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Massive Multiplayer Gaming Warehouses On The Way
hephaist0s writes "A company called Holo-Dek Gaming has opened a gaming center in New Hampshire where $5/hour buys gamers a 73-inch high definition projection screen and a networked Alienware PC or or Xbox. More impressive, though, are the prototypes for their 180-degree gaming theater... and their game sphere. Yes, sphere. This is just a pilot program--the Baltimore facility planned for 2005 would have 300 networked gaming stations. Story and pictures here, company website here."
I wonder what the return would be at $5 an hour for such hardware. Surely they'd go bankrupt.
I don't know about you, but when I want a LAN party with my friends but don't actually want to have to coordinate and set up a LAN party, I go to "cyberstores", where you pay maybe $3/hour for a pretty decent computer all hooked up and ready to play games.
Well, hell- if you can get an Alienware all LANned up (don't even get me started on the crazy screens) for only $5/hour, these little LAN businesses will surely die.
Not that I don't support these warehouses, where I will surely blow hundreds of dollars.
- dshaw
If you've ever looked at a clock while gaming, you'd see that the hands move much faster. 1 hour goes by in a snap. More importantly, it's more expensive than a movie, and movies are designed for the time period, pack more into them, and are generally more interesting.
I have a feeling that the type of person who would do this aready owns an alienware and a hdtv...
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
If you look at the article, it shows that the "73 inch screens" are nothing more than Alienware computers hooked up to a projector, and with the user sitting about 3 feet from the wall. I don't know what could be inside the "game spheres", but the 180 game screen looks very cool. Plus, realistically, you see a lot of things through your peripheral vision; your actual center field of vision is very small (if I remember correctly, roughly 5-6 cm in diameter). I really like this idea. It reminds me of the story that was on Slashdot a while ago, about having video game tournaments at movie theaters.
How much you want to bet the Citizen's Decency Brigade will be howling to shut these down, or at the very least to require a minimum age of 18 for admittance?
Lost: Sig, white with black letters. No collar. Reward if found!
Is Fahrenheit 451 going to come true? Are we going to enter a society where every wall is a tele-screen, and we're constantly watching TV/playing games/etc?
What happened to normal life? Does that not exist anymore?
Arcades are still VERY big in other countries besides the US. In London there are tons of 4 and 5 story arcades, each with a bar at either the bottom or middle.
In other countries they focused on the adult crowd, for some reason America missed the boat on that...
This sig is the express property of someone.
$5000 / 73" projection TV (price based on a 70" Wega projection TV on pricegrabber.com)
$1800 / Alienware Aurora PC (middle of the road configuration from their web page)
300 * (5000 + 1800) = $2,040,000. Now even if they managed to get a huge bulk rate discount for those setups it would still be horrendously expensive. Let's be gracious and give them a 50% discount, though. So, about a cool $1M to equip the place. $1,000,000 / $5 per hour = 200,000 hrs. Divide that by 300 and you get approximately 667 hrs / machine to pay off the hardware. Figuring there's about 180 business hrs in a month (5hr per weekday and 10hrs per weekend for 30 days) means that every single one of those stations has to run continuously for about 15 weeks to pay off the hardware.
Now factor in broadband for 300 stations, rent, insurance, wages, benefits, advertising, security, etc... those things can easily rack up another $1m annually. So now all 300 machines need to run continually for 30 weeks, or 7.5 months, to cover the cost of the business.
Now the never ending sink-hole that is new game acquisitions. $50/title * 300 means it will cost them close to $15,000.00 for every game they have installed. Lets say the publishers give them a break of $35 / box. that's still $10,5000 / title. What's an average loadout for a LAN box? Four titles? Five? Let's say five. That's $52,500 for the software Figure new titles come out quarterly, but not new ones. Maybe 10 new titles a year? So, $105,000. In machine hours that's another 70 per machine, or another two business weeks. That brings the / machine total to roughly 32 weeks.
8 months of 35 hr weeks, for every machine in the place is a huge huge number.
100% utilization of that facility for 2/3rds of the year is extremely agressive.
So what, right? If they manage it then they have the cost of the hardware covered and the rest is pure sweet profit. Nope. After a year a ton of revolving costs will come in to play:
* Those projectors don't last forever. The bulbs aren't exactly cheap, either.
* Some of that hardware is going to break beyond repair and have to be replaced entirely.
* People expect a LAN center to offer them the current bleeding edge hardware...something better than what they have at home. Machines will have to be upgraded/replaced at a very fast clip.
None of this even takes in to account the R&D and manufacturing costs for those spheres.
And they'd be wrong. I have one of these pads, and they're far better than the arcade.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
First off, there's this thing called deprecation you get to write against your profits. If they're leasing, the picture is even better - most of the wear items are deductions and that drops the effective cost by a large margin. Leasing would be pretty perfect for an arrangment like this, as the machines can be maintained or replaced on a regular planned schedule.
A place like this is going to run 24h or 18h/day, not 8h/day. Unless my sleeping habits do not extrapolate, that is - I suspect there are a lot of semi-nocturnal technical people out there.
$5/h might just be an introductory rate - if they move that up even a small amount, say $7.50/h - this has dramatic impacts on the bottom line if the utilization rates are high. $5 or even $8/h is a bargain - it costs time to maintain a state of the art system, and it costs real money too. Not everyone has the time (or money) to do this.
Another consideration a lot of people here haven't mentioned is the fact it gives everyone an even playing field. Either a lot of people here don't lan and don't know WTF they are talking about - or maybe everyone has money, I don't know - but there is nothing that sucks worse at a LAN than when somebody has inferior hardware, or the bare minimum hardware, and is getting their ass fragged because of it. This gives a top of the line reference platform to go have some fun with.
This hasn't factored in concessions - likely huge, movie theatres operate at a near loss and make it up on popcorn, for example. A place like this could make a fortune with a liscenced area selling alcohol, pizza, whatever - no mess, no fuss.
I think these guys are going to make a killing.
..don't panic
Maybe he's one of those fortunate 10% of men who can have an orgasm from a lap dance at a strip club. Most guys will just end up handing over 20 after 20 and end up jerking off later at home.
Also, I wouldn't count on pussy in your face/lap at a titty bar. Last time I checked around here, the places that were all nude weren't allowed to serve alcohol. To put it in geeky terminology, the law is "all nude XOR alcohol". Yeah, I don't get any either.
My other first post is car post.
I own a game center, TheQwerty.com. Whenever I see a high end game center go up (alien ware computers, VIP rooms, fancy expensive tech..) they usually go out of business in a few months to a year. These people don't realize that this isn't a technology business, it's a *social* business. Most people don't goto game centers because of the technology, they go because they can hang out with friends and play games with like minded people.
These are also low profit businesses, so buying big expensive items will only hurt things more.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl