Taito Introducing NESiCAxLive Digital Download System to Arcades

Andriasang story

At the 48th Amusement Machine Show in Chiba, Taito announced their upcoming NESiCAxLive system. Instead of cartridges, the games are delivered by digital download. It's suggested that operators can keep copies of games on a local server for quicker distribution to cabinets.

Companies on board include:
Arc System Works (BlazBlue Continuum Shift II is the first NxL title)
Atlus
SNK Playmore (Most probably KOF XIV... but what else? Let's start seeing some other franchises also.)
Gulti
G.Rev
Success (Psyvariar 3 plz)
Bouken (WHO are they?)
Moss (Raiden V, I guess)
Warashi Inc.

This sounds interesting. Could it be the next MVS? Cave is NOT on board for NxL, despite what's been said at Andriasang.

Discuss.

And so, Japanese arcade developers have taken a bold step into the year 2005.

Seriously, though, it's good to see them still find ways to support arcade gaming.

Hopefully it gives arcades the kick in the ass they need. Have any US operators tried this out in the US? I could see this being pretty useful, especially in smaller arcade setups located in movie theaters and hotels.

Look at any discussion of arcades by American people who aren't f-chans. The only time arcades were considered to have any importance was when the arcade hardware was universally superior to anything at home and every game's credit was a quarter. Neither of those conditions are ever going to come about again (and even if the former condition somehow magically did, nobody would care because nobody has any inclination to play anything at an arcade and would rather just sit at home on Live/PSN/&c.).

The future of the US arcade is as it has been for several years - Golden Tee Golf, Touchmaster X000, and a maybe a PIU machine where 6 of the panels are broken.

this literally means nothing outside of "we might not see rom dumps of these games in the future"

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Originally Posted by dog$

Look at any discussion of arcades by American people who aren't f-chans. The only time arcades were considered to have any importance was when the arcade hardware was universally superior to anything at home and every game's credit was a quarter. Neither of those conditions are ever going to come about again (and even if the former condition somehow magically did, nobody would care because nobody has any inclination to play anything at an arcade and would rather just sit at home on Live/PSN/&c.).

The future of the US arcade is as it has been for several years - Golden Tee Golf, Touchmaster X000, and a maybe a PIU machine where 6 of the panels are broken.

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I still go to Frankie's to play the newest light gun and driving games, since those really can't be replicated at home as intended. I probably only go once a quarter though, so I'm not keeping the industry afloat to be sure.

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Originally Posted by Yoshi

I still go to Frankie's to play the newest light gun and driving games, since those really can't be replicated at home as intended. I probably only go once a quarter though, so I'm not keeping the industry afloat to be sure.

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But that's more or less what he was saying. You only play at the arcade when it offers something you can't get at home, which is either a specific peripheral or (in the past) better graphics.

I mean at this point even if they did pack superior graphics, I'm not sure how much of a draw because the delta between consoles and top of the line feels smaller than in the past.

That delta is still pretty gigantic, but arcade games aren't at the high end anymore. They're not the hardware pushing advanced physics and high definition 3D. So that, as you said, leaves peripherals as the key to making people want to go to arcades. And it's been a long time since there has been a new racer as good as something like Daytona or a great light gun game as far as I can tell, so that is just going to further diminish the need to go.

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Originally Posted by Yoshi

That delta is still pretty gigantic

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I don't know if it is. Do high-end PC games look better than PS3/Xbox games? Of course. But enough to get people to go to another place to play them? No. I think the perceptible gap between high end and mid-range is shrinking with each passing generation, because the same gains in complexity yield exponentially decreasing gains in perceptible detail. Eventually (and of course we aren't there yet) you'll be able to double the power of a system and with it double the complexity (resolution, geometry, etc) and the average person won't be able to see the difference because those pixels and polygons are already so small.

There's still a lot that can be improved upon as far as graphics and physics go, but I just don't see anyone investing the time and money to make that happen in an arcade game. Stuff like fire, smoke, explosions, fluid dynamics, realtime deformation, and lighting are still pretty hokey on modern consoles. Maybe if we're still stuck with the same consoles four years from now, a high end arcade machine could draw some attention

Also, NESiCAxLive?
NESiCAxLive?
Really rolls off the toungue, doesn't it?
If they had just dumped a bucket of rocks on a keyboard, it would spit out a better name than that.