You do have a point. I have little trouble recognizing that micro-transactions and coin-op difficulty creep are both profit driven modifications made to games, and also that I'd be better served by the life of a hermit than a time machine to the 1980s if I wanted to escape the effects of human greed, particularly on much more important things than video games.
I think it's important too to distinguish between a micro-transaction for something like a skin or a hat that has a cosmetic effect, versus "pay to win/pay to not grind", versus "pay every 5 minutes regardless of whether you win or lose" etc. My remarks on micro-transactions and difficulty creep is less about how profitable they are, but rather how the changes feel to me.
In writing my first post, I had a thought to compromise between the old school approach and the current paradigm: what if every game loop cost 1 credit if you win, 2 credits if you lose, and 100 yen buys 2 credits? If the challenge fits into my flow state so that it's at the upper limit of my competence, I would have an explicit 50 yen incentive to win in an engaging challenge. The game devs and proprieter would still make some guaranteed income on my play time. If no one has ever posited this idea before (and I'd bet someone has, and probably tested it, and maybe it doesn't work well for them), I feel like calling it "win to save".
It could even be an interesting study - players of games often won't keep playing if they feel they can't win, so the designer would have to be careful not to nickle and dime the player by setting them up for expensive failures. On the other hand, an engaging way to keep players paying could be to set them up for challenging victories that are very quick and efficient, to get them into the next loop faster... There's a lot of dimensions to this, more than I'm willing let alone able to put into one comment.
I agree arcades are a fantastic place for rhythm and dancing games. I hope you have a great day.