How much did original arcade machines cost?

[idsane]

Was just thinking about this. How much did an arcade owner pay for a cabinet back in the hayday of the 80s or 90s? Were they all purchased or leased?

[oyama82]

my father back in 1989 was leasing them

[WhereEaglesDare]

i know today some machines are sold for 10-20k

[TOK]

I think the ballpark going rate for a new game in the early to mid 80's was 2500 to 3000 dollars.

[jimmy2x2x]

Im pretty sure I read that defender cost £1600 (uk) on release.

[WhereEaglesDare]

Im pretty sure I read that defender cost £1600 (uk) on release.

$2500 bucks...  a new 1980 Camaro was $7500... 

a 2010 Camaro is $24,000 so if you can compare the two then Defender today would be $8,000

The Online Inflation Calculator says "What cost $2500 in 1980 would cost $6424.94 in 2009."

[idsane]

Wow that is amazing. I would never have guessed they could be that much in the 80s. 10,000 plays to get your $2500 back. I wonder how much capital it took to open something like a ChuckECheese or Alladin's Castle back then with their extensive arcades. So I guess expensive retro games that go for a couple of thousand are still less than what they originally went for, and none are very good for collectors that were holding on to them to turn a profit.

[Ginsu Victim]

Wow that is amazing. I would never have guessed they could be that much in the 80s. 10,000 plays to get your $2500 back.

Back then, it wasn't that hard. Check the coin counters on some older cabs sometime. My Track and Field had 53,000.

[RayB]

I think I read somewhere that a machine had to make about $150 per week to be considered a success. If you think about it, and consider that earnings lower as a game gets old, the machine paid itself in about 6 months or so...

Some actual production numbers, earnings (during tests) etc available here:
http://www.atarigames.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&id=5%3Aatari-inter-office-memos&Itemid=5&layout=default&limitstart=60

[runninblue]

About 14-15 years ago out of curiosity I rang up a distributor to get a quote on a 2nd hand Daytona machine (double) and he quoted me $25,000 Australian dollars...15 years ago...2nd hand. I nearly cried.

[CheffoJeffo]

Tough question, although I think TOK is in the ballpark.

I thought I had an old Atari price list, but I can't seem to find it now. IIRC, Pong was about an $800 purchase. I know that Asteroids cost just under $800 to make, but I can't find what a first tier dealer would pay (and it is important to remember that there was lots of wheeling and dealing were going on -- what cost $1000 from Dealer A might cost $2000 from Dealer B).

I recall folks saying, during the heyday, that games could be paid off within a few weeks and that, as the crash neared, the life cycle of games shortened drastically making them difficult to pay off (hence, the crash). I'll need to watch the documentaries again to get a better handle.

[WhereEaglesDare]

Wow that is amazing. I would never have guessed they could be that much in the 80s. 10,000 plays to get your $2500 back.

Back then, it wasn't that hard. Check the coin counters on some older cabs sometime. My Track and Field had 53,000.

Yea, because when you think about "Home Arcades" weren't around or affordable for a long while later...

[idsane]

Interesting link Ray. It says StarWars costs about 1200 to make, Missile command around 800, so double to triple that resell would make sense. $150 a week also seems about right, as one of the SWESB memos compares it to other games in 85 and what they made, with marble madness at the top with over $200 a week. So if a game costs $2500 and makes $150 a week for about 4.5 months, it would be paid off, which still seems like a long time to pay it off. For the games that didn't become popular, who knows who long it took to pay those off. No wonder arcades were a boom and bust back then. But then again, I'm sure the retail chains like ChuckECheese would see a lot more than $150 a week from a Star wars game, especially during the summer.

[RayB]

That Star Wars price sheet is for parts only. Labour and R&D not included. Atari would have added an amount to compensate for that, and then the distributors add their own mark-up as well. $2500 to $3500 is probably right.

[nitz]

Interesting topic

On a related topic, I'd be interested to know what the cost/profit situation on a classic game is today. My local comic shop, movie theater, and mini-golf place all have a few old arcade games that get switched out now and then, so I assume they don't own them. I go to all these places semi-regularly and I hardly ever see anybody playing the games. So I really wonder how much it costs to lease them. I'd be very surprised if any of those games see 100 plays a week - and that would only be $25 since they only charge a quarter. Would it cost a lot less than that a week to lease those? I wouldn't have thought so, but maybe I'm wrong.

