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"Anyone interested in console LAN gaming?"

I expect everyone kows what a LAN gaming centre is, well its predominantly for pc's but would anyone be interested in one for consoles, if you could play online against other people using fast braodband access, on all three major consoles!

can anyone here please register their interest, and whether they would be interested.

thanks

I work for a Bank where I deal a lot with businesses (larger than this proposal. It's an interesting idea, but with costs of establishing a network, with the appropriate software and hardware would be huge. Furthermore you'd possibly have to get licensing from Sony/MS/Nintendo as all games released are for private use only.

The fact that you may only be able to run one game a time on the system means that you are limiting the appeal - and in order to make money you need to attract as wide an audience as possible.

With people being able to play online from their own homes for a modest fee, why would they travel to a location, pay money just to play in a room with x number of different people they don't know.

It may work, but it'd require a lot of investment and a high number of users to make money.

Not to mention the fact that the cost will be different depending on it's loacation, perhaps "the" most important factor when opening up a high street business.

You are of course forgetting about planning permission, public performance fees and licensing etc etc...

working out the costings i think it will cost us around £8000 to set up initially, not including electricity rent or insurance but with my calculations in terms of charges and prices, i expect our revenue to be around £216,000 based on a 50 week year and being open for 12 hours a day 6 days a week, if we open 7 days this goes up to £252,000. this is before tax, rent, electricty and wages though.

Untitled wrote:
> hopefully we could buy second hand consoles

Fair enough, that would definitely cut the setup costs.

> and games.

Ok speaking from a PS2 point of perspective here, you'll be paying full price for the games. Your talking about setting up an infrastructure that will allow potentially 50+ people to play a PS2 game online.

Considering there are no games currently on the market which allow online ability and they will be released soon, you'll end up paying full price, plus your going to have to buy all the latest releases in bulk so when the hordes turn up you wont have the problem of saying "sorry can't play that we haven't got any in stock"

> charges would be a few pounds an hour

Fair charge, would maybe think about paying that amount for a bit of a laugh.

> we would mainly only have the online games, and the most popular titles

See my comment about buying all the latest games.

> also, people would be free to bring their own games.

So what happens when for example, I've bought a copy of the latest game and say to my mates "come on lets go and play this online, it'll be a right laugh", I take my copy along but you haven't got any in stock or not enough?

> it would be expensive to set up

Damn right it'd be expensive, I'd suggest you start talking seriously to Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony as soon as possible. TV's alone are going to set you back a fortune, cabling, internet connection, electricity etc etc. Is your name Bill Gates by any chance?? :p

I'm sorry to put a downer on your idea, but I just can't see how your "couple of quid an hour" is going to even come close to covering your startup expenditure plus your normal day to day running costs.

When and if I play games online I want to be sat in a nice comfy chair or sofa with a nice big TV sat in front of me, not some 14" poxy portable. Plus a nice cold beer and easy access to the toilet! Us oldies need the loo more :) seriously, your going to have to provide one massive complex with some seriously good facilities and I just don't see how you'd be able to afford all that.

I only download CD hacks now if I've lost my CD.


Piracy is great fun until you see just how big it is, and how badly it must effect the industry as a whole.

That's my point really when you look at the longevity of PC games over Console games, one of the main reasons for the volume of sales is due to either the limited attention span of the people that play them or simply the fact that so many console games do not offer the same replay value as a lot of PC games do.

And yes - I know that there are Console games with plenty of replay value but not to the same scale as many many more PC games ( That's aimed at the moron's who will try to pick fault )

You only have to do a few quick searches on the net to find the extent of the hacking / piracy epidemic that affects PC games - you can find most games to download with enough searching and the speed that the CD cracks appear after game release is incredible. I must admit that I do have a couple of games which I have downloaded CD cracks for. Not to sell the game on but so that I can play without the hassle of loading the CD and also so that I can play the game that I bought on home or work PC when I want.

I didn't lose.

PC gaming is bigger than console gaming, just not financially so. The main reason being that more parties demand a chunk of console games sales leading to the games being 50% more expensive. The other being, as stated, piracy.

I've been involved in a number of piracy rings, and the sheer size of the hacker/piracy community is simply staggering.

Go away Ib - you lost...

Twice as many games for consoles are sold than total software sales for PC's - that's including all the business software etc.

But......

There is a culture difference I'll grant you.

Alot of console games are bought - played for a week or two and then discarded, either sold on or stuck at the back of a shelf to gather dust. Wheras - because of the type of game on PC - they tend to be played for much longer, I bought a copy of good old Duke Nukem 3D probably 7 years ago now and it is still played virtully every day over our office network - that is incredible value for money - working it out it has probably been played by three of us for getting on for 1600 hours - that's a heck of a lot of gameplay for 29.99.

PC gaming, as a culture, is far larger, and has the larger user base. The enormous PC gaming piracy market massively undercuts the PC sales figures, a problem which consoles inevitably suffer less of.

Put it this way, millions of people are online at any given time playing Starcraft. And that's just the people playing online.

Sony got a massive 600,000 people online. Whooo.