Why were arcade machines much more powerful than home video game consoles and personal computers back in the day?
In: Technology
Arcade machines are expensive, on average $3,000-$5000 in the 80s and 90s. Note that this is the cost back then so accounting inflation, it’s worth much more in today’s dollars.
This would give you a top of the line personal computer at the time. Consoles were still in the hundreds of dollars. Given that the arcade was designed to run a single game, the hardware could be optimized to run the one game better than if the hardware was designed to run many games like in a personal computer.
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