Sega Leaving The Arcade Business Is The End Of An Era
It's rare in gaming that you can say anything is truly the 'end of an era'. Eras, by definition, are long stretches of time. Gaming, relatively speaking, is a fairly young medium. Kojima leaving Konami was the end of an era, but after that I'm struggling. We call it the 'end of an era' when a cult Xbox 360 finally closes its servers, but that's not really an era so much as it is a seven-year stretch. Today though, Sega is leaving the arcade business after over 50 years of trading. Make no mistake: this is the end of an era.
The writing has been on the wall for the arcades for a long time. As a business that trades not only on heavy foot traffic, but also requires a lot of strangers touching the same buttons, terminals, and coin slots one after the other, the pandemic was devastating for arcades. Sega, despite being veterans of five decades, seems pragmatic about the decline, and is either unsure they will bounce back or would rather focus its attention on the future instead of nostalgia. The iconic Ikebukuro Gigo arcade (that's the red one I guarantee you will feature in every single news story about this topic) closed last September after 28 years of trading. Fans lined the street to say goodbye. At first, a smaller location opened just across the street, but with Sega getting out of dodge, that reprieve was very short-lived.
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It's not just Sega though. The Seattle arcade featured in The Last of Us Part 2 also closed its doors recently. It too was struck down by the pandemic and a general declining interest in arcades, especially in the US, where they've always been a smaller, more tourist driven business than they are in Japan.
On Sega's part, the arcades will at least
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