First off I want to thank each of you before hand for taking the time to read through my random musings and helping me with some of the questions that I have. I appreciate the fact that there is a place for me to go to tap into the experiences of other game centers and understand that there is a private forum where more information is shared than here in the open.

That said, I am in the early stages of planning my LAN center. My goal is to be open sometime in 2007 or 2008. I'm writing my business plan now but had some strategic questions that I thought you guys could help me with.

Is it more popular to buy your PCs or lease them? Leasing offers 3 year automatic refreshes which is appealing to me in keeping my center up to date with the best hardware. The downside is I do not own the hardware.

Standard PCs or a Citrix environment with thin clients? Every center I have gone into has standard PCs and I believe that is because of the low prices available. Thin client computing is interesting to me because it locks the hardware away from the customer, in my mind reducing the risk associated with systems out in the open. Server driven applications/games should run faster and smoother than if they were on a PC because of the horsepower servers have over PCs. thoughts and conjecture is appreciated.

General LAN Center store square footage? What is the typical size of a LAN center? I'm wanting to start with 24 systems and figure I would need about 1000sqft to build out my center properly. Has anyone gone larger/smaller with roughly the same number of systems?

Those are my first round of questions. I will be setting up an account to see the private forums where I can pester you all with more stuff, but that will have to wait a bit. Thanks in advance for your responses!

Goof

Welcome to iGames. This section is the gamers section of the forum. We have a Game Center section, for prospective game center owner and existing game center owner. We are over six hundred strong, with more than 50000 posts. Also iGames offers other advantages, like licensing for software. Please consider joining. Please go to www.igames.org.

Hope to see you on the other side.

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Peter Shores
Combatex
Houston, TX

[QUOTE=Combatex]Welcome to iGames. This section is the gamers section of the forum. We have a Game Center section, for prospective game center owner and existing game center owner. We are over six hundred strong, with more than 50000 posts. Also iGames offers other advantages, like licensing for software. Please consider joining. Please go to www.igames.org.

Hope to see you on the other side.[/QUOTE]

Thanks for your response Ron. I appreciate your information regarding the number if LAN center owners who are members of the private site. If I have asked for information that should only be requested in the private forums then I apologize. I will be setting up a membership soon, just have to wait until payday at my "real job". Until then I was hoping to gleen a little knowledge from the masses.

Goof

I completely understand. The problem lies in the fact that this is a public forum. All members volunteers their answers, only members can search and learn from the game center forum. So far all that you have asked can be searched in the game center forum, because the questions have been asked by all of us.

I have written this before, there is no such thing as one or two questions. Two question will expand for you into 100's of questions and many searches. This why it is important to join. There are many aspects of operating a game center. Now is the time to learn, before you invest in assets, invest in education.

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Peter Shores
Combatex
Houston, TX

[QUOTE=Combatex]I completely understand. The problem lies in the fact that this is a public forum. All members volunteers their answers, only members can search and learn from the game center forum. So far all that you have asked can be searched in the game center forum, because the questions have been asked by all of us.

I have written this before, there is no such thing as one or two questions. Two question will expand for you into 100's of questions and many searches. This why it is important to join. There are many aspects of operating a game center. Now is the time to learn, before you invest in assets, invest in education.[/QUOTE]
Roger that. I look forward to joining in the next few weeks then.

Thanks!
Goof

We offer custom built gaming pcs made for an extreme gaming center environment we are in the iGames center-in-a-box section of corporate members and click on the systems section. We offer these services to iGames center members.

Not many know we are iGames corporate members.

You can check us at www.computergamersfactory.com

We also have forums for quick questions you may have about us.

got any free samples :)

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Playonet C.B.
Ibiza, Spain.
Open since Dec 2002.
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Igames please offer more to non usa Countries please.