Hi all,
I am currently exploring some options regarding setting up a business with arcade related products. With the success of retro game consoles such as the NES and SNES mini and various other I can imagine there being a demand for retro arcade gaming at home as well.
At this time there already are some businesses providing build to order arcade cabinets and DIY kits and parts. I am considering launching a Kickstarter campaign for a two player bar top arcade cabinet, completely assembled and finished.
I have finished one full sized cabinet for my family's private use. This took a lot of time, but I think I can streamline the production process by amongst other things have a 3rd party CNC route the MDF parts for me and produce a series of units at once.
My main concerns are copyright and licensing issues I might encounter. Even though several sellers offer cabinets with xxx in 1 jamma multi boards or raspberry pi systems with preloaded roms it seems like most if not all do this illegal or in a shady grey area at best. The same goes for the sticker graphics of well known brands and characters. For a DIY project for own personal use, such as my own Star Wars themed cabinet, this shouldn't be to much of a problem, but I don't want to risk costly claims or law suits by commercially selling cabinets with unlicensed material.
Since there are so many different game studios and publishers it will probably be to complicated and expensive to get a allround license for a broad scala of known arcade games, unless I would focus on one specific franchise, but that would narrow the target audience. An option would be to offer fully assembled and finished cabinets but without the all in one jamma board but have it plug and play ready so the customer could add their own 3rd party bought game system. Or sell with a raspberry pi / mini PC but without roms. The thing is, I am really wondering if a bar top arcade cabinet is still an interesting buy for most people if it's not plug and play out of the box and they have to go out and find their own roms or jamma board.
I'm wondering what your opinions are about the matter I sketched above: if a fully finished bartop cabinet will sell if it's not shipped with preloaded games.
Since new 3:4 ratio 17 or 19" screens are hard to find these days (or very expensive) I'm considering using used/refurbished 3:4 ratio monitors which are pretty cheap these days. This will also highly benefit the eventual consumer price and I would still make sure to offer a minimal 12 months warranty so customers are protected. I'm wondering if using refurbished monitors might put people of to much though.
As you can tell I'm still in the brainstorming phase and all your thoughts and input will be greatly appreciated.