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WHY DON'T THEY STILL MAKE PCBs

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pointdablame:

Did you know there is less than 1/8" between the "A" key and the "CAPS LOCK" key on a keyboard.   ::)

Tiger-Heli:


--- Quote from: GamingGreg on April 28, 2004, 08:44:19 pm ---Why don't they make anymore 8088 PCs? or pulse dial telephones? or 300 baud modems? or Beta VCRs? or 69 Chevy's?

It all comes down to money.  If there's not enough demand, to cover the cost of production, then they're not going to do it as they would loose money to do so.  (There may be demand for 69 Chevy's, but is there enough demand to cover the millions it would cost to produce a limited number of cars?)

--- End quote ---
Yep, basically what Gaming Greg said.  You have two factors at work:

1) The game companies would much rather sell an operator a brand new $3000 (or $15,000) arcade game replacement, than a $200 replacement board.

2) The game companies won't sell a new $200 or $150 PCB (maybe more with startup costs for a limited run) replacement board when most operators can buy a working board from another operator parting out a machine with a bad monitor for around $50 to $100.

It's not much different from other industries - Five years ago, you could buy a 10G HD, now you probably won't find NEW drives smaller than 60 G.  The 10G drives aren't produced b/c you couldn't sell new 10G drives for less than the secondary market sells them for, and they would rather sell the newer product line.

UPDATE - However, this is where copyright law comes into play, b/c even though NAMCO is not selling Pac-Man boards themselves anymore, they could definitely prevent you from burning a pacman ROM image onto a new replacement board and selling that to operators.

paigeoliver:

Also a few other factors at work.

The MAJORITY of the arcade companies, are dead, dying, sold off to non-arcade companies, or have moved completely into other areas.

Atari GONE
Williams, Midway, Bally, Sente - GAMBLING ONLY
Gottlieb - GONE
Namco - ALIVE, but evil.
Sega - BARELY ALIVE (Big problem with Sega is that they have consistently been a company of decent titles that weren't big hits. Only title they ever had that would even be a candidate for another run would be Frogger).
Taito - Retreated to Japan.
Cinematronics - GONE
Nintendo - Doesn't do arcades anymore.


Stingray:


--- Quote from: paigeoliver on April 29, 2004, 08:28:12 am ---Namco - ALIVE, but evil.

--- End quote ---

LOL.  ;D

-S

steve_pss:

Point,
At the risk of creating a flame war I think I need to take umbridge with your assertions. Assuming all of us are using the same keyboard paints to broad a cross section of our demographic. Your lucky the mods let you post such a pointless reply.

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