The death of arcades, and your role

Like drive-ins, tamagotchis, and those wristbands that were straight until you slapped them on, the arcade seems to have vanished almost completely. The development of console technology that put it on par with the arcade machines was the main reason they died, but there's details in that statement which were never really explained.

The main reason why I abandoned the arcade for the console was the accessibility and privacy. I didn't have to wait to play the game I wanted while some kid stuffed endless quarters into the machine, get into fights when the jackass behind me knocked my dude into bullets, or feel horribly shamed when Mario got his ass kicked by a goomba. Despite all that, I'm kinda sad they're gone, or relegated to movie theatre lobbies. As good as the consoles were, they just really didn't capture the atmosphere of the arcade.

So 4chan, what's your role in supporting or killing the arcade?

I argue that the death of video arcades, or at least the cause of death in my local area, is the direct result of the car racing video games.  Either video game companies are blatantly ignoring the realities of their target audience, or they are trying to rewrite their target audience into their own view.  I watched as every time I walked into the local video arcades that the games I enjoyed playing were replaced one by one with some generic racing game.  This went on for weeks, months, years...finally all the games were nothing but racing games.  This is no joke here, I'm dead serious, every damn game.  My contribution for death was I quit going into video arcades since they clearly don't know the mentality of people who play video games!

However, perhaps I am a statistic anomaly.  After all, when I go into a video arcade, I expect to see an entire wall end to end covered with pinball machines.  I'm that old school here.  To me the highlight of the arcade market was the 80's.  I could spend hours playing nothing but Smash TV.  By today's standards, Smash TV is considered a crappy game, but whenever I grab the grenade launcher in that game, I still start screaming "Get some!  Get some!"  This is the point that many parents place thier hands over thier child's ears and lead them away...

So those are my two points.  Either the arcades are killing themselves by not knowing who their customers are, or perhaps my kind is simply the ones dying out and that is why arcades are failing.