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Mame - Good or Bad for the Arcade Biz ?
RayB:
wow, merging the threads makes it real confusing... but anyways,
the END WORD on this is this:
The arcade industry was in a steady and quick decline WAY before MAME ever existed. By the late 80's, all you saw was stinker after stinker (most of it side-scrolling, poor imitations of Final Fight). Street Fighter II was responsible for a brief resurgence in arcade popularity and profits in the early 90's. It's been downhill from there. (and this is not my opinion, but the facts).
D_Zoot:
So was the original question regarding Mame and arcades, or Mame and the home market?
It seems to have gotten confused in this thread...
In regards to Mame and Arcades, I'm with Ray. The industry was in big trouble long before Mame was even an idea in someones skull. Mame didn't even make it worse. The industry came on too quickly and burned out quickly with all the original ideas happening early on, then nothing but re-runs after that. Consoles killed it the rest of the way. Why spend your money in an arcade when mom and dad bought you -insert name of console here- for Christmas and you can stay at home and play for free?
D
SirPoonga:
--- Quote from: D_Zoot on February 20, 2005, 10:02:54 pm ---
--- Quote from: fredster on February 20, 2005, 07:20:01 pm ---No, my point is people won't rebuild old machines because of mame.
--- End quote ---
That may be very true in Mame circles, such as this forum. But outside of the world of Mame there is a large, and growing, community of game collectors going stong.
--- End quote ---
It works for this group too. Look at the projects forums. Fixing up old cabinet projects show up all the time. I bought a double dragon II cabinet because I wanted a real arcade machine.
SirPoonga:
Yeah, merging didn't quite go the way I expected.
The point of the whole matter of the fact is mame will not kill the arcades. There is no reason that it would. The reason that it won't is because what mame emulates isn;t in the arcade and never will. The mamedevs have rules for allowing games into mame. !) has to be older than 3 years old 2) Must not be making money.
A good example of this is the new golden tee golf driver. Al though it has had the ability to be emulated in mame for years, since IT was making money on it mame the mamedevs did not release the driver. Now the IT isn't supporting that game they put it in. So tell me how that is hurting the arcades?
jbox:
Okay, after re-reading this thread I'm not sure I'm answering the right questions. ???
A comment such as this one:
--- Quote ---But I think it's really BAD for the arcade business. Classic machines are worth less. People don't want to spend lots of money on repairs. Cabs are tossed away and more people are getting out of the business.
--- End quote ---
makes me think we are talking about the arcade hardware market. In other words MAME has had only a fraction as much impact as Intel has on destroying the arcade market. All hardware companies must update themselves with the time to match what is currently the best way to make stuff. :'(
However, a comment such as this:
--- Quote --- No, my point is people won't rebuild old machines because of mame.
--- End quote ---
make me think we are talking about the arcade hobby market. Hobby markets are typically built around people who *experienced* the original in some form and wish to recreate that feeling either to recapture the emotional bond or to prove they have 3l33t skillz. Yes, I think MAME has diverted a small fraction of border-line people like myself who might otherwise be more interested in buying "originals", but the cold hard truth is that you al' are gittin' olda grandpa. ;D The hobby market is most likely going to decline for the same reason all our friends don't like to rebuild old Model-T Fords (because modern cars "are just cheap knock-offs"). I mean there *are* people like that out there, but they're just people with too much time on their hands... 8)
Computerised gaming as we know it will still continue to advance, and reach into new fields we don't currently expect it to.