Arcade Heroes

arcadehero December 25, 2013 at 4:01 pm

Depends on where it is (customer base) and what the game selection is. Will 30 year old games pay the rent? Probably not, unless you have 300 of them (or rather, enough that keep people interested and you just happen to have a lot of games that potential regulars want, the exact version that they want and so on). I’ve said it over and over, but brand new games can and do make money and with several units, pay the bills. But they are much more expensive to get. And it seems some people don’t like hearing that Crystal Castles or Double Dragon won’t pull in $200 a week but maybe $5/mo if you’re lucky. Whereas something like Terminator Salvation will do $200/wk or at least it did (its starting to slow down a little but still strong, for me at least). Batman would have pulled more than that if it didn’t have the technical issue. Classic games are the comfort food of an arcade – I’ve had multiple people come into my arcade, look, comment on how cool it is that I have old games, and walk out without bothering to play and I never see them again. Or they will come and tell me how awesome it is that I’m doing something like this but they do the same thing – don’t play the games they think are cool. While that’s not a huge number of people that fit into these categories, there are indicative of a majority that are not going to come to a location on a regular basis to relive old memories. Most of the money that will be made is for making new ones. Classics can still play a little part of that but I think you have to rely on more than nostalgia to make it all work. Most locations have picked redemption/attractions to do that, a few others tournaments and such. Then we have other issues that make arcades suffer, its not just the games – landlords, local laws, management, maintenance, weather events, etc.