arcade video games

[Richard]

I have 3 question about arcade video games, what is the average you make? Is 50percent commission good? Or is video arcade a waste of time and money?

Thanks in advance.

[musser]

Videos are DOA

[mjacks]

Videos are awesome if you want to spend a lot of money and make very little in return.  Only video that could possibly do anything are sit down drivers and the location has be to really good.

[LandJGroup]

Videos are awesome if you want to spend a lot of money and make very little in return. Only video that could possibly do anything are sit down drivers and the location has be to really good.

How do golden tees do? The reason I ask is because I've got a golden tee complete in my bar that just collects dust. Thought about moving it somewhere to make some money.

[Billnuts]

How do golden tees do? The reason I ask is because I've got a golden tee complete in my bar that just collects dust. Thought about moving it somewhere to make some money.

 

Yes you can make money with it!

 

Sell it on craigslist... to someone who has a mancave

 

The $600.00 you sell it for is about 4 years income net... from any location you put it on.

[mainor5251]

This is one time I'm gonna take the veterans advice.

[LandJGroup]

Yes you can make money with it!

Sell it on craigslist... to someone who has a mancave

The $600.00 you sell it for is about 4 years income net... from any location you put it on.

Going to put the gt in my pool house. I will make more money betting my drunk friends next summer then 600 bones. Guess I bought it for too much. Lol

[mjacks]

Bill is dead on. I bought 2 of them a few years ago, made a few hundred on the over a year and a half and then sold them for less than half of what I paid. My distributor tells me that sales have dropped like a rock over the last few years.

[mainor5251]

Hows the multicades doing mjacks?

[ronsidney]

the iphone and ipod touch etc has killed sales on just about all types of entertainment vending.. I say its all about location.. I used to be able to drop games anywhere and they would make something but now its a crap shoot..

 

say location 1 is a pizza joint, the same amount of customers a day etc but location 2 has free wifi,, the 2nd location will do 30% less than the second with any thing(except bulk which will remain the same 20-30 bucks).. Is it the ipod touch?? data plans on iphone not being unlimited? candy crush? whatever i dont know completly.

 

I sell most of the multicades i build for mancaves.. just started wrapping fridges and jukeboxes for this market also(just selling decals that is)..

 

i still put out multicades,mainly because i can for cheap cause i build them and the numbers meet up better on some slower locations they might not for somebody who doesn't build them..but i do have a dairy queen that has made 150 plus every month it has been there for going on 8 months now,and most every pizza hut or pizza location they still hover in the 100 dollar range, but some china buffets etc they wont do 50 where the crane does 400..

 

I also paid a laundromat owner a extra 5% if he would do away with his free wifi and it boosted sales in last 3 months(that was my test to see effect but it was slow mat anyway)..he didnt bite on the 5% as much as he did on some BS story i told him about people doing illegal stuff on free wifi and the owner of the IP addy getting into trouble etc.. I had heard about that one time where people where driving around neighborhoods using free wifi without passwords etc and watching pedophilia and got homeowners in trouble,dont know if it was true story so thats why i said BS story..sounded legit and scared him enough anyway.

 

i got some racks im working on to upgrade some locations and "customize graphics to locations" (to ward off the evil service vending from pitching so hard) with racks that have multicade built in middle slot, then im gonna drill holes in bottom plates of bulk also so i can funnel all cash down to one collection bucket in bottom,may add changer also and have it refill itself with coins dropping from above, working on grid plate where all nickels,dimes etc would fall through(picture a connect 4 game board slanted on side and only quarters where too big for holes) and only allow quarters to make it too hopper.. Im just so slammed right now for some reason i cant get it finished!!  

[mjacks]

Hows the multicades doing mjacks?

 

They consistently make a couple handfuls of quarters every month.  Not going to get rich off them but I didn't get them expecting to break the bank.  They are good looking space fillers that the managers and owners appreciate playing every once in a while.  Happy managers and owners gives me job security so they are worth it.  Not like the games are going to get old and go out of style.

