Yes, I see your point but each machine only needs 2 visits from a saddict pumping a few hundred each each week to make that amount. And the arcade can still be ostensibly 'dead'. It kind of mirrors the old reports from the online casino industry and anecdotes stating that 80% of profits come from just 10% of the players. Or words to that effect. If a 90% dead arcade can have a few staff, pay high street business rents and rates plus electricity costs, it shows the influence just a few big spenders can have.
I must admit I love
@ChopleyIOM 's videos but cringe when he plays those terrible 90-92% BP cabinet games at £2 a spin. It demonstrates perfectly how easily it could go wrong and somebody could spunk hundreds in one in a short space of time. Notwithstanding the graphical awfulness of those top-paying stacked symbols over-appearing....
Yes that's exactly the point I make about the £500s in the pubs here, a few folks have said in the comments on the videos, and over at Desert Island Fruits, regarding surely they're not profitable and in my videos you can often see there's no one else playing them etc.
The answer to that of course is the sheer rate of knots these things can hoover up money at, especially with the appalling RTPs they're set to, whereby 92% is about your lot at top stake, and often lower than that, especially if you dare to reduce your stake to less than £2 per go.
(There's a reason that many pubs here have three or four, or even five of fuckers, on site! They all need to be bought, maintained, and have their licence fees paid, you think they'd be there if they were losing money?)
They only need a few visitors per day (or even per week.....) to make their bank, and the pernicious way in which they constantly cycle small wins straight back into credits to be replayed means that people often play out to a bust, not realising that they're getting ground down against the shit RTP as they do so and think they've won 'nothing' when in actual fact the machine has been drip feeding its RTP to them the whole time.
Back in the day on fruit machines this wasn't allowed, so credits had to be kept separate from the bank, therefore collecting the bank when credits were exhausted, and having to put it back in as 'fresh money' at least gave pause for thought.
I think these random games in pubs/arcades would take a lot less money if people had to collect out £20 or £40 or whatever it was from let's say £100 in, and then make a conscious decision to put it back into the machine and play it through again.
Still, effective regulation, who needs it eh? LOL.
Blatant video pimpage but I did a deep dive into some of the numbers on how low RTPs and cycling can totally fuck you as a player, it's got spreadsheets and everything
Direct timestamped link to the relevant section:
And the follow on video with more number crunching: