Some reasons on why Game Centres are so popular

This is a post I've been wanting to do for a couple of weeks since I watched a certain episode of a show called Pach-Attack on gametrailers.com.

For those that don't know, Pach-Attack is a show hosted by a guy called Micheal Pachter, a dude who knows a great deal about the industry and answers questions on certain topics every week about business related things.  A couple of weeks ago, he was asked "Why are arcades so prominent in Japan but not so viable in the states?" to which he responded "Japan is a weird place and the people are just a lot weirder than the people in the west"

Now I don't know why but this struck a nerve with me, I think Pach-Attack is a great show and the guy knows his stuff, but on this topic he is just fucking wrong, and the way he worded his answer seemed pretty offensive, not only to the Japanese, but to me who also enjoys these games.

The chance of Pach himself reading this post is pretty slim, but I'll tell you the real reason why arcades are more viable here than anywhere else.

1. More new/interesting games
I'm really only talking about the UK but from what I've heard about America it's a similar situation.  In the UK, you ALWAYS see the same games, shit like Time Crisis and DDR and maybe a shitty racing game or 2, but in Japan, the selection is way more varied.  You have a metric shit ton of rhythm games, but all have an interesting take on rhythm gameplay (the recent Mai Mai comes to mind on this one)

Also, I've covered games before like Sengoku Taisen but games like this are basically unheard of in the west AT ALL, and I don't think anywhere would want these huge cabinets in their establishments, which leads me to my next point

2. Dedicated places to play
The Game Centre is a pretty popular thing out here, hell, I live within about 30 minutes of 4 different ones.  The existence of these not only give people a good place to come together, compete and practice, but it gives developers of these games somewhere to put their crazy designed cabinets.  While Arcades like this used to exist in the west, I found that people weren't willing to maintain the machines as much as they are around here, so shit used to stop working and people would stop coming.  The closest thing to an arcade near me in the UK had a broken DDR machine for 2 YEARS, that was never fixed and probably still has a broken right pad on the P1 side today. Speaking of machine care leads me to my final point which is...

3. Developers and players actually give a shit in Japan
Players of arcades in the UK really didn't give 2 fucks about how they treated the machines, and owners, like I mentioned in my last point, didn't give a shit about fixing them either.  For example, people would wreck the guns on rail shooters, or in one case, some teenagers broke into the coin box and stole the money, and the place disposed of the cabinet rather than spend time repairing it.  So in short, people fuck up the games and they are just not worth playing.

Arcades also get more developer attention with stat cards being available to unlock new content on basically every game.  On top of that, with most machines being hooked up to the internet, developers release patches and updates for popular games with great frequency.  If you dig through the posts a bit, or check my youtube channel, the Sound Voltex Booth game that I covered a while back has had over 40 new songs added to its library as well as a long list of pre-existing Beatmania songs that have been remixed for the game.

I could talk for days about why arcades here are so good, but I'll leave you with those 3 points for now.  So, Micheal Pachter, the Japanese aren't weird, the scene is just more interesting over here, and maybe you should actually look at what's available before you make stupid comments like that.