The entertainment industry is constantly evolving and has not been exempt from changes based on both commercial trends and consumer preferences, an example of which is the proliferation of machines recreational around the world a few decades ago and its evident decline in recent times
According to the most recent financial analysis of the corporate Teikoku Databankin Japan, during the last ten years eight thousand arcade halls have closed, with the drop being the most pronounced and close to the 30%due to the consequences left by the COVID 19 pandemic.
An example of the above was when at the beginning of 2022, SEGA decided to abandon this market sector after having participated in it for half a century, adding to a similar outcome that suffered Namco Funscape London in the United Kingdom.
Regarding the situation in the country of the rising sun, not only have the changes in public preferences, which now lean more towards crane devices and/or prizes, been the triggers, but other definitive factors are present such as increase in the electricity rates and the taxes consumption, in addition to the commissions due to the exchange of currencies in cash.
For this reason, the operating profits of the companies that own the conglomerates Arcadian have decreased dramatically, going from a margin of 26 percent in the late 1980s to a 6% currentlyshowing that the business persists because of nostalgia, but not because of its profitability.
In that same sense, worrying are the figures that, at the height of the arcades, there were 26,573 establishments that had this type of recreation, against the 4,022 present so far in 2024, with the slowdown expected to continue to worsen exponentially.
It would be very risky to say that the arcade rooms are going to disappear in their entirety, however, it is a reality that they have been aging along with the gamers of yesteryear, opening the possibility of this type of recreational spaces being positioned as a very specific niche segment, just as has happened with the Physical format in home video games.
#flame #arcade #halls
