I am not sure how valuable my 1.67c will be [$0.02 CAD] but I have pondered the viability of making and selling bartops for quite a while, and made the following observations in my research. You are only going to have 3 target customer markets, A) People who want a cheap arcade cabinet, cheap. B) People who want a cabinet but are unknowledgeable or unwilling to do the wood work. C) The impulse gamer who wants a 100% working product with zero setup.
People in the community like Haruman take care of (B) quite easily. It is important to note that the individuals in column (B) are already committed to own a cabinet, and are fully willing to go through the work of either the PC or Pi setup to fill the cabinet, as well as the expected wiring and component purchased to go with it.
The lines blur a little between (A) and (C), to elaborate, (A) customers are familiar with MAME and arcade cabinets, but do not want to go through with assembly. They expect a bartop, wired with joysticks and buttons, and for either a fresh loaded PC or Pi to be present and will expect no os on the Pi, and no roms/frontend on the PC, if there is a front end, great, added bonus. Customers in the (C) catagory expect to purchase a unit they can bring home, plug in, turn on and start gaming. To elaborate, they don't care about the legality of pirated ROMs, they expect it to just 'work'.
You may be thinking "There are plenty of people that don't quite fit into A, B or C", the issue with that statement, while accurate, is that those people either don't want an arcade, or they are the type currently reading this forum post, who want an Arcade, but will either want to build it themselves, or have VERY specific things they want it to do. (LED buttons with LED blinky, U360 controllers with custom maps etc). While there is a market there, it is VERY small, and is for completely custom built cabinets on a 1 by 1 basis with customization (Paradox comes to mind) and really, they fall into the void between A and B.
Beyond that specific situation, which I anticipate would get very few orders, especially due to shipping costs, left me with the only remaining viable option (which others have mentioned), enjoying the hobby enough that you start making bartops for fun, become proficient at it, and sell them on Kijiji, Craigslist, E-Bay or your local Farmers Market / Flea Market. You will have to decide on the moral dilemma (or legal depending where you live) of building these with ROms present or not.
While there is a lot here, I think this will be the non condescending version explaining some of the other previous short, but to the point replies you have already received.
{While I have lurked on here for eternity, how is that for my second post ever
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