Unrecognized Dominance

In what may seem to be a weird twist in how we think, Arcades are now worth more than consoles. To be honest, it shouldn’t. Domination goes back and forth quickly, so it would be silly to think one group should rule them all. What we are in right now is the unrecognized period, where yes there is a reversal, but not a lot of people have noticed yet. The reason why is the concept of domination by consoles has been pushed for a long time.

It’s true, arcades are now dominating. To give an example, Sega is starting to lean towards arcade games more than console games.

“This is also due to the fact that Sega has been extremely successful (and profitable) in the arcade market and prefers not to ruin its financial reports and risking its own and share holders’ money in the consumer market. So right now they are playing it safe. Pretty funny for a company that at the moment is owned by Sammy (leader of the gambling market with pachinkos and slot machines) isn’t it?

As you know, in the land rising sun the coin-op industry is still live and kicking, and Sega – being the leader - has a major share of the national income (thanks also to its ownership of many arcade centers such as Club Sega and Sega Gigo, in which millions of yen is spent every year). Its presence is so huge that even the other software houses such as Capcom let Sega distribute their games abroad: a clear example is ‘Luigi’s Mansion’, which is produced by Capcom but distributed worldwide by Sega UK.”

This may sound like a Japan only thing, but there are now more arcades than there were 10 years ago. Most arcades in the US seem to be doing fine, and those that are shutting down have three more pop up. It is not a losing scenario to have an arcade. In fact, most experts are predicting arcades to make more money than consoles in the next five years.

If they aren’t moving more toward arcades, there are companies like Nintendo that are hedging bets. This isn’t a new thing for Nintendo either. They have released arcade games this entire century, and most of you don’t even realize this. There was an arcade system made by Sega, Namco, and Nintendo for various games. It included F Zero, and Mario Kart.

But how is this happening without you noticing? The answer is something I call unrecognized domination, which happens all the time. What happens is one group is dominant, and continues to think they are dominant even when evidence shows otherwise. It can go on for centuries.

In my last article I pointed out that Japan decided to mimic England. They believed the English to have domination in the markets, even though it was an American that helped the country open up. At that time, the US was exporting more than any other country, and had several industrial businesses dominating the world. No one recognized this, because they would point out other as to why they couldn’t be dominant.

Another example is one I love to give. Between the 18th century and the middle of the 19th century, most europeans didn’t realize they had dominated the world. They held lands in China, India, the African Continent, and on to the Americas. The reason why they hadn’t noticed was the competition between them was so strong they didn’t have time to look. When a peaceful era opened up, a new idea came forward that they always dominated, and were given this ability by god. There had been speculation beforehand, but the idea became dominant by the 1860’s. There is a lot of history there, so please understand that a paragraph does not do it justice.

Because the narrative had been that China, or other cultures were dominant, it was difficult to accept that they now had fallen. The Chinese on their part considered Europeans to be a disease of the skin, but not the innards. The rampaging thieves, and civil wars breaking out were more important to the average Chinese bureaucrat.

To be honest, Domination goes back and forth all the time. It’s really obvious when you look at it from a historical point of view, but most people don’t get that option. Which company has dominated TV sales? The honest truth is that it goes back and forth. The same goes for any company. It is rare that one dominates the area entirely for years on end. Even then, the people taking second or third find a way to declare themselves the victor.

For example, Sega was a major force in arcade games coming back into power in the 60’s and 70’s. You don’t hear about this, because videogames then took over. Then after that consoles began to be promoted.

The reason why arcades were even talked about, was to talk about the ports to consoles. Street Fighter II and Final Fight helped Nintendo secure dominance in the early 90’s. What most people don’t realize is that many of those arcade games didn’t release onto consoles. Game Journalists didn’t cover them, and moved more towards home PC’s and consoles throughout the 80’s and 90’s. I think the big moment is when the PS2 had tons of old arcade ports released to it. Most people remembered those games, but didn’t know about the upcoming ones.

During 2003 and 2005 there was a drop for classic style arcades. Many companies began to go away, so people assumed they were dying. Instead of noticing the difficulties in finance everywhere, and how the kids who played them grew up only being told about consoles. Because of this, we find common forums like this random one I found from five years ago.

Look at the article a bit to see how everyone concludes the arcade is dead. They give reasons like the console took over, and other ideas. Then near the bottom, you have someone posting pictures of a very nice arcade that is doing well. I know it’s doing well, because that arcade is still in Portland, and is a major part of the Portland Retro Gaming Expo Arcade. Heck, I chatted with the owners a few months ago.

Then look at some of the previous articles. There are attempts to rework the same narrative. Arcades are doing well in Japan. Arcades are only doing well with the big companies. Small time arcades don’t exist. The list continues just as China viewed Europeans as a nuisance, Console journalists do not view arcades as something important.

As you can see, this creates a weird moment. I don’t know if arcades will begin to dominate and show up more in the market or not. If you think it is going to happen, maybe try your hand at it.

It is a weird thing. Arcades are making more money than consoles, and this is expected to increase not decrease in the near future. We don’t recognize something like this because we get stuck on the narrative already given. In this case it is that consoles have made the arcade useless, and they are slowly going away. As the arcades rise up, we have a lot of people trying to have the same narrative work, even when the evidence shows otherwise.