Sorry about the lack of updates for the past few days, everyone is busy and there has been little internet time as of late.
You might recall that over the past year or so, there have been reports of big arcade companies in Japan closing a bunch of arcade locations to streamline their operations. When this happens some assume that it must surely mean that everyone is content just sitting at home playing their Wii so arcades must be in decline there. Or you can consider that maybe there are other factors involved. Either way, attendance was quite high at AOU this year and as some photographic proof (and you might also notice in the videos we posted below that every game has a bunch of people around it) here is a picture of the line waiting to get into the show.
UPDATE: AM-Net is reporting that attendance to the show was 45,160 people. It sounds like they had a nice handful of attendees there to me.
[Discuss on the Forum]
That’s an increase of roughly 6,500 visitors compared last year (article is linked below).
Very few people have noted that while the trend in the last few years has been to reduce the number of arcades in Japan, they are generally making way for larger ones. It’s only recently that we’re starting to see full-on closures, largely due to financial pressure.
https://arcadeheroes.com/2008/02/22/aou-attendance-rises-by-10000/
Dear HeavyElec,
I agree with the ‘updating’ comment reagrding old style arcades in JP for the new big ones. I tried to write this in a number of features for consumer game mags who all said that “the facts don’t stand-up” – only for them not to reply when I sent the numbers in that proved this.
Most consumer sites have even tried to avoid reporting the AOU show, or the news on the attendance. A lot scared by the popularity of KOF especially as their is no home date!
I am going to run a feature in the Stinger on the AOU numbers on the increase of revenue in amusement – guess only people who read the Stinger will ever get to see it!