VR, back in the arcade days

Arcades don't just mean outdated and old-fashioned gaming experiences; they have also been the vehicle for the latest innovations in gaming technology and have a potential value of billions of dollars. The rise and fall of the arcade is a cautionary tale about the increasing complexity of technology. But critics may be wrong: VR technology will revitalize the arcade, as VR development needs to tap into the full potential of the consumer market. To understand why, we must first return to history.

Home consoles didn't beat the arcade, and video did take out the radio stars.

In the early 1980s, arcades became popular in North America, and with them came incredible profits. At the same time, home consoles also became popular and benefited along with the arcades. However, it cannot be said that the success of home consoles was responsible for the failure of the arcade. Arcades failed due to their difficulty in recovering from game crashes, something that home consoles also suffered from - this was once the case in the native North American arcade culture, whereas in Japan, arcades are still thriving.

The rise of the electronic arcade is attributed to the development of Atari, founded by Nolan Bushnell, and the subsequent release of the first coin-operated ping-pong game version on the Magnavox Odyssey, a home-operated platform that was released in August 1972, three months before coin-operated consoles. Throughout the 1970s, arcades began to expand and grow rapidly with the addition of major game manufacturers such as Taito, Midway (acquired by Bally in 1969), Namco, Nintendo, and Sega. 1977 saw a small shock to the industry, and 1978 saw a golden age of arcade development with the rapid popularity of Taito's Game Space Invaders. , arcade development entered a golden age. However, because of the North American Game Crash in 1983, the golden age of the arcade came to an end. At the end of the golden age, the number of arcades in North America reached a peak of 10,000 units. At that time there were 24,000 arcades, 400,000 street stores and 1.5 million games worldwide. Let's use McDonald's as a reference point. Currently there are only 36,000 McDonald's stores worldwide as well, so the profits from arcades during the Golden Age were unprecedented.

In 1982, arcade games peaked at $8 billion (now $19.6 billion). That same year, the pop music industry made $4 billion in profits compared to Hollywood's $3 billion.

In the 1970s and early 1980s, before new hardware became commonplace in homes, the arcade was the perfect vehicle to showcase the latest technology. Home systems were just a sampling of arcade games. In the 1970s and early 1980s, home systems also enjoyed a period of rapid growth. the Atari 2600 sold 30 million consoles, in contrast to the Nintendo 64, which sold 33 million units 20 years later. By 1982, the home console market was growing rapidly, reaching an estimated $2 billion ($4.9 billion today). There is a mutually beneficial symbiotic relationship between home consoles and arcades. People were accustomed to playing games in the comfort of their homes however they would equally play the arcade to play the latest video games. The arcade becomes a place where people meet regularly and share the same gaming pleasure. Socialization is at the heart of the arcade.

In 1983, the decline of the North American gaming industry itself, as well as the flaws of the arcade's inability to get back to normal after jamming were directly responsible for the failure of the North American arcade industry. The market had become oversaturated. However, other factors such as the global recession of the early 1980s and the stagnation of content from game manufacturers were also importantly linked.The 1983 crash continued into 1985, completely destroying the gaming industry in just two years. The crash quickly brought the golden age of the arcade to a close, and in 1983, as a result of the crash, Atari, for example, lost $500 million (about $1.2 billion today) on games produced for arcades, home consoles, and computer platforms. The direct loss to the game industry amounted to $1.5 billion ($3.6 billion today). Mattel, the world's third largest game maker, withdrew from the market at that time. For arcade operators, the collapse was equally painful. In the first year alone, 2,000 of the 10,000 arcade operations in North America announced their closure..

The onslaught finally came to an end in 1985, thanks to the North American success of Nintendo's NES home console, which quickly ignited the home console market, but there were no similar games to rekindle the arcade market. As a result, the arcade industry continued to dwindle until it no longer existed. In hindsight, a number of potential factors have been listed to explain the arcade's difficulty in recovering from the 1983 onslaught.

First, public confidence that the market would recover had been low. There was a bubble in the brand new market and rapid rise and sudden shock suffered. However, the size of the gaming industry was estimated at $88.4 billion in 2015,rising to $102.9 billion in 2017. Therefore, this shock is nothing more than a fall for an industry that has yet to develop.

Second, arcades required a huge and ongoing capital investment to counter home consoles. Each arcade was a separate game, and each cost $3,000 ($7,000 today). If an arcade owner wanted three people to be able to play Pac-Man at the same time, he would need to buy three arcades to make it happen. The arcade unit model is simple: given the price of a unit, the arcade owner knows how many people need to play the machine in order for him not to lose money. Each arcade purchase is a gamble that requires a large capital investment and a huge payback.

