FuryForce

Excerpt from recent article on @famitsu. Minoru Ikeda, Game Center of Mikado manager discusses the Impact of COVID-19 on Arcades: ---> — I heard that Mikado, like many arcades, suffered financially during the COVID-19 pandemic but managed to recover through merchandise sales, streaming, and promotions. How are things now? Ikeda: If we consider our peak sales before the pandemic as 100%, we still haven’t fully returned to that level. However, our revenue has been steadily increasing year by year, and we’re gradually approaching pre-pandemic numbers. The good news is that weekends are as busy as ever. In fact, they’ve bounced back to the levels we saw at our peak. However, weekdays have taken a big hit. It seems that people’s lifestyles have changed—rather than stopping by an arcade after work, many now go straight home. I suspect that during the pandemic, people realized, “Wait, I can enjoy entertainment from home.” This shift in behavior has made weekday evenings particularly difficult for us. Mikado is located next to Takadanobaba Station, which is on the Yamanote Line. One challenge we’ve faced is that, due to the pandemic, the last train on the Yamanote Line now departs earlier than before. Previously, customers could play until around 11:30 PM, but now they have to leave by 10:30 PM. — So you lost an hour of business each night due to train schedule changes. Ikeda: Exactly. Before the pandemic, some players would stay right up until closing time. There were even times when someone would start playing Gradius III right before closing, and we’d be like, “Hey, that game takes at least an hour to finish!” (laughs). But now, people tend to leave earlier at night. One of our biggest challenges moving forward is figuring out how to fill those late-night gaps and make up for the lost revenue. #arcades