There's no need to take a few blocks to a Queens arcade popular with adults looking for luxury goods like Hermès bags and Chanel wallets.
At Gatcha, a 9,000-square-foot gamer's paradise in Flushing, a single pull of a crane machine costs $50 and you can buy a $3,600 Hermes Picotin bag, a $600 Chanel purse, or a $549 Apple AirPods Max. You have a chance to take it home. According to the Wall Street Journal.
Gatcha owner Jason Leung said one lucky customer was able to get his hands on a prized handbag for just $600 after 12 tries.
In addition to their high prices, Hermès bags are notoriously difficult to purchase, as they are sold in limited quantities and are usually out of stock at boutiques.
Lien estimates that 80 percent of his “patrons are over the age of 14 and spend an average of $40 to $55.”
Inspired by similar East Asian businesses, so-called “kid-adult” arcades are booming among U.S. millennials and Gen Z, the magazine said.
According to the magazine, each U.S. state has its own special rules for regulating arcade games, but a well-known secret throughout the industry is that machine operators can often program games to make them harder to win. That's what it means.
The report says machine operators can also rig the game so that a win is awarded after a certain number of plays.
Navid Jannati owns the 1,600-square-foot Gacha Claw arcade in Las Vegas. Similar arcade names are likely a reference to Japanese gachapon machines, small toy vending machines that accept coins and spit out random prizes.
Jannati said he personally tests each arcade machine about 100 times to find that it takes four to seven plays to win. This is the exact amount that will keep the machine profitable.
“We have the most aggressive odds in Vegas,” Giannati told the Journal.
He estimates that 70% of his customers are adults.
For Las Vegas arcades, Jannati sources rare anime figures that retail for up to $80 each and average $13 wholesale. Players would have to try the $2-a-piece machine about 12 times before winning the toy, giving the arcade a profit of $11 per figurine.
Giannati told the Journal that the arcade makes between $7,000 and $10,000 a month from its 20 machines.
Carson Scheer, 25, from Detroit, who spends up to 20 hours a week at arcades, said the flashier machines were more likely to be cheated.
“When you play, it's like you have to choose your poison,” he told the Journal.
Jonathan Asensio, a 23-year-old content creator from San Antonio, said it all comes down to personal strategy.
What are his qualifications? This frequent arcade customer has won over 1,000 prizes in arcade games. That includes a pair of AirPods from a machine that costs just $11 to play.
He told the Journal that his strategies include aiming at machines with prizes scattered around, waving his claws to drop prizes into better positions, and tipping over stacks of items. .
