Claw machines are slot machines.
Yeah in general the claws are designed to not shut tightly enough or to let go by random chance. With the odds against the player of course. Some are more/less obvious than others. I've seen some where the claw begins to shut way too early, and is already letting go on the way up. Some even have the 'slot machine' built into the claw, when you play this light on the claw goes left and right and settles on a 'modifier' like increased grip strength or whatever.
Bringing up crane machines, I kinda just wanted to rant a little about the Japanese ones. They offer remote play versions nowadays and it's common for streamers to play them. Though usually they are VTubers promoting their own goods...
I've watched some such streams and there's some new setup for prizes not suitable for the claw. Basically you try to pick up ping pong balls instead, and drop them over a bunch of ball slots with one of the slots being the winning prize. It is still luck based, but in a way your chances of winning should increase as the slots fill up.
Though sometimes the world just hates you.
There's also some setups where the claw shutting strength isn't the only deciding factor, since you don't have to lift the prize all the way across over a slot. Sometimes it is balanced on two poles and you just have to dislodge it, or on some kinda ramp and you gotta slide it off, so sometimes the strategy is to completely punch/shove it with the claw. In a way you can make 'progress' on these as well, since even if you fail to grab hold of it you might have knocked it around and moved it a little.
Though it's also possible to make the thing even harder to get. But in some such setups I've seen some wins achieved by dropping the claw offset from the prize, with the intention of pushing the prize through with the open claw.
Also in Japan, even for the remote ones - they eventually take pity on you if you failed too many times. And will adjust the game so that you have a high chance of winning. So it's kinda interesting that on top of that - they do have some design elements that should increase your odds of winning the more you play rather than it being a total crapshoot.
Japanese claw machines though are typically of a much better quality, even if there's still a huge luck element. I was there in January and they still operate a lot of them, with whole floors of the arcade dedicated to claw machines. The prizes themselves typically are exclusive goods(though you eventually see them being sold off the shelf and stuff) rather than random junk.
Anyway I don't disagree that they are slot machines, but the Japanese ones intrigue me.
