100 pc net cafè

garthv

do you think that a net cafe with 100 pc's,open 24 hours a day,7 days a wekk and available to rent for LANs would survive in Ireland(situated in Dublin City Centre)

Superman

Ir it was cheap and not run on alot of staff. like EasyInternet one in munich, where there are 400 pc's and it has a ticket machine.no visible staff at computers and some turk in a vest whos sits taking in money for toilets. he has a sign sayng "No information"

Tazzle

This doesn't exactly involve counter-strike directly now does it, I don't think it really belongs here but then again I'm not sure where is best. I presume this would be gaming oriented seeing as you posted here. Moved to games for the minute, they can sort it out again if needs be.

Cake Fiend

Not a chance, not now. Are you menthol? The market is saturated, just take a look around. You'd have to be able to offer something noone else can - and most people are just interested in cheap net access. There's no way you could viably run a big gaming cafe in the city centre and stay in the black. Hell, with places like EasyInternet infiltrating Dublin, you'd be crazy to think about opening even a basic cafe.

User45701

Net house was supposed to expand into abby st with a 100pc place but it kept getting messed up.

BlitzKrieg

are'nt the number of internet cafes around dublin on the decrease in numbers? (prob wrong) it might not be viable because the irish online gaming community is not big enough to support it from a lan perspective*, and the majority of net cafes in dublin run off the international studants etc. Which the current number seems to suit very well. a 100 would be overkill.


*thats not saying there is no irish community or not, just that you wouldnt get numbers that big coming regulary to net cafes unlike say in America or Korea.

Wow, yr MetaChloreenz are off scalar!

de_css: 100 PC M3Ga LAN? .css

MAY THE MOJO BE WITH YOU!

and also with me
Garry
LOses
MotiVation

Stephen

What the fuck are you talking about?

SouperComputer

100 sounds a bit nuts.

you never know, it might take off, but it would require a lot of R&D not to mention financing!

you might find you get a lot of customers, but its not finacially viable!

n1ck

Originally posted by psIRE
Wow, yr MetaChloreenz are off scalar!

de_css: 100 PC M3Ga LAN? .css

MAY THE MOJO BE WITH YOU!

and also with me
Garry
LOses
MotiVation

what in the name of god are you on? You seem to spout such utter crap even for the cs board your posts are utter crap.

Stephen

from his profile:

1337R th3n Th0U

:rolleyes:
:rolleyes:
:rolleyes:

Winters

100 pc's?

Just enough for a 50v50 game of Battlefield2 when it comes out in a year.

Providing your PCs can haldle all new games and the such, you dont price yourselves out of the market and have a nice uber connection that will be able to spread itself over all the computers. A 100 pc net cafe would be able to survive...

Though as long as you check your market research and book beforehand.

sceptre

Originally posted by Stephen
from his profile:

1337R th3n Th0U


:rolleyes:
:rolleyes:
:rolleyes:

Someone tell the kid that the '3' in 'th3n' should be a '4':rolleyes:

garthv

oh yeh it would definetly be a pure gaming cafè,
i was thinking of it because of the fact that there is no place in Ireland able to hold a proper full LAN,well room 101 but thats only on occasions and yes it would have cheap net access,the cheapest in dublin

j0e9o

one way to ensure surival would be to try and get and even going there like lanned lan or something that could bring in big sponsors then u would be set but if they're all good pc ppl will defo come

BLITZ_Molloy

Pipedream tbh. The only way you could run a setup like that would be like EasyEverything. They charge according to how busy the place is.

And it'd have to be a really closed system where you couldn't play games, install anything. Just browse the net. Otherwise it'd take an army of people to maintain the machines.

deathcube ^_^

a 100 pc cafe ?
dont know if gaming cafes are really on the menu at the moment

It's a nice idea and if carried out properly it would probably bring up some cashing the long run.

dedicated gaming cafe's overseas in places like sweden has really taken off

look at

http://www.infernoonline.com/

http://www.nine.se/

those cafes, to name just two, seem to have made it work for themselves.

The décor and the hardware would be the main attraction, next to price.
Keeping all the pc's in shape wouldnt be too much of a hassle as long as they were all kept with the exact same hardware in them. . .
either ghosting them or using smartcards.


.

Superman

ah, eventually most games will end up like quazar !

Cake Fiend

Originally posted by Garth_Vader
oh yeh it would definetly be a pure gaming cafè,
i was thinking of it because of the fact that there is no place in Ireland able to hold a proper full LAN,well room 101 but thats only on occasions and yes it would have cheap net access,the cheapest in dublin

ROFL

I'm not trying to be mean, but you obviously have done NO real research here. First off, I very much doubt it would be financially viable to even open a 'pure gaming' cafe, never mind run it at a profit for any length of time. The initial outlay would be tremendous what with the price of 100 high-spec PCs, a high-bandwidth and high-reliability connection, counter and maintenance staff, rent of a building with enough space for all of this in Dublin city centre.... with internet cafe business in Dublin as volatile as it is in the moment, who in their right mind would you find to invest in this?

