Downloadable Arcade-Style games

So I think everyone at least knows how arcade games worked. You put money in to play, play till you die, rinse, repeat. Well, given online and digital distribution and microtransactions and so on have become a thing, why couldn't we adopt that style for home console gaming? At least for some? I mean, the game itself should be free, or at least relatively cheap, and the extra lives should always be at the price level of the original arcade machines, like a quarter or something.

Anyway. Idea. Discuss.

EDIT: Wait. Did I already make a thread like this? I have a Deja Vu feeling. Hmm.

edited 16th Oct '13 4:42:00 PM by unnoun

I don't think modern FTP games can be effectively compared to old Arcade games. For one, it's perfectly possible to "1 Credit Complete" an arcade game with enough skill and practice, where as with most of these other games, on a long enough playthrough, a vanilla player avatar or interface sans purchases will bog you down no matter how skilled you are.

I recognize that modern FTP isn't similar to the old-school style. I was just wondering why the modern technology hasn't resulted in a revolution in said old-school style.

It has. Compare how easy it is to make an old-school arcade game today to how hard it was back then when only companies on the relative scale of today's EA could bring them out.

But I haven't seen many Arcade Style Games, where you only needed to pay for deaths, and/or where payment options were for small amounts.

Ah, you mean arcade-style payment model rather than arcade style gameplay. Well, there are a lot of Facebook games that make the player straight up pay for lives unless they do well.

But not many for consoles, and the payment amounts are normally like a dollar I think.

The Arcade games are normally thought of as "hardcore" because of how difficult they are to master, and how punishing the difficulty got at times. Slowly ramping up and up. And countless kids would spend an entire day and just lose all their quarters, which made it a somewhat profitable venture.

And I'm just wondering why that hasn't been done so much with modern games given the avenues provided.

Smartphone games do do that to an extent. Optionally, at least. I quite liked Nimble Quest for that.

edited 20th Oct '13 5:07:41 PM by Schitzo

Nowadays it's a lot harder to spend all one's cash on a single game even in physical arcades (yes, they are still alive and kicking in some places) because there are simply so many games to spend on and people have so much more cash to spend.

There's also the fact that the game publishers and developers now want a larger cut whereas with older arcade games most of the profits would go to the operator of the machines.

edited 20th Oct '13 5:12:23 PM by Recon5