I would reccomend gourmet coffees at any gaming cafe. If you invest in a good esspreso/capuchino machine (Lavaza, etc), you'll make a killing. Gaming cafes are not popular in the USA as compared to Europe or Asia, so you'll have to find a way to get people to come in (and stay in). Coffee is the answer Good luck on your business.
Great choice on the headphones. Make sure the seating is comfortable. The gaming center down here has crappiest machines ever but the seats are cheapo leather ones and the make people want to stay and play. If you hold CS tournies for free lan time im in I could get probably 10-15 people their minimum for csing if stakes are involved (like an hour free lantime). Please set up the placement wisely everyone hates the a$$'s that look over your shoulder and kill you -_-. I think alternating angled placement is the best but might be costly, or card board cutouts like they use in high school national testing. Cheap and effective. Man i wish i had the funds for a lan cafe.... Those cpu's are very good gaming performance, at least from wht i have experienced. Maybe 9600XT's would suffice and save you some cash. Kinda depends on what your hosting i geuss. 9600XT ran perfectly fine on my comp, but i do have 1G of ram.
Yea, I'm trying to find some good esspreso/capuchino/frapuchino machines for the cafe. We plan on hosting tournaments for numerous games on a regular basis. We will also have lock-in's every Friday and Saturday (one time fee to stay from 10:00pm to 7:00am). I'll take a look at the 9600XT's... We will have all the popular games and here are a couple to name: CS, UT2004, FarCry, Call of Duty, Battlefield 1942 (with all expansions), Halo, Max Payne 2, Medal of Honor (with all expansions), Need for Speed Underground, Quake 3, Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon (with expansions), Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six (with all expansions), Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Pandora's Tomorrow, WarCraft 3 (with all expansions), EverQuest (with all expansions), etc etc etc .... the list just goes on and on. Today I plan on getting together what I'm going to be using for our network and figure out which chairs. We plan on building our own desks which will block other people from looking at your screen but I've been trying to draw up a good solution for an angle placement. Our cafe will have a Nx T1 (3mbps down/3mbps up)...
I know your getting 30 gaming PC's but to be honest Far Cry and UT 2004 really need 1Gb of RAM for optimal performance! I would really reccomend you getting 1GB for them straight off the shot... seen as your buying in bulk you'll get discount anyways... and with the newer games coming out 1Gb of RAM is really going to become the high-end standard... btw have you looked into how much its going to cost you for licenses? I love your idea of a gaming cafe! I've never seen one before... then again, with my system, I dont really need one... lol but I dont want you opening this store to have Ubisoft or Atari shutting you down due to the fact your serving the games off a server and havn't looked into paying for licences per PC using the games, also make sure you get more Windows licenses than you need as SO many people get busted bad ass lately with MS checking up on small companies and stuff for not having enough licenses... may I suggest having a couple of Linux boxes too? with nVidia cards for UT 2004? it'll be good to premote Linux especially for uber geeks! lol
Hey Nugz, Best of luck on gaming cafe. If you're going to be serving coffee then make sure those computers are out of the way just in case some fool decides to spill some coffee. I would hate for something like that to happen. I do have a question: Are you going to have Internet access as well?
xafier - Thanks for the suggestion on 1GB of ram. Our is going to be completely legit and every computer will have its own Windows XP Pro license, every single game will be licensed for each computer, all software for each computer will be licensed (Norton Ghost, virus scanner, cafe software, etc). There will not be one thing on our computers that aren't properly licensed. For example, Valve doesn't allow you to just go out and buy 30 copies of their games to load on the computers -- you must join their internet cafe Steam program and pay 10 a month per computer that will be running the games but that 10 a month per PC includes all their current games and future games (HL2, etc) without paying more. JeyNyce - Yea, we won't be allowing food or drinks near computers just incase. We will have internet access and it will be a NxT1 line (3mbps down/3mbps up). EDIT - I forgot to clarify this. The reason why we will have a file server dishing out the game images and mounting them is so little kids don't come asking for a copy of FarCry so they can play the game and then them scratch it, loose it, steal it, etc. However, we will still have a copy for each computer in the building incase of inspection.
there are not so many gaming cafes in Pakistan only few in some big cities but its sure s a good idea to build a gamecafe instead of a net cafe of more increasing gamers and demanding games i really like ur machines they are cheap plus they are real kool, best of luck for your cafe
sounds like you have it all planned out good luck man. Im not sure how the samsung is in stability the computer is going to be on pretty much 24/7 so a good disk is a must. Something like seagate or western digital.. havent read up on the samsung one but and never really noticed them on the market. dont got for the 9600XT. then youll have to upgrade sooner and with a new cafe, which just spend lots of money on those cool machines a new upgrade isnt in your interest
Thanks, I can use the luck I'll look more into the Samsung's but someone above or in another forum said the Samsung's run quieter and not as hot as WD, etc. I'm still getting everything all together but once the first UPS truck comes with all that hardware, I might have a heart attack from disbelief I will be in heaven, heh. It has been a long time dream and now we are turning it into real life. I've been to many gaming cafes and most of their hardware isn't worth playing on and a lot only buy a certain number of game copies (ie, they might buy 10 copies of one game when they have 40 computers) so it is hard to get on the good computers with the good games. Therefore, we have promised that we will offer high end computers with games licensed to every machine so there won't be a problem. I am also going to have wireless internet so when business people come in for coffee and to do some work they can just use their laptops and just pay a little less just for the connection and no computer.
nugz, I wasn't trying to say you would try and do anything non-legit... but I know SO many people totally forget about licenses... was just giving you a reminder just incase it slipt your mind hey just think, when its all up and running you can have all your mates over for madass LAN parties after closing hours ownage or what??!? lol
I hear ya, and I wasn't trying to sound aggresive or anything. I've been hearing a lot of stories about people getting busted for not having proper licenses in small/medium businesses lately. Bingo -- I can't wait for all my friends to come over afterhours
you know why that is? cus all the MS employees arent intelligent enough to count upto triple figures so they only pick on small companies sue them, take all their money and then some, steal their ideas and make more money after buying the company... MS = evil... you look up evil in the dictionary... Mr William Gates picture is there in full glory! (it should be anyways )
well what i said earlier about card trying was only a suggestion and i do realise that people go along just for some fun, I think with the specs you are going to rock and do well and yes people like a drink as well. Goodluck.