While the arcade was struggling, the NES home console, named by IGN in 2009 as the greatest home console of all time, was doing remarkably well, and after the NES quickly exploded onto the scene in North America, it was widely recognized that the home console had beaten the arcade. In retrospect, comparisons were made between the severely battered arcade industry and the home consoles that could play Super Mario, which was named IGN's favorite game of all time in 2005 and 2007. In contrast to North America, Japan didn't suffer the same gaming impact, and arcades continued to thrive in Japan, even though the NES was released in 1983, two years before the North American release, and still didn't stop the momentum of arcades. Because the North American gaming industry believed that home consoles were the future, it became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The Evolution of VR Hardware: From “Halo 3D” to an Immersive Future

Virtual Reality (VR) this thing, at first just a science fiction movie in the fantasy, and later turned into a “big helmet + handle” game equipment, and now, it has quietly penetrated into the industrial, medical, educational and even social fields. The evolution of hardware is the key to promote the VR experience, today we talk about the development of VR hardware, see what tricks can be played in the future of VR equipment.  

The first generation of VR: the first experience of immersion, but “halo 3D” is very serious
In the 1990s, people began to try to manufacture VR equipment, early VR headset (such as Virtual Boy) basically belongs to the category of “look at the dizzy”. The technical bottlenecks at that time were mainly:

Low resolution: the image looks like a mosaic of small squares;
Low refresh rate: when you turn your head, you can't keep up with the screen, making you dizzy;
Narrow viewing angle: you can only see the virtual world in a small window;
Single interaction: basically you can only look at it, there is no real immersion.  
Nevertheless, these devices still laid the foundation for later VR technology.

Second generation VR: high resolution + low latency, finally playable!
By the 2010s, VR hardware finally took a qualitative leap forward. devices such as the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive began to emerge, and major technological breakthroughs included:  

Binocular high-definition display: the resolution reaches 1080p or more, the picture is finally no longer “mosaic”;  
High refresh rate: more than 90Hz, so that the visual delay is greatly reduced, reducing the sense of vertigo;  
Position tracking technology: 6DoF (Six Degrees of Freedom tracking) to achieve accurate positioning of the head and hands;  
Spatial audio: allowing sound to be “immersive” and the sense of direction to be more realistic.  
This stage of VR has been able to meet the needs of the game, but the equipment is still heavy, expensive, and requires high PC performance.

The third generation of VR: wireless + lightweight, so that the experience is more free!
In recent years, the focus of VR hardware development has shifted to “wireless” and “lightweight”, representing devices such as the Meta Quest series, Pico Neo and so on. The core technological innovations include:  

Self-contained computing power: no need to connect to a PC to run VR applications;  
Wireless transmission: no longer bound by cables, experience more freedom;  
Lightweight design: more comfortable and longer wearing time;  
Hand tracking + eye tracking: more natural interaction, no need for a handle.  
In addition, AI has also begun to enter the field of VR hardware optimization, such as through machine learning to improve rendering effects, through eye tracking to reduce the burden of computation and improve performance.

Many features of VR technology cannot be packaged for use at home

In the past, the home gaming industry has proven that home consoles will opt for a universal hardware base and cater for all games to be compatible. People were hoping that virtual reality technology would make a difference. Unfortunately, it didn't, and Oculus, Valve, and Sony will all use a common virtual reality input controller, similar in appearance to the Wii controller. Big companies want to capture a huge market and maximize profits, and it's easy to achieve that goal by turning to a common hardware base and specializing in software development. In addition to a hardware base that's difficult to pack up and take home, the huge demand for event space is what makes VR technology difficult to take home. This means that the event space required for gaming will not be central to programming games. In contrast, an arcade can offer aspects that a home cannot, from a controlled physical space to the finest details.

In 2018, 73% of HMD users are still struggling to fully utilize their VR devices and enjoy the immense potential that VR technology has to offer. Imagine living your life with no or very poor interaction with the world. Instead of poor HMD devices, arcades can take full advantage of their devices to enhance the experience.HTC/Valve comes with two handheld motion controllers, and the Oculus Rift is currently using Xbox One controllers, and will be followed by Oculus touch controllers. Both of these VR controllers will make you feel like they are simply controllers rather than props in the virtual world. This reduces the one-to-one correspondence between the virtual and the real, and can lead to a worse user experience. Sensory and tactile differences break the realism of virtual reality. In the arcade, there are no props that break the virtual and the real. In addition to controllers, other extras such as motion capture devices can also be used in arcades. Any aspect that enhances the sense of virtual reality automatically provides a better experience.

The Last Barrier

Dedicated virtual reality spaces allow for an optimal user experience. The freedom to move around the space enhances the one-to-one user experience. Nothing is more like the walking experience than walking itself.

The space of an arcade can be defined by the space required for virtual games. One can design the space of the arcade according to the space required for different virtual games. Each player will be given the proper space to experience the virtual game to the maximum. And the space would always be dedicated to the virtual reality experience without having to serve as a bedroom in someone's home. Local multiplayer gaming is also no longer limited by computers or venues. The gaming space would likewise be a solution to the problem of most people staying at home.

VR Arcades Have Been Realized, and Play a Crucial Role

There is a lot of hype about VR technology. However, VR technology will not see the same steady growth as most hardware introduced to the market; VR technology is currently in the mid-stage of development, with prices of VR devices well under control and the technology constantly being innovated. VR arcades have also enabled users to experience better virtual reality technology at a cheaper price.