When this decade started, things weren’t looking terribly rosy for arcades. But they have held on thanks to a few companies sweating it out and continuing to bring us games; that and some lcoations have remained dedicated to their palyer base, importing if they had to and providing something that players would be hard-pressed to find elsewhere. While I still think that we have a ways to go, from recent news of different game releases and a number of new locations popping up all over the place (whether they are FEC or not), I think that 2009 is going to be a fine year for arcades overall, especially if the games we saw at IAAPA live up to providing a fun and exciting experience.
UK gadget website T3 has just released an article that takes an overall look at arcades and with ATEI coming up with the promise off showing off even more arcade releases for ’09. The article is very optimistic, which contrasts starkly with the standard ‘arcades-are-dead’ fare. They discuss many of the new releases that are expected to make an impact on the scene and they will also be attending ATEI and providing some coverage of the event there for more people to see. Of interest in that article, we find our friend Kevin Williams of The Stinger Report making an interesting revelation:
The Stinger Report man teases T3 with talk of “a brand new concept in game platforms for public space in 2009” debuting at ATEI, “with the first ‘Game Gate UV’ cabinets on display that bring consumer gaming into a Pay-for-Time package.”
He adds that a number of major arcade players “have signed up to support a machine, which opens a brand new chapter in the amusement industries history.”
So has someone finally managed to create something like the Xbox 360 powered T2 arcade machine without all of 
those legal troubles? It sure looks like it (as you can see it pictured to the right there) but we’ll have to wait until next month to see what it is all about. If several arcade companies are part of the deal that is also very interesting news and it should be cool to see how it all pans out.
[Article: Will 2009 be the year of the arcade – T3] [Discuss on the Forum]
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Molloy
Console graphics are so close to arcade graphics this generation I don’t see why we don’t have some current gen equivalent of the Naomi. The big three just don’t seem to have any interest in arcades, or see how they can fit into their new casual game audience strategies. If they launched a Xbox 360 board with Geometry Wars and a few updated classics I’m sure the smaller developers would flock to the platform. These PC based architectures are too expensive (although, maybe the way PC hardware is going they’ll be very cheap in a few more years).
Pay per time machines don’t strike me as something that will actually take off. It was a different story with something like the Nintendo Playchoice. You could play Mario 3 for 10 minutes and get most of the way through the game. If you play Halo 3 for 10 minutes you’d be lucky to be half way through the first level. Console games are a totally different animal from arcade games now.