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Japan may be home of many of the biggest manufacturer names in arcade gaming, but the majority of its consumers are uninterested in the pursuit and have a low opinion of the venues, according to new research.
A survey of 12,000 Japanese residents by MyVoice found that 61 percent never go into amusement arcades, and 20 percent visit less than once a year.
They were described as too expensive by 53 percent, too loud by 52 percent, aimed at children by 47 percent, too smoky by 27 percent, hard to enter by 12 percent, too dark by 12 percent, and scary by 11 percent.
Only 18 percent considered them fun.
Among those who do visit arcades, 59 percent go there for crane games, and just 27.5 percent for video games. Of these, more than half attend arcades to play racing games, and only about a quarter for fighting games, despite the latter category’s international reputation for popularity in Japan.
The strong interest in non-violent games may be accounted for in part by the increasingly ageing demographic of Japan’s arcade customers.
According to the Japan Amusement Industry Association, it’s getting harder to attract young people – who doubtless are more likely to have access to games on their PCs, consoles or mobile devices. Instead, locations like the Sega Dream Factory in Tokyo are targeting senior citizens, who now make up a third of that site’s customers.
They may not, though, be drawn just by the quality of the game content. Social aspects are, it’s suggested, as important: an arcade visit is an opportunity to get out of the house and meet people. Their favourite game types are reported to include pachinko, crane devices and horse racing.
Despite arcades’ difficulties in grabbing younger players, however, all is not entirely bleak for Japanese amusement-machine manufacturers: if even a relatively small proportion of the country’s 127m population visits the venues, that’s still a lot of yen going into the slots.
Namco Bandai, for example, recently reported that unit sales for its fiscal first half-year were up 18 percent, to 14,600 units. The vast majority of those were sold in Japan, including 4100 arcade games and 1600 electro-mechanical novelty games.
Sales in the U.S. and Europe were also up, but less steeply, rising ten percent.
The firm, which runs arcades itself as well as making equipment, cut their number slightly in Japan – from 255 in September 2009 to 240 a year later – and more aggressively in the U.S., from 938 to 849 venues over the same period.
