I am not into competitive gaming at all, but enjoyed this tremendously.
Many possible reasons of the success are mentioned, but the one that caught my attention is how the arcades are getting paid: gamers only pay for the number of games lost, so gamers have a major incentive in getting better and winning, and everyone progresses since they compete with each other. Sounds brilliant on one hand, but I also wonder how big a stressor it is for newcomers.
> the one that caught my attention is how the arcades are getting paid: gamers only pay for the number of games lost,
But that does kind of mirror real-world arcade play. In single-player, you play on one credit until you lose (or beat the final boss).
For PvP multi-player, they do specifically mention "winner stays on" which I think is a pretty common form of play almost anywhere? You play against another person; whoever loses goes to the back of the queue, and the next challenger pays for the credit to play. The winner plays as many games against challengers as they can until they lose, at which point they go to the back of the queue. When it's their turn to challenge, they pay for the credit for that game. In that situation, again, you're basically paying for as many games as you lose (subject to off-by-one/rounding errors?)
If the per-coin fee isn't too bad, the excitement of gaming with people in person, who can quickly become friends if not already so, can outweigh losing a lot. And it does capture the arcade experience even more. I played a bit on some cabinets when visiting Japan recently, if you play on the "cabinet network" (not always someone next to you) at least it's a 100 yen coin fee and you go either until you lose or you win 3 matches in a row.
I think 100 yen is a bit steep (US 75 cents at the moment) but I had some fun matches even though I'm used to using a controller. (Some non-Tekken fighting game cabinets actually had a controller attached, or a USB hookup to bring your own.) I spent more doing that than I have on my actual PC copy... not that hard though since it routinely goes on sale for $5 for the base game / $13 or so for the definitive version with all the DLC characters.
Many possible reasons of the success are mentioned, but the one that caught my attention is how the arcades are getting paid: gamers only pay for the number of games lost, so gamers have a major incentive in getting better and winning, and everyone progresses since they compete with each other. Sounds brilliant on one hand, but I also wonder how big a stressor it is for newcomers.