As I was reading your post, Rob, I thought about whether the arcades are really DEAD, or just morphed. I could argue that arcades are still going strong in the form of GameWorks and so on, but that's a weaker argument in my view than saying that the role played by arcades in pushing the industry forward has been subsumed by the big gaming expos (E3 in particular). That's where a lot of the really futuristic, balls to the wall technology happens, eventually making its way into consoles and PCs. The fact that E3 and the like get so much attention via blogs and all manner of multimedia help as well, of course. But, just like in the arcades, these big conventions are places where avid gamers, developers, enthusiasts, media, and so on get their hands on new tech--it's just that the prototyping stage is much more efficient since there isn't the need to manufacture thousands of coin-op machines.

It might be a stretch here...But bear with me a moment. Could we say that *all* arcade machines (besides redemption machines, obviously) are really just prototypes? In the sense that they were prototypes of games running on hardware that hadn't yet achieved the economies of scale necessary to take them to the public in the form of console and/or PC games? I know it's a bit wacky, but do you get what I'm trying to say here?