game. I get to own the game and play it forever even after I beat it. Big difference.
By the time the PS1 was out I basically only played gimmick machines with novel controls like driving games, ones with cabinets that you climb inside, lightgun games (even though everyone had a couple lightgun games at home, but usually they were shit compared to arcade ones), DDR, or the dreaded ticket redemption games. Everyone shits on those, but I'm sorry, I was a kid, and I had 50 cents that I could spend on Ms. Pac Man, which I already owned and could play for free at home, or I could spend it on that game where I hit the gators that come out of the machine with a mallet and get tickets that I can use to buy some shit prize. I can't play the gator game at home and I don't get the shit prize for Ms. Pac Man. Ms. Pac Man is a better game but I'm not gonna pay to play a game I already own.