One thing I always liked about the Arcades was that in general, companies like Sega and others would put out machines that were far ahead of the home consoles. The average person simply couldn't afford it, and therefore did not mind dropping in a few quarters for the eye candy and interactivity. Today, this would mean that arcades would need far more than ~$600 playstation 3 power, but rather, hardware in the thousands of dollars to make this worthwhile, particularly when some gaming enthusiasts already spend a huge amount on high definition gaming pc's.
