Dave_K. wrote:Why is it that pictures I see of japanese arcades seem mostly empty? How can they stay in business with that many machines and nobody playing them?
Everybody who's gone to Japan wonders why the country can kep going with the prices they have. Sometimes you and a friend go into a restaurant at a good hour, you're the only customer, and there are three people waiting on you... you stay for 2 hours, pay your bill for, say $50 och $60... I mean, it's not even enough to pay the waiters fee!
And two years later, the place is still running!
Or, as given above, you enter this huge arcade hall... and on the shmup floor there is basically nobody.
I don't know how they do it. But they do. One thing I like with Japan is that sometimes it seems they're more prone to give good service than to maximize profit every second. Meaning you can actually have a not-so-popular arcade machine standing in a corner, when it probably would be more profitable exchanging it for another Pop'n'music or something. When I entered arcade halls to find Mushihime-sama, virtually nobody was sitting by the shmup machines. Maybe they come in hordes at some specific times...