>>203928
>Arcades were killed by the SNES and Genesis in my opinion.
This. I can't believe someone said smartphones and Dave & Busters. Arcades were dead long before then. The better home hardware got, the more pointless it was to go all the way to the arcade and stand there while you pump quarters in every few minutes, instead of just playing as much as you want in the comfort of your own home. Even NES put a significant dent in arcades, and while they lasted through the SNES and Genesis, they were significantly hurt. At least fighting games were big at the time and were theoretically best in arcades, though the difference was still hardly enough to justify going out and paying per round instead of just renting or buying and playing as much as you want at home. On the PS1, theoretically Tekken was worse than arcades, but it started getting additional modes and content that far outweigh the slight graphical edge the arcades might have. By the Dreamcast, games like Soul Calibur were better at home in every way. And all of this is leaving out discussion of games that just don't work at arcades. Yeah, fighting games are all well and good, but since the '80s, platformers ruled the day, and they were way better at home. As were adventure games, and RPGs, and practically everything else other than quick old arcade games that were essentially seen as minigames by this point, and fighting games. Racing games kind of work, but the home versions had so much more content that they blew arcade racers out of the water. And this was a significant reason the Saturn failed outside Japan. Sure, Sega did good ports of arcade games, but arcade games have no fucking content because you're just meant to pay a dollar for a few minutes and move on, and it isn't as interesting as actually having more than three fucking tracks in your racing game.
Even in the '90s, when there were still lots of arcades around, they were only worth going to for ticket games and games with moving physical pieces. Ride cabinets, special lightguns, racing wheel/pedal setups, and stuff like Whack-A-Mole. Eventually DDR was kind of worth it, but then you could buy your own DDR pad, and again, even if it wasn't as good, it was worth it for getting to play at home and not pay per play. Actual games were all better at home. Arcades were for gimmicks that got boring after a few minutes.
>>203991
And also this. But it's a secondary factor.