Im probably in the very very small minority of people who still love and go to arcades. Its such a great place to meet like minded nerds. We are lucky to have 2 really awesome ones in town, one of which has a lot of good old machines, and they repair them too. They have some new ones that are OK too.
Anyway, I dont like that they changed to the dumb card thing. I get it (efficiency, capitalism, it was bound to happen) but it removes another visceral experience in society that was so fun.
Anyway, my old man rant!
Arcades have to charge more than a quarter per play now due to inflation. The price isn’t just you renting the machine for the duration of the play, it’s you paying a small slice of the rent on the arcade location, the income of the workers, the maintenance of the machines, and the electricity for the lights, AC/heating, and so on. No arcades would exist today if they could only charge quarters.
Even accounting for inflation arcades should be cheaper.
The compute hardware costs much less and is much more power efficient.
Other power hungry features like lights and displays are both cheaper and more power efficient.
The argument that they still need to be expensive makes so little sense, other than the physical space they occupy.