If the per-coin fee isn't too bad, the excitement of gaming with people in person, who can quickly become friends if not already so, can outweigh losing a lot.

If the per-coin fee isn't too bad, the excitement of gaming with people in person, who can quickly become friends if not already so, can outweigh losing a lot. And it does capture the arcade experience even more. I played a bit on some cabinets when visiting Japan recently, if you play on the "cabinet network" (not always someone next to you) at least it's a 100 yen coin fee and you go either until you lose or you win 3 matches in a row. I think 100 yen is a bit steep (US 75 cents at the moment) but I had some fun matches even though I'm used to using a controller. (Some non-Tekken fighting game cabinets actually had a controller attached, or a USB hookup to bring your own.) I spent more doing that than I have on my actual PC copy... not that hard though since it routinely goes on sale for $5 for the base game / $13 or so for the definitive version with all the DLC characters.