Also, even if you somehow managed to get a cafe of some sort open, the money is not in gaming. Gamers are a fickle bunch, as soon as somewhere with better PCs / better games / better connection / better rates opens, they'll be off like a shot. Also, most gamers are students, who won't be able to afford lengthy gaming sessions, unless the rates are low. Bye-bye profit. The most profitable type of customer an internet cafe gets is the one who pops in for 10-15 minutes, buys a coffee, checks their email, browses a bit, then pays and leaves the PC free for the next punter. This is where the bulk of the money comes from, not the people who stay on the PC for hours at special rates.

And this 'cheapest net access in Dublin' - how are you going to manage that? How can you possibly compete with multinationals like EasyInternet who can afford to take losses far better than a private venture? Who have such low overheads that they could afford to charge 50c per hour in their first few weeks of business? How do you propose to charge less than they do?

I wouldn't have recommended anyone try to open an internet cafe in Dublin two or three years ago, and the situation has only gotten harder since. If you're determined to one day open an internet cafe, open it somewhere other than Dublin city centre, don't try to follow the gaming-cafe pipe dream, and make sure you know your business first.

Shakar

Agree with Sico, financially it's a no-go and there isn't enough interest in gaming in Ireland for it. Contrasting with Sweden there is way more interest in gaming over there.

monument

Originally posted by Shakar
Agree with Sico, financially it's a no-go and there isn't enough interest in gaming in Ireland for it. Contrasting with Sweden there is way more interest in gaming over there.

Well, not PC gaming anyway.

However, why would any PC gamer with always-on broadband bother going to a café? In addition, anyone one that would bother, would also bother to at least try to get BB.

The Real B-man

internet cafes have had there day most have internet access at home the only need for them is if you want to send an email on the move & for tourists.

goo

I still go to lans, but you're right, with broadband getting far cheaper and more popular, overnight lans will be way, way less popular and then maybe even stop completely, as they may not even be offered, what with the tiny crowds and all.

Whywontitwrok

I dunno. Most of the 8 guys I game with have BB and we still go out to lans, Or bring the lan to our houses. Its just being together and getting to throw the insults right there and then,and the in your face style of competition!

Maybe its just us

OfflerCrocGod

Playing on your own cannot ever compare to playing in the same room as everyone else in your game. If they ever have big LANs (if it ever gets built) for games which can take lots of ppl on a server (at LEAST 32) I would definitively be there: it would be too much fun to miss:).

BlitzKrieg

maybe if you didnt start with a 100 pcs and instead did a multi-format arcade...you know a few arcade machines (only good games, no gamble machines) a selection of ps2s, x-box's gamecubes etc hooked up to nice big tvs and maybe at first 8 high end pcs hooked up to a small selection of online servers. Promote multi-player etc.


There's a place here in cambridge trying to do this. It has only 8 pcs designed for gaming but it has a server and also has 2 X-boxes hooked up for 8-player gaming. This is half the cafe. The other half is normal check mail etc. Its also a Pub, game shop and game magazine place.


You could invest in that crappy arcade place near UGC, keep only the good arcade games and one or two pool tables, have Game set up a small stall for selling games and magazines hook up 10 or so X-boxes and PS2's (each?) allowing people to rent out games to play these on the machines, have a membership thing to promote tournaments etc, news and events. Upstairs have a selection of PCs some for simple surfing but mostly for PC games, maybe even a service for providing mods and upgrades for a small price (See Battlefield boards for the amount of people who need mods burnt onto CD.) Maybe a monthly CD magazine with news reviews and all the patches and mods?


If double as a retail as well as a play area you would get good customers, also people waiting for a time slot on one of the PS2s/Xbox's would most likely pass the time on a arcade machine.


Course its prob best to keep RPGs and such away from here at peak times. Also it would do very well being near a cinema.

Carlitos

Yeah it's a nice idea,infernoonline type cafe.But it's true that there wouldnt be enough interest for it.People wont set one up based on a small community of gamers.Need something even more lucrative.Like a giant phone center for foreigners to ring home.That seems to rake in the euro's for the cafe's here:dunno:

gamer

i think u cud make it work if u put in 40 pcs 100 is too much you wud not get the revenue to cover rent esb staff for such a large space to hold that many pcs theres already a gaming net cafe in georges st on the left it has about 30 pcs i think.the main factor here is getting a space large enough in a location where the is a large no of pedestrians passersby a netcafe down a side steet wont get much business cos nobody will know its there.to get in a good location u need to pay a high rent,,basic economics.city centre location is best place to set 1 up .

quank

What if the 100 PC café wasn't a new café? Just a LAN café?

That would be able to be real cheap, and I sure as hell know, I would bring around 10-20 of my friends to it.

Oh the karnage...

But I can't think of anywhere suitable in the city centre for a hundred PC café...



Mebbe in one of those retail type shops beside the Blanchardstown shopping centre?