Do not listen to this guy. Music games have never reached a solid footing within the United States (aside from Dance Dance Revolution / In The Groove / Pump It Up), and going into more niche titles will only limit your player base that much more. It might be cool to say “We’re the only arcade in Texas with a beatmania IIDX 16 Empress Machine!” but it will cost you at least $20k, take up a lot of space in the arcade, and will go for hours without being touched at all. Any of the niche bemani titles (beatmania IIDX, Pop’n Music, Guitar Freaks, Drummania, etc) will have maybe 10 regulars if you’re lucky. These games are a losing proposition. The money would be much better spent on Initial D cabinets, which had a pretty decent following at CyberZone RSM, even at $2 a game! At most a game of Initial D would last 5 or so minutes. One game of beatmania IIDX could last around 10 minutes, depending on the skill of the player. I’ve made one credit on Dance Maniax stretch for almost half an hour.
If you really think about it, why drive 4 hours when I can drive 0 hours and play games on my console? With the launch between arcade and console becoming shorter with each new game coming out, there’s only going to be a limited amount of time in which you will enjoy exclusivity of a game. Will you be able to have enough plays by enough people to offset the cost of getting the game so quickly?
Adding to that, most people’s (which will include none of us on this message board) idea of an arcade in DFW will instantly bring up the following responses: Main Event, Dave & Busters, or Gameworks. The general public’s notion of a video game arcade is vastly different from ours, and it will be really hard (if not impossible) to convince them otherwise. John Q Public coming in with his wife and two young kids are going to expect something like Chuck E Cheese or Gameworks and end up sorely disappointed.
People drop $200 - $300 at Gamestop because they are paying for games to play at home and for a tangible object that they believe they have ownership of. These people aren’t going to stop going to Gamestop just because an arcade opened near them. The arcade cannot replicate the experiences and pros of playing games at home (RPGs, no time restraints, accessibility, the list goes on and on), so you cannot expect them to give those up for an arcade experience in which most cases will net them absolutely nothing in the end. At least with buying video games, you have a tangible object you can turn around and sell to recoup some of the investment you’ve made.
Arcades that exist “for the gaming community” are few and far in between, and that’s for good reason. If you can somehow find a way to get players in the DFW area to come out and play and spend money, then at least you have something going for you. You’re going to have to identify where your profit margins are going to be the best (hint: it’s not going to be some of us).
Once you figure out where you’re going, and you feel that you want to take the risk, good luck. Hopefully you can succeed where many others have failed.
I agree with all of your opinions, I will have to talk to my partners on the subjects addressed. also go more in depth with various spots most of you have pointed out, also thank you for not posting anymore flames at us; we just need some help and looked to you’ll for insight.
Well not only 3s, but alot of the hispanics came to play KOF and CVS2, we made like 250 a week off cvs2 =( and that game cabinet can be had for cheap, we paid the machine off in like 2 weeks.
so 250 a week, divide that by 7, give or take 35 dollars a day, let say add 4 other fighting games, and drop the overall average of each fighting game to 20 dollars a day, times 5, an extra 100 a day, total profit of 700 a week, not counting in switches or problems the game may run into. thats just assuming 20 a day for each of the machines. which could drop, but when we had that collection of fighting games in the back it made good money considering the low overhead we intially started with.
Well yeah, the more money saved up front would help you out most definitely in the short run. But the quality of the cabinets might suffer unless you put some time and effort into making them.
Hey one thing I’d REALLY recommend is having a WEBSITE that is actually updated and maintained, that would be huge. This alone will separate you from others. Whenever I want to see what’s going on in TX arcades my only option is to fumble around SRK message boards.
Planet Zero doesn’t even have a website, and their myspace is trash (their last update was from June last year, come on!) Arcade UFO still has Arcadia and last years Halloween event on their calendar. I mean wtf lol. Two great arcades, two trash websites.
It may be a little thing, but attention to detail in that regard will definitely reflect on your business as a whole.
Last blog update: 5/3/09
Last Twitter update (also updates the main page): 15 hours ago
UFO’s Web site is maintained daily, and updates are usually posted immediately following new events. If you want to read 20 blog updates a day, there’s always Kotaku.
That having been said, do you have any beneficial advice besides “Web site is trash?” All I have gathered so far is that you have difficulty reading/clicking things (but this can be my fault if there is something genuinely wrong with the structure).
I didn’t comment on the twitter, just on the website, as not everyone likes to use twitter. Perhaps trash is a strong word. I usually have a casual/sarcastic tone when I talk, which might be misconstrued in text communication with people I don’t know. My bad on that.
The thing I’d point out to you is your calendar. Someone told me you guys were having a tourney May 23rd. Went to your calendar to try to find details and found nothing. After looking around the SRK forums I found the tourney post(dated April 26th) Between then and looking at your website again now, I still see that’s it not on your calendar.
Another one is posting tourney results as that’s also something a lot of people would like to check up on(especially on your most recent tournament the Arcadia one.)
Things like that might not be too big a deal for someone like me, since I check up on SRK, but not everyone does and you can’t rely on another website to post info that you should have on your own. If I’m still doing the reading/clicking thing wrong :looney: then feel free to excuse this post.
The only problem is that it doesn’t seem like you guys have laid out a thorough business plan for this to succeed. You say it will be enough to keep you alive but I even think that’s highly doubtful. Do you plan on just approaching a bank with an ‘idea’ and hoping they will take you for granted and give you a loan? I’m confused on what your full process is.
Also what determined your specific location? You say you did research but was that just asking a few people in the area (apologies for not going through every word in this thread if this was answered). The demographics in the area will be something to also consider as well as median income.
You mention only catering toward fighting games which is a bit baffling. That will surely not succeed. Places like Dave & Busters and GameWorks survive only because they can cater toward a casual market as well as opposed to just a hardcore fanbase which may only equate to a couple dozen people if you stuck with just one genre. In the end it will be a heavy investment.
And most importantly what are your marketing plans for this location? Are you going with a grass roots marketing effort? How many resources are you dedicating into marketing? This will be vital to know and to plan for this to be of any type of success. Guerilla Marketing efforts would probably be your most reasonable and cost effective way of obtaining a general customer base.
Anyways - Just wanted to question a few things and bring them to attention. DFW is so vast compared to many other metropolitan areas. The population is spread out amongst so many suburbs that its difficult to launch a central hub anywhere.
Anyways if you need Marketing advice… give me a holler I wouldn’t mind helping. I actually work in video game marketing.
PZ had a website that had a pretty active forum (albeit usually full of regulars and otaku, but active nonetheless); I think they’re just updating the information, since they’re relocating to a better location.
They usually talked about things way in advance, like Anime Matsuri and other events.
Ahh, well I had started occasionally going to PZ since December08 (this is already after they had relocated) whenever I’d be in Houston. From then til’ now they never had a website.
Also Wow at 2 people actually voting no. Where’s the love guys!
I wouldn’t mind helping. I actually work in video game marketing.