<story><title>Japanese gaming arcades are on their last life</title><url>https://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2021/06/06/digital/japanese-gaming-arcades-pandemic/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tmm84</author><text>Having lived in Japan for the past decade I can say that game centers (arcades to those outside Japan) have changed. I remember playing rhythm based games (pop-n-music, taiko drum master, etc.) and some fighting&amp;#x2F;shooting games for a few years. But, within the last two years or so, the NFC card requirement for almost all games has come to fruition. Wanna play that racing game? Gonna need to &amp;quot;grind&amp;quot; a vehicle and save that progress with an NFC. Wanna play that rhythm game? Scan your NFC first. Wanna shoot at dinos? You know the drill. This is why I won&amp;#x27;t put a single yen in the machines. Arcade games were put your coin in the box and see how good you were at it. However, they have turned it into a scan your NFC and see how far you&amp;#x27;ve &amp;quot;grind&amp;quot;-ed to mastery. Instead of &amp;quot;grind&amp;quot;-ing an arcade game at 100 yen per round I could actually use my money on other things that bring more pleasure.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>fomine3</author><text>Reasons those arcade games requiring (or giving benefit) for NFC (like Paseli by Konami):&lt;p&gt;* Game company want to collect money more from arcade shop.&lt;p&gt;* Managing many coins aren&amp;#x27;t easy task.&lt;p&gt;* Consumption tax is raised from 5% to 10% in past decade, but coin (100 JPY) game can&amp;#x27;t apply the raised tax precisely.&lt;p&gt;* Flexible play options thanks to ability of flexible pricing&lt;p&gt;* Anyway most player want to save game progress&lt;p&gt;But coldly treating coin user is bad for newcomer. Maybe general credit card NFC payment solves some problem, but it&amp;#x27;s not well accessible for teenages in Japan.</text></comment>
<story><title>Japanese gaming arcades are on their last life</title><url>https://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2021/06/06/digital/japanese-gaming-arcades-pandemic/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tmm84</author><text>Having lived in Japan for the past decade I can say that game centers (arcades to those outside Japan) have changed. I remember playing rhythm based games (pop-n-music, taiko drum master, etc.) and some fighting&amp;#x2F;shooting games for a few years. But, within the last two years or so, the NFC card requirement for almost all games has come to fruition. Wanna play that racing game? Gonna need to &amp;quot;grind&amp;quot; a vehicle and save that progress with an NFC. Wanna play that rhythm game? Scan your NFC first. Wanna shoot at dinos? You know the drill. This is why I won&amp;#x27;t put a single yen in the machines. Arcade games were put your coin in the box and see how good you were at it. However, they have turned it into a scan your NFC and see how far you&amp;#x27;ve &amp;quot;grind&amp;quot;-ed to mastery. Instead of &amp;quot;grind&amp;quot;-ing an arcade game at 100 yen per round I could actually use my money on other things that bring more pleasure.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>phaseshifter</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m surprised you have that takeaway for NFC since you have played some rhythm games at least. For the most part I&amp;#x27;d say on most rhythm games I&amp;#x27;ve played (IIDX, SDVX, Groove Coaster) it&amp;#x27;s pretty much storing your song scores so you can see what you&amp;#x27;ve played before and you can go to another arcade and have the same data there too. I feel it&amp;#x27;s less of a grinding thing and more of a player convenience there.&lt;p&gt;An interesting thing is that you don&amp;#x27;t have to buy their NFC card either, most of the Konami cabs (e-amusement) can accept a Suica&amp;#x2F;any IC transit card (a side effect of their card systems both using FeliCa).</text></comment>