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Feasibility of opening an Arcade

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Apollo:
If I was going to do it I'd go down the whole retro bar route. A themed bar with decent food available and part of the bar is the arcade, cocktail cabinets are lounge tables etc. Artwork on the walls, old school games like Pacman, Galaga and Joust etc with a couple of old pinballs like Black Knight, F14 Tomcat etc.

Malenko:
I thought about this too. My idea for running one is a little different then the traditional drop a quarter in arcade it'd be more of a "pay to play for a while thing" as opposed to "drop a quarter in", pay $5 for an hour of unlimited playing or some sort of daily or monthly thing, group rates, things of that nature. of course I think the real money would be in renting the entire place out for birthday parties and stuff and or hosting Tournaments.

Of course this would present problems if for example suits00 and tommy were hoggin the MKII machine and cheffoJeffo wanted to play... maybe some sort of "limit if 2 continues if someone is waiting to play" but that'd make games like golden axe and double dragon tough to beat...but there'd be other games to play.

Im actually building up my personal arcade collection just incase one day I want to open an arcade. I actually have given it alot of thought but the initial investment is a bit overwhelming, so is the rent and licensing feesmetc

spacies:

Put me down as another who would like to do this.

I think an Arcade that was rented on a per night basis would do OK. Something like work functions, stag parties, a bunch of friends etc.

And maybe open to the general public on Saturday and Sundays.

To attract repeat customers you would run a High Score board for every machine.

Great idea but tons of logistics.


Ken Layton:
This has been talked to death on this and the KLOV forums. The general concencus is, "are you crazy?". You'll go broke same as all the other arcades have. Even the huge 'Illuzions' arcade up in Renton, Wash (30,000 square feet) went broke.

In order to stay open today you must have a cheap rent building, be able to repair the machines yourself, buy the machines cheap, and have food sales as a hook to keep the customers there.

ratzz:
I think you need to look at this the other way round.

instead of thinking of an arcade and what else you could do with it, you need to think of a good well established business idea that would have a better chance of working and build an arcade in it.

I would love to own an arcade, but the now grown up business owner thinks it probably wouldn't work.

Very sad ... :-[

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