My company Christmas party was at a "Dave & Busters", which is a large facility known for its arcade machines. Each of us was given an unlimited gaming card and I was looking forward to the arcade machines, since it has been years since I've played one. Despite the fact I had an unlimited card, I was very disappointed. About half of the games were light gun shooters and the other half were racers; a minority were sports. Not one fighting game! How can someone run a large collection of arcade machines (had to be 100+) and not have even one of them for fighting fans? Back when I used to go to arcades, the main draw was the fighters, such as Street Fighter II, Mortal Kombat, Fatal Fury, Samurai Shodown, etc. Every arcade had multiple fighting games and they were typically the main attraction. I have no memories of people crowding around a racer or a shooter, but I do have several distinct memories of large crowds observing skillful players at Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat II. A skillful player at a fighting game is fun to watch.

People still make arcade machines?

can you imagine if new arcade machines allowed you to swipe a credit card for game credits?
kids would be in debt long before grad school

Here in San Francisco there was an arcade that opened in a hole-in-the-wall kind of spot that featured almost exclusively fighters and hosted online-streamed tourneys pretty regularly. I tried to get into KoF13 but just didn't want to put that much energy into it, but I did get totally decimated a few times by some very skillful players.

However, I felt the opposite about that place- don't people want to play something BESIDES a fighter? I guess it is just where you go and the demographic. Fighters could be arguably more 'hardcore gaming' than shooters, racing games etc. Anyway, that place recently closed down. It's sad, but I'm surprised they decided to give it a shot, arcades must be hard pressed to bring in thousands of dollars in quarters to pay the rent let alone profit.

Can't speak for the US, but arcade fighting games still draw decent crowds here in Japan.
In any arcade, people mostly flock to the fighting games.
Shoot-em-ups (of the bullet hell kind) are popular too, but they don't really draw crowds usually.