Alternatively, there's another place that has all the games set on freeplay and charges $10 an hour to play. That's probably more profitable I would think. Might be ok if you're playing some of those beat 'em ups that were basically designed to eat your money, but for classics, it's a ripoff. $10 divided by $0.25 is 40, meaning you'd have to play 40 games an hour to make it worthwhile, meaning on average, each of your games is only lasting a minute and half! For most classics, you would have to be an outright terrible player for that to happen.

[CheffoJeffo]

The deals that I have most often seen in current times are not leases, but rather revenue sharing -- the operator puts their machine on your premises and you split the revenue 50/50.

Not sure how they work out the licensing and insurance, although it wouldn't be unreasonable for the op to handle the licensing and the location owner to handle the insurance (that was how we did it when I managed the residence arcade in university ... but that was 20 years ago).

[WhereEaglesDare]

Even a really good 90s era game in great shape today would cost $400-750, not including license and insurance, it will still take around 6 months til you make any money on it, this must be why you just dont see them as much as you use to.

[nitz]

The deals that I have most often seen in current times are not leases, but rather revenue sharing -- the operator puts their machine on your premises and you split the revenue 50/50.

Ah yeah, that makes sense. Still, I have a feeling the folks that have these in their shops are folks who have a love for the games - I mean, any profit they're making has gotta be pretty meager so if they didn't love the games, they probably wouldn't want to be bothered.

[idsane]

I agree that almost anywhere you see games set up, there is almost no interest in playing them, especially by younger kids. The only exception I know of, is Dave and Busters. With the adult environment and alcohol, those games see a lot of use. But as far as the movie theaters and other odd places go, I can't see how they would make money unless they get it second hand on craigs for a couple hundred bucks. The impetus for my original question was seeing cabs on craigs (in search of an empty cab for my project) and thinking these listers were crazy for asking $500 for a game that was never very popular. 

[nitz]

The impetus for my original question was seeing cabs on craigs (in search of an empty cab for my project) and thinking these listers were crazy for asking $500 for a game that was never very popular. 

Cab prices depend highly on the supply/demand situation of where you live. When people mention how they picked up a nice Ms Pacman or whatever for $200 at an auction, it makes me wanna cry. Where I live, a cab like that is going for $600-$800 if it's at all in decent shape. $200-$300 is the general asking price for a random not really popular game with a cab in decent shape.

So it all depends - but $500 does sound a little high for an unpopular game no matter where you are. I would wait to see if you could find something cheaper. OTOH, if the cab is nice and has a working monitor and CP you can use, and acceptable artwork (ie. you wouldn't have to put any work into it other than interfacing the monitor and controls to a PC) $500 could be worth it for the time, money, and work it would save you. I wouldn't pay that much though unless I was getting something that was basically "drop a PC in and play".

[idsane]

It seems most games on Craigs in Denver go from 250-500 for ones that weren't superstars of their days. Really all I want is an empty cabinet and maybe some coin doors, but those don't seem to ever pop up much.

[mmb]

It seems most games on Craigs in Denver go from 250-500 for ones that weren't superstars of their days. Really all I want is an empty cabinet and maybe some coin doors, but those don't seem to ever pop up much.

Ebay the coin door and three sheets of MDF later.....

[DrFrag]

I too have heard figures of $2500-$3000 for arcade machines back in the day.  My local fish & chip shop said the takings were split 50/50 with the amusement operator.

I bought a generic cab with Karnov in it for AU$300 in the mid 90s.  One of those wood veneer laminate jobs with photocopied marquees that seemed to be everywhere in Australia (along with "If you are playing this game outside of Japan you are involved in a crime!" boot screens.  I swear, were there any genuine cabs in Australia back then?).  The coin counter for the 20c slot was over 175,000.  So $35,000 in 10 years or so ... not a bad taking on that one.

[bkenobi]

The coin counter for the 20c slot was over 175,000.  So $35,000 in 10 years or so ... not a bad taking on that one.

Not to say that $35k isn't a lot of money for a cab to earn, but you may be forgetting something.  If the cab cost $2500 originally, then it would have had a real marquee, board set, and controls installed.  From your message, that cab had a "reproduction" marquee, so it probably wasn't the original game.  In order to get to the 175k game plays, the operator may have had to change the game several times.  There's also maintenance for any cab on site that could involve repairing vandalism.  I doubt all of this would come close to $35k, so I suspect they did pretty good on that cab!