mossy_11 wrote:
Also, the demise of the arcades -- that's a big one.
There has been no demise. Please read this:
Seth Killian's "The Once and Future Arcade"
For those who may be unaware, Shoryuken (SRK) is a competitive fighting game based community. We have been playing arcade fighting games in tournaments since shortly after Street Fighter II came out. Back then they would communicate via Usenet to discuss strategies, trash talk, and announce tournaments. Today, arcades have much less activity than in the past, but still enough to sustain themselves financially. The ones with activity from competitive scenes (and not just fighting games, but also other genres) still see a large amount of people consistently going to play. In fact, some arcades in the U.S. were opened not too long ago, by people who are part of the SRK community (look up Denjin Arcade and ArcadeUFO). Also, arcades in Japan are still as active now as they were in the 80s/90s.
Here's another article that touches more on that:
Arcade Culture
In short, arcades are not dead, they are just less active in the west (with some exceptions) and still highly active in some parts of the world.
So if you're going to make any kind of arcade-related article, please give accurate information. :)