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Why are arcade cabinets so expensive?
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this post was submitted on 03 Jun 2024
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Yeah, the hardware in a console is mass produced, the hardware in an arcade cabinet is made in relatively small batches. Mass producing something is always a lot cheaper per unit due to economies of scale.
The hardware in an arcade cabinet is either a raspberry pi or a regular desktop PC.
In a MAME machine maybe, but the original arcade cabinets all have custom hardware.
Not all of them. In recent years, virtually all arcades have been powered by standard gaming PCs (see for example the infamous Half-Life 2 arcade). In the past, it wasn't unheard of for some arcades to have nearly identical hardware compared to home consoles. The Neo Geo arcade for example is running the exact same code as the home console (although in this case, the arcade came first). There have also been edge-cases, like the Namco System 11, which is using only slightly modified PS1 hardware (primarily in the sound department) in order to drive down costs.