> People complain about microtransactions today and don't even think to consider that the original microtransaction was the arcade machine

I couldn't disagree more. The arcade machine did not feel like a microtransaction at the time. We were glad to spend the coins on them. Now, even with presumably much more funds than when we were kids, the microtransactions feels very exploitative!

If people "dont even think to consider" then that means there isn't much of a similarity