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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."
possibly see everything on the screen at once? I don't know if my field of view is that wide.
This sig is intentionally blank
Didn't arcades die because you could finally play the same games with the same quality at home?
I think the makers of DDR machines would disagree with you.
I wonder what the return would be at $5 an hour for such hardware. Surely they'd go bankrupt.
Cool how much to buy a porno sphere for home use? And how do I write it off as a business expense?
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
Until I see a gaming Dyson sphere!
Bored? Visit my exciting counter page!
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?
Been done.
And don't forget to use a towel.
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
If the projector bulb lasts 1000 hours, you would need to sell 100 hours alone just to cover the bulb cost.
Southeastern Virginia REPRESENT!
Does the $5 dollar rate include some deodorant or soap kit for the unwashed masses?
Yes! I listen to NYC Speedcore and do math at 3AM. I suggest you try it too.
...NOW.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
Man, Private porn sphere title game: "Cumming from all directions."
http://www.commaecho.com
Did anyone else read that headline as "Massive Multiplayer Gaming Whorehouses On The Way"?
$5/hour just seemed wrong for that.
here
got sig?
Arcades are dead and PC Baangs (it's the korean name for those cybercafes where you can play games onLAN/online) are nowhere near as popular as arcades were back in the day.
Now I can see how these warehouses with their alienware pcs and nice screens (most of them are "only" 73 inches) would appeal to the same crowd that plays FPS and Strategy games and goes to LAN parties but that crowd is very very small compared to the overall gamer's market. Heck, the whole PC game market represents less than 20% so you can imagine the actual percentage of people who are fond of those games.
The idea just doesn't seem to have enough appeal to snowball into the next big trend. I know it doesn't appeal to me. For the cost of a handful of gaming sessions, I can buy a new $200 graphic card and play the same games on a respectable 20" monitor (ok, so I already own that) for as long as I want, in the comfort of my home.
This is not to say his isn't a valid business plan. The center can be profitable if the location is good and the marketing is done right. But that's only in the short term. Once the newness evaporates and those alienware rigs aren't so hot anymore (replacing 300 alienware rigs will cost you a cool $100,000) , I predict a steady decline into oblivion.
Alienware PC or or Xbox Santa, I want a new slashdot editor and a speelcheck for christmas :D
I own a cybercafe in colorado, and I'll tell you from first hand experience that the gaming community, although incredibly loyal and a ton of fun, cannot financially support such a behemoth.
/Don't/ cater to gamers, but instead to the joesixpacks.
300 Stations? I know there is one place in NY (??) that has something like that, and the only reason they are in business is because they
Sure, the coasts are a lot more populated and have a higher per-capita of hardcore gamers who will pay to play, but with only ~20 stations, it will take them a -long- time to break out of the red incurred by the initial investment. We've been open for 14 months now, and we're still paying off our $1200 PCs, and we're the most popular gaming center in town! We charge $3/hr for members, and $4/hr for walk-ins, and we get by with very modest paychecks. We would surely be unable to stay open if our *screens* costed $1k apeice, not to mention the $2k+ alienware boxes they have, even at $5/hr.
It's a great idea, but man. Good luck guys.
$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.
I considered modding this Famebait but decided to reply instead.
New Hampshire is actually more urban than most people think. Hell, the southeat sector of the state is more-or-less all Boston suburbs. Nashua is home to plenty of high-tech companies, including military contractors and hard-drive manufacturers. The site's slashdotted so I can't see where the place is located, but if it's in Nashua or the Seacoast area, then they'll be in a good position to attract Massachusettes gamers, especally with the I-495 corridor right there.
Of course, I couldn't be wrong, as I've been living in a -rea- rural area for the last two and a half years -- Fargo, ND. I miss the urbanized Nashua, NH.
I find it interesting that some place the line arbitrarily here, as though this is the last straw.
Enormous stores already exist where people go to piddle away tens of hours playing games. I have a good friend who spent ~2 years in south korea -- supposedly these LAN stores get regular all night attendees. Have you ever been to Best Buy? Circuit city? Enormous televisions are all that you can find.
How about the internet? Have you ever been with someone who for the first time used it, and clicked on EVERY SINGLE AD because they found it interesting? Funny how after a few hours, you literally filter them out. No matter what the ad or the exposure, any avid computer user can find the "Close" button within 3 seconds.
This didn't start even in our generation. Several generations ago "watching TV" became a viable hobby. People spend $50+ per month in order to get their hundreds of channels.
To balk at a gaming center set up for $5/hr playing and ignore movie theatres, the internet (nothing more than ads on a network protocol), cellular phones so that you can be reached at any point of the day, palm pilots, etc, etc is kind of funny.
There were many before us who bailed out long ago claiming that the world was a completely different place that they no longer comprehended. Today's youth will see this as the norm, but get upset when air travel isn't complete unless you have your own box to sit in and watch a 360 degree in-flight movie and yearn for the "good old days".
My co-workers and I have been going to a place like this for sometime here in Greensboro, NC. Digital Lifestyle Center has approx. 16-20 Alienware 64-bit gaming monsters and around 10 XBox'en.
Great place to go after work, enjoy a few Bawls, and kill your co-workers (legally).
Two sentences that have never been spoken together before.
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.
If you get in, then you can get whatever booze, smack, or blow you want to go along with your choice of "interactive partner". Natrually, nothing in the interactive room is free; the $500 is the weed-out money to keep the riff-raff from even asking.
Yeah, right.
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
Where you are, sure, but I've seen three arcades shut down within six months of opening back in Arizona. Even the youth center didn't last more than a year or two before there was howling to have it shut down for the dangers of letting kids congregate..