A lot of the appeal of arcades back in the day was the obvious graphical difference between home consoles and the arcade experience. It seems once that difference was blurred, the arcades seemed to disappear. In what way could companies such as Sega differentiate their arcade models from the home consoles, to bring about even a muted profitable return to the past experience? I don't know about anybody else, but I truly miss having local arcade parlors I used to frequent as a kid.

nothing, because i dont think they can.

Most game companies these days are barely staying afloat as it is, and to dump some serious cash into an industry where the only thing people care about nowadays are crane machines, skee ball and the retro Pac-Man/Galaga/Space Invaders machines isn't a smart thing for them to do.

Sure you got the DDR/GH crowd, but apart from that no one cares about any arcade games released after the late 90's.

The machines cost too much - just the game board for some games run around $1k to $3k and in the case of games like SFIV you actually need two boards for 2P play. Then the cost of the cabinet can easily go to $10k+, especially if they plan on using an HD screen. It's just a $15k+ investment in a game like Street Fighter IV or Blazblue isn't smart because once the game is released on console, the arcade scene scatters and the vendor is probably out on a lot of cash.

So, um, they need a bail-out.

Scantily clad women delivering alcoholic beverages to the players free of charge would be a start.

Some GOOD exclusive arcade games

They could start by making the games a quarter again.

After they do that I will work hard to come up with step 2.

Experiences that simply can not be had at home. Arcades would need something like virtual reality goggles that REALLY work or free hand jobs (they cost money at my house) for gamers to spend money on an experience they can't own.

One thing I noticed when I was serving in Japan in 1999-2000 was that you could interchange your home console memory card with the arcade of the same game. This was years ago, and they are always releasing their crazy technological advances years ahead of U.S. release. Also, arcades are still rather popular over there.

Another pricecut? ;D