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[petran79]

Large scale "attraction" arcades, with all the deluxe cabinets and kids party rooms, and big city arcades, with their competitive scenes, lasted into the '00s, but regular suburban arcades absolutely fell off a cliff around '96/'97.

I remember such a small arcade that was near my school,around that time. It was there you'd be able to discover some obscure titles.
Eg the one mentioned had one cab of Night Slashers. There was no chance I'd discover that amazing beat-em-up in large malls. It took a lot of search to find that game on MAME years later. Felt like Darkstalkers somehow in theme and dark mood.
It also had Snk Double Dragon and a Sega Mega Play cab (sonic 2 and shinobi 3)

 

[jstripes]

I remember such a small arcade that was near my school,around that time. It was there you'd be able to discover some obscure titles.
Eg the one mentioned had one cab of Night Slashers. There was no chance I'd discover that amazing beat-em-up in large malls. It took a lot of search to find that game on MAME years later. Felt like Darkstalkers somehow in theme and dark mood.
It also had Snk Double Dragon and a Sega Mega Play cab (sonic 2 and shinobi 3)

I'm not saying small suburban arcades simply vanished, for some operators it was a labour of love, but the vast majority of them withered away and disappeared.

From my observations working at that store, while Street Fighter II X on 3DO got the coffin ready, the home port of Tekken on PS1 was the first legit nail in the coffin. For most people it was indistinguishable from the arcade.

 

[Tizoc]

Feel free to correct me on this-
BTW, OP, there was no 'strategy'; back then you just released a game and hoped that it would sell or do well enough for you and if it was a hit, build off that.
90s Capcom was a little more generous in that they'd allow for their games' to have at least a second game made for them should the first do well enough.
SFA1 is best seen as a prototype for example, with SFA2 being them cleaning up their act and releasing a better product.
One thing I will say about SFA2 is that Cammy VERY likely was intended to be in the game but they couldn't get her ready in time, hence why she appears in XvSF and in SFA2 Gold.

Hell want something that may prove my first point? The fact that SFA3's primary plot has Cammy as a focus. You think they planned that ish? It very likely came around as they went on to work on it eventually.

 

[Syril]

I'm not saying small suburban arcades simply vanished, for some operators it was a labour of love, but the vast majority of them withered away and disappeared.

From my observations working at that store, while Street Fighter II X on 3DO got the coffin ready, the home port of Tekken on PS1 was the first legit nail in the coffin. For most people it was indistinguishable from the arcade.

That's because the arcade hardware Tekken ran on, Namco System 11, was actually based on the PS1 itself.

 

[petran79]

In my country the state wiped out any small arcades with a law that equated them with gambling. They were forced to shut down and never recovered. After the law was revoked few years later, only large malls managed to re-emerge.

Large scale "attraction" arcades, with all the deluxe cabinets and kids party rooms, and big city arcades, with their competitive scenes, lasted into the '00s, but regular suburban arcades absolutely fell off a cliff around '96/'97.

That's because the arcade hardware Tekken ran on, Namco System 11, was actually based on the PS1 itself.

Older generations regarded home video games as secondary. Arcades were where the fun was at. If you had consoles like an Atari or NES that is. Even when 32-bit consoles and computers were released, I preferred to visit arcades. Not due to the technology, I just liked the atmosphere and games.
But if you were at elementary school and got a PS1 or N64, there was no urge to visit arcades. Equal to getting a Neo Geo in the early 90s.
Though net cafes substituted arcades for social gaming. I was at a net cafe and everyone was playing mobas and cs. Also Fifa on PS4. Just for fun I brought my pad and downloaded and played GG Xrd from my Steam account. I was the only one...

 

[jstripes]

Older generations regarded home video games as secondary. Arcades were where the fun was at. If you had consoles like an Atari or NES that is. Even when 32-bit consoles and computers were released, I preferred to visit arcades. Not due to the technology, I just liked the atmosphere and games.
But if you were at elementary school and got a PS1 or N64, there was no urge to visit arcades. Equal to getting a Neo Geo in the early 90s.
Though net cafes substituted arcades for social gaming. I was at a net cafe and everyone was playing mobas and cs. Also Fifa on PS4. Just for fun I brought my pad and downloaded and played GG Xrd from my Steam account. I was the only one...

I dunno. I was a teen in the '90s, and for my crowd, arcades were the secondary place. It's where you'd go to play the powerful and exotic games. Of course, a fighting scene developed around it, but that was genre-specific. At home you could play the games for hours and hours without having to worry about having quarters, trade game with friends, etc.

In the city here, some independent gaming stores have taken over the social role of the arcade. They have rooms set up with a bunch of monitors to host gaming tournaments and stuff. Places like that are why SFV didn't have an arcade release.