Popularity with customers, including foreign tourists, leads to chain hitting crane game target months ahead of schedule.

Up through the early ‘90s, it was pretty normal for convenience stores in America to have an arcade video game cabinet or two in the corner for customers to drop a few quarters into. Here in Japan, though, despite, or perhaps because of, the rich arcade culture, arcade games have never had a presence at major convenience store chains.

However, these days you’re more and more likely to see a different form of coin-operated entertainment at one chain: crane games. Back in 2022, the manager of a branch of Lawson, one of Japan’s big-three convenience store chains, approached the head office to discuss the idea that customers might be interested in not only purchasing items at the store, but spending on experiences as well. This got the wheels turning to start installing crane games inside Lawson stores, chosen for being an easily accessible form of fun with an affordable price point that are popular with people across a wide variety of ages and other demographics.

▼ Crane games inside a Lawson branch

The cabinets are more compact than the full-size ones found in dedicated arcades/game centers, and in some two different gameplay areas may be operated by the same controls, with the player pressing an arrow-shaped button at the start to select which prizes they’re trying for. The prizes tend to be compact too, but are generally plushies and figures of popular characters, like the ones from One Piece, Dragon Quest, and the Super Mario franchise seen above.

After starting out in Japan’s central Kiki region in 2022, Lawson has continued to expand its crane game operations. A year ago, when the machines were in 623 branches nationwide, Lawson said it wanted them in 1,000 by the end of 2025, and it’s actually hit that milestone before we’re even done with summer, as there are now 1,109 Lawson branches with in-store crane games.

With a price of 100 yen (US$0.68), Lawson isn’t getting rich off single plays. Really, though, the greater benefit to the chain is bringing in extra foot traffic. While convenience stores in Japan do try to differentiate from one another with their private-brand items, there’s a lot of overlap between chains too, often with little to no difference in prices, as manufacturers in Japan have a strong say in what retailers charge for their products. If Lawson can earn a spot in people’s minds as “the convenience store with the fun crane games,” though, at least some of the people coming in to try their luck will also happen to be thirsty or hungry, and since they’re already inside a Lawson, they may as well pick up a bottle of Pocari Sweat or a box of shape-trademarked Pocky there too, right?

Of course, Lawson wouldn’t be installing more crane games unless people were enjoying playing them, and the company says they’re particularly popular in branches in sightseeing areas and that foreign tourists have been especially enamored by them, and the chain is now looking into creating Lawson-exclusive prizes to stock them with.

There doesn’t currently appear to be any complete list of crane game-equipped branches or way to search for them through the chain’s official website, but Lawson says it plans to continue adding them to more of its stores.

Source: Narinari, Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Lawson
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