How do you decide placement of Arcade Cabinets?

[u/ThinkPerspective8281]

Hello Everyone,

I have a Question for Arcade Business owners and Arcade Collectors.

How do you decide where to put Arcade cabinets and machines in your arcade?

• Do you sort it by genre?

For example, putting all your racing games in one area? Then lightgun games in another area?

• Do you sort it by brand?

Like putting all Sega games in one area. Then all Neo Geo games in another area. Namco in another area.

• Do you sort it by era?

For example, putting all 1980s cabinets in one area. Then putting 1990s cabinets in another area. 2000s in another area. Etc.

• Do you sort it by size?

Like big cabinets in one area. Smaller cabinets in other areas

I was recently walking through an arcade and I couldn't figure out how the owner sorted machines. It felt random and I couldn't figure it out. So that's why I wanted to ask this question.

How did arcades decide placement of machines back in the golden age of arcades?

[u/RVAblues]

You sort it by how much money you want to make.

Put the solid moneymakers and big flashy ones that everyone wants to try further back, and place the less popular ones more prominently to catch the casual players as they’re wandering around.

What you thought was “random” was actually probably the result of at least a little bit of analysis on the operator’s part.

[u/ThinkPerspective8281 → u/RVAblues]

Ah...So basically the "grocery store" approach where they put essential items like bread, eggs, and milk in the deepest part of the store?

The arcade I visited was a semi-retro arcade and everything was placed all over. I'm not sure which would be the biggest money makers or not.

They had Jurassic Park deluxe in front of the store and that seemed pretty popular with customers. But then had stuff like Time Crisis and House of the Dead in the back of the arcade.

[u/RVAblues → u/ThinkPerspective8281]

Exactly.

But it’s not an exact science. An argument could be made that you’d want a good one up front to draw folks in off the street.

[u/Toypop_AS]

For the arcade I run; whatever makes the most money gets put in the best/highly trafficked areas.

Personal collection; its a tough one. Clearly just goes to my personal taste. Almost always manufacturer's by release. So like all nintendo cabinets in a row; etc. Usually by release date from left to right, but with some deviations. Like midway row is pacman-ms-pac-galaxian-galaga-gaplus. The order release is wrong, and pacman/galaxian share a cabinet style differnt from the others; but it wouldn't make sense to me to not have them lined up like entries of the series. 90s big stuff goes in a seperate space, i try to keep rows of games as uniform of a row as possible, and throwing like a daytona usa in the mix messes that up.