Arcade games for adults have become quite popular in recent years. Always a staple in the past at bars and pubs, entertainment games for adults as a popular pastime for an evening night out has not waned in popularity. If anything, this continues to be popular, especially if they are set up with contactless payments, since people have a clear preference for patronizing establishments that have employed contactless technology due to health and safety concerns over covid-19.
To begin with, what makes these arcade games popular?
A major psychological aspect is tapping into your inner child. Playing around with something that reminds you of your childhood, even if it’s a different game, and spending time with something that is simple to play and uncomplicated is a good way to relax after a long day’s work. Obviously playing arcade games can improve your coordination and in fact, research has shown that surgeons who played several hours of arcade games a week, actually committed fewer errors during surgery then they’re nonplaying counterparts! So, you have good clean relaxing fun that only costs some small change.
What are the leading game types?
- Pool and billiards
- Darts
- Foosball
- Pac-Man
- Air Hockey
- Shuffleboard
- Skeeball
- Pinball
- Beer Pong
- Bingo
- Music box and karaoke
- Klask
- Big Buck Hunter
- Buzztime Tablets
- Hook and Ring Toss
Introducing: Eatertainment
A new term has recently been coined to portray the shift in adult consumer nightlife entertainment patterns. It’s called Eatertainment. Eatertainment is defined as a guest experience that involves food and/or beverage dining before, after, or during other activities.
This is an evolution of a venue that was comprised of entertainment machines as an additional money maker rather than part of an integrated concept. Examples include:
- A bowling venue with seating for food & beverage
- A music venue that sells drinks during a show
- A bar with life-sized games
- A movie theater that lets guests eat a meal as they watch their film
A new study has found that consumer nightlife preferences in America are shifting from crowded venues with loud music to places that tend to be more intimate and less crowded. Undoubtedly COVID-19 has had an effect on this trend but also lifestyles and younger generations have different tastes than the older ones.
The research speaks for itself: 64% will leave a bar or nightclub if they feel it’s too crowded. a long line will drive away 50 poor percent even before they enter. If waiting times are too long for getting a drink, nearly 40% will leave for a different venue.
Today, guests want to patronize venues that offer food and drinks, and sufficient entertainment to keep them in place. 21% will spend more at an ‘eatertainment’ venue than at a traditional bar or pub and nearly 30% prefer going to a bar with activities and entertainment.
When you break down the reasoning, it becomes clearer why this trend is growing. In a world that is more and more singular, people are looking for opportunities to meet with people and have fun. 62% will choose an ‘eatertainment’ venue for a night out with friends and 43% will prefer it for birthdays.
Cash and coins are at a disadvantage
A recent workshop at the Euromat summit in Brussels had some chilling conclusions for the gaming machine industry. The growth of contactless payments at bars and pubs which has been extremely accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic is leading to major losses on the entertainment machines that only take coins and cash. The shift to Cashless payments means that people no longer have coins and petty cash in their pockets to play the machines. On the other hand, machines that could accept contactless payments are seeing a boom in the revenue they are generating since players can keep playing and are not dependent on the coinage left in their pocket.
Tapping in to the revenues
With cashless payments becoming the norm, even for small sum transactions, entertainment machine operators are faced with a dilemma; scrap the old machines and invest in new ones? Or continue to generate as much as possible from the existing machines and set up.
Luckily there is another option – retrofitting existing Pulse machines to become advanced pulse machines. OTI, one of the world’s leaders in contactless payment solutions has the exact kind of hardware and software that can be retrofitted to existing entertainment machines, turning them into smart pulse machines that can except both coin cash and all the contactless methods of payment including tap-and-go, credit cards, debit cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, etc.
OTI’s solutions are field-proven, cost effective, and easy to implement. Sometimes adapting to the future is just a question of tapping into the right partners!