[jaffery]

50/50 is a good commission

[FrCorey]

^{I used to operator video games in the 70's. arcades are not so popular now.}

^{I would pay up to 5 grand for a game, then the race was on to make it pay for itself before people lost interest.}

^{and you need you learn to fix them too, at least to board level. meaning, when it breaks down, you can find out which part went bad.}

^{And, can replace it. wonderful days of tracing circuits, hunting down blown capasitors,  unsoldering chips, working in hot  places, sweating like a pig, and getting  the crap shocked out of you. i.e. you know you made a boo boo when you get a zap and smell pork burning. that's how I once learned I could short 50 volts dc down my arm with no problems. lots of good time and satisfaction too thou, working for hours and finding a bad scratch rom on your track and field game. but also now, most everything is SMT, surface mount technology, meaning you need special equipment to work on them. back when I was doing it, all you needed was basic electronics and a local radio shack. and a lot of the new games are PC based now. most run Linux. a free unix derivative.}

[dogcow]

I would consider $30 a month to be a good multicade spot. Sit down drivers can make a few bucks but heres

the trick with video games. take out the 25c acceptor and put in a dBA , make it give a lot of plays for $1 like 5 or 7 

plays for a buck, i mean who cares it doesnt cost you anything .  this will bump sales more than anything. 

 

 

i hate video games but the fact is you have to have them just like pushers or anything else, because you will

get locations that want them and just cant be convinced otherwise, or u need them to fill space. 

 

coin laundries and flea markets are probably the best in terms of games, vertical multicade (pacman,etc..) and the 

blue-elf-2 or any other csp2 emulator because it has a lot of fighting games those do really well. like i said set it like

5 or 7 plays for a buck you will do great

 

oh yeah 50/50 commish

[musser]

I'm probably going to lose a laundromat tomorrow when I tell the owner the touch Screens I pulled wont be put back in. The truth is they dont even make enough money to bother to fix. I am happy letting someone else waste their money. I might try to switch it to a couple of multicades because you can fix those cheap.

[dogcow]

I'm probably going to lose a laundromat tomorrow when I tell the owner the touch Screens I pulled wont be put back in. The truth is they dont even make enough money to bother to fix. I am happy letting someone else waste their money. I might try to switch it to a couple of multicades because you can fix those cheap.

yeah i dont know why the laundry owners love games so much they are a big waste of space. i have tried to

convert all mine to the more action oriented prize games like sports arena but some still insisit they need a multicade 

[ronsidney]

i have been putting out a bunch of multicades to ward off other crane vendors that are pitching my stops.. alot of big operators like service vending don't do video so they wont offer video for a location..

 

of course say if the location did 500 for the month and 400 of it was from the crane machine ,100 from multicade... but they dont watch me when i pull the money and count most of the time, so say their commission is 30% of crane and 50% of the multicade ( it ads up to 170 in this scenario) i will pay them but then just brag and brag about how the multicade made all that money!  say how the crane just doesnt do that much but that multicade is making a killing.. I just stress this so much as i service the stop so when they get pitched for crane they have that little voice in their head saying "the multicade is the money maker,not the crane" so they wont even think of kicking me out unless they get another multicade.. so its kinda a protection machine.

 

I always grab all the money from machines and then either go to their office to count or to a corner table and that is when they normally come  and talk to me so all the money is in one bag by then and im just counting out their commission as i pay by meter numbers..of course you have some locations that want to break it down etc but most of my stops i got them trained pretty well.

[How2vend com]

^{I used to operator video games in the 70's. arcades are not so popular now.}

^{I would pay up to 5 grand for a game, then the race was on to make it pay for itself before people lost interest.}

^{and you need you learn to fix them too, at least to board level. meaning, when it breaks down, you can find out which part went bad.}

^{And, can replace it. wonderful days of tracing circuits, hunting down blown capasitors,  unsoldering chips, working in hot  places, sweating like a pig, and getting  the crap shocked out of you. i.e. you know you made a boo boo when you get a zap and smell pork burning. that's how I once learned I could short 50 volts dc down my arm with no problems. lots of good time and satisfaction too thou, working for hours and finding a bad scratch rom on your track and field game. but also now, most everything is SMT, surface mount technology, meaning you need special equipment to work on them. back when I was doing it, all you needed was basic electronics and a local radio shack. and a lot of the new games are PC based now. most run Linux. a free unix derivative.}

 

The good ole 80's were the days. Games that could actually fill a coin bucket.

[sideburn]

Sounds like arcade isn't doing good nowadays...What about games that are not video games such as pinball, shoot a hoop, pool or games with a small footprint? Still same thing compared to arcade games?