We always hear the numbers for how good or bad the console industry is doing in terms of how much cash it pulls in or sales of total units, which is an awful lot (something in the
neighborhood of $17+ billion last year for video game sales) but they overlook the arcade industry entirely. Fortunately for that we have Play Meter Magazine, an amusement trade publication, which runs a “State of the Industry” report every year that analyzes total sales, locations and revenue that the US amusment industry pulls in per year. The numbers for 2007 are interesting, showing some trends headed downward, others upward. Overall the industry made $5.8 billion – which means that the arcade industry is not dead, although suffering a little bit from previous years. While it is trailing far behind the console industry, one has to consider that the arcade industry has less than 10 developers actively making games and last year less than 30 games were released, none of which had a Halo 3 style hype machine behind them so in making almost $6 billion isn’t bad. Also of interest – pinball is up quite a bit from 2006, making $81 million last year. The report is a great read and I would say essential for anyone interested in opening up an arcade in the US. I still think that 2008 will smash 2007 as we are going to see some huge releases this year (Street Fighter IV anyone?).
[PlayMeter’s State of the Industry Report 2007] [Discuss on the Forum]
I don’t think thats bad at all considering that the cost of living is going up in most areas and income is not, just because of this I would expect a downward trend in entertainment spending while the price of living essentials such as food and gasoline go up and up in price. This also proves that people are still willing to put money into arcade machines even though the console games industry is currently taking in record amounts of money right now.
Yeah overall I think it’s impressive for an industry that a lot of gamers consider to be dead to be pulling in this much money. If developers can improve their game releases and lower prices on games it would help tremendously as the year goes on.