DigitalBattle.com

I’m sure many of us can remember hours and dollars invested in arcade games. All the way back from Pong and Space Invaders to modern games like Dance Dance Revolution and Time Crisis 4, gamers have flocked to arcades for a more social gaming experience. It seems however that this trend is changing. While spokesman for Namco Bandai Yuji Machida partly blames the high oil prices keeping Japanese families from making frequent trips to the malls where the arcades are mostly located, he points a bigger finger at the home console industry. The Wii in particular is to blame. With a highly social gameplay most often aimed at a wide, diverse audience, Nintendo’s console offers the simplicity non-gamers and casual gamers found enjoyable about arcade games. Instead of lots of buttons or joysticks you had the simplicity of a light gun, steering wheel or snowboard. The other two consoles are likely to blame as well, given that many popular arcade games such as Dance Dance Revolution, the Guitar Hero series and Rock Band have all been released in home versions. Light gun games are also occasionally available for the consoles. Some of it might also have to do with the prices. If the cost of playing a Japanese arcade game is anywhere parallel to American arcades, it can be prohibitively expensive to play a game more than once or twice, as most of the games these days cost a dollar per credit. Unless arcades can come up with something more to offer, they’re going to disappear almost entirely.