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Viveport Arcade: Operator FAQs


Rockjaw

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Regarding per minute pricing... things get interesting for developers if they have a hit title...

Say it ends up at 0.03 per minute average (cost not customer price) on these pre pay minutes ... with some costing more or less..

thats 1.80 per hour.

14.40/day @ 8 hours a day (if its really popular)

72/week @ 5 days a week (mon tue closed!)

302/month @ 4.2 weeks a month

x 10 PC = £3200 Month.

As a site operator I dont have a problem paying that if indeed my customers are going crazy for a new game and I've got 10 in use 8 hours a day .. i might even open monday and tuesday.

But it also means an older title can bag the occasional 1.80/hr if someone comes into play. Better still... if its a multiplayer game that might bag the dev £18. x 1000s of arcades its easy to see even small indie devs earning enough to pay the rent from 1 or 2 plays per month in each arcade.. while hoping for a ferrari. Added to their revenue from constantly increasing hardware sales and owners picking up back catalougue... makes me wonder if im at the wrong end of the business... lol.

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 yeah we certainly see Arcades as a potentially excellent revenue generator. I mean, there's a reason why arcades were a big business 'back in the day'.

 

Brings to mind that story, possibly apocryphal, about an arcade operator complaining that their machine wasn't working (might have been Pac-Man). When they took it in for repair, turns out it was jammed with quarters...!

 

Just to be clear to anyone reading - because I misread your post at first,  - the pricing he's quoting below is for developer revenue (and is plucked from thin air). Just want to reiterate, for a potential operator, you pre-pay for minutes of Viveport Arcade usage... which only gets used up as it's used by customers. :)

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Indeed... maybe its time to go offline.. and private as its quite easy for someone to take this out of context. Is there anything meant to have gone out from Viveport arcade registration of interest yet? I've not heard anything... even a thank you for registering well be back to you in a couple of months.. you know to confirm our details are in the mail list.

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At last - I can post correctly! Using a laptop now as my tablet doesn't play nice with this site. Earlier on I said I'd be paying £100pm rent - I wish, and it was a typo: £800pm.

 

The developers/publishers of 'theBlu' charge 8.1p (GBP) per minute - that's £4.86 per hour using their system; I'll be charging £10-£12 per hour per PC. After paying 'theBlu that leaves me £5.14 and out of that comes rent/business rates/insurance/electric/internet/website/insurance/wage/income tax/national insurance/re-investment into VR equipment to either maintain them or to keep up to date with equipment and finally lots of other little things such as VR hygienic wipes etc...

 

I think the mid-long term chargeable market price for my sort of "walk in" - "high street" arcade setup is £10 -£12 per hour - much more than that and I go bust! My format is like a traditional arcade - a shop open to the public; walk in; make a booking; if a slot is free you can take it there and then. My target customer is college/university students and anyone of working age - after trying the Vive once or twice, I don't think people will pay much more than £10-£12 per hour for the experience - HTC need to price accordingly and perhaps not get to carried away thinking they've reinvented the wheel. I say all this with regards to pricing as a parent of 3 with 2 of them being in college and University, and the other in comprehensive school - this is my own opinion as to what I think people in those age groups can easily afford. In addition, most people I have spoke with (university research) were happy to pay £6 for 30 mins - hence why I'm going for £10 per hour or £6 for 30 mins. Remember this isn't like the old days - people have higher disposable income - if we charge to much; and they like the Vive, they'll do their darnest to buy one for themselves! Doing that means they can save their game progress and purchase great games that could well be cheaper than hiring my Vives for an hour. I also think HTC should give consideration to the fact that operators like us are not just creating wealth for HTC, the developer/publisher and myself - essentially we're also demoing the Vive for HTC and indirectly pushing sales for HTC. However, I do think the way Viveport Arcade way of pricing by the minute is a a better way than the Steam alternative way.

 

 

 

 

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 - Great letter and I agree with all of it.

 

 With regards to games - someone mentioned you have Raw Data, Space Pirate Trainer and Brookhaven experiment coming over to Viveport - they're more like it!  Maybe try and get Serious Sam Vr and Audioshield. There are others good games you could go requesting but I already have my own agreements with one or two of them (MI5 top secret).

 

What I would like is an overlay built into Viveport Arcade where a user could select their Steam games such as 'The Lab' from within Viveport Arcade - something like that would be very handy as the idea of a user switching between Steam and Viveport - back and fore - isn't great, and let's be honest, everyone loves the Lab's archery game - well I do anyway!

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I also emailed Valve explaining my view on how the current system wont work, and was simply told it would be brought up at the next meeting.....

 

Since we dont have a dedicated forum yet i've a couple of questions for other arcade owners here if they dont mind! :)

 

What playspace size is everybody going to use?? I'm aiming for 3mx3m

 

Has anyone come accross any games designed/modified for arcades?? I know Raw Data have an arcade version and possibly brookhaven but im not sure of others.

 

All the best,

Jamie

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Thanks for comments, everyone. I'm going to make sure our Arcade team sees this thread. :)

 

 - we haven't sent out anything to the Viveport Arcade list yet. If you're worried I can check your email and see you're signed up. We probably won't send anything for a while, but I'll keep you updated here as much as possible.

 

 - thanks for comments. One thing that also strikes me about a 'pay per month' model is, well, you're paying when people aren't playing. Pay-per-hour seems better to me. Then again I'm biased. ;)

 

 - we've had conversations with the devs behind Raw Data and Brookhaven, as I understand it, to create Viveport Arcade specific versions. In all cases it's basically down to the developers to make an 'arcade-friendly' version of their titles. We won't force them. I think the effort will pay off in the long run though.

 

FYI - dedicated forum, I'm looking into it. Feel free to start your own threads if you prefer rather than congregating in here. Meet, greet, sing each other's praises, etc. :D

 

I find it very interesting that we have several (fellow) Brits in here - where are my American neighbors? :D

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I'm not creating new topic, to not mix with other topics not connected with arcade problems. 

 

I need some kind of technical advice, and since I even not get answer from HTC for my question if it is possible to buy HTC Vive Bussnes Edition to Spain... I hope can get faster answer here :)

 

Anywywy, its about lighouses, lets imagine such situation as in the picure 



All dimensions are in meters. The room size about 6x12 and lets imagine 8 separated play zones, each with own lighouses. There are some partitions between zones, like in the pictures. Is it going to works or for example lighouse "Ab" will disturb people in zone B, and same, other "b" lighouses with disturb the oposit zones.

 

What do you think? Did anybody test similar situation in field? In such case is it necessary to add more partitions, or like that will be enough? 

 

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You should be okay. We actually have several 'partitioned off' areas in our office with base stations close to each other, and it works fine.

 

The only thing I'm not sure of is whether they're all on the A/B channels. I'm working from home today otherwise I would check it myself. :)

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  Thank you for very fast answer :) I will appreciate any more confirmation, because soon (in few days I guess), I'm going to sign contract for premises, so needs to be sure can arrange place in a way I hope :)

 

BTW, is there any guide with some advices how to setup lighthouses in arcade environment, where there are lots of them in relatively small area? If not, it would be perfect to create something like that. It would be very helpful. 

 

I have one more question about my picture. Let’s imagine there will be no partition walls (just big plain area, no wall for example between B and D). Do you think it will still works or can expect major issues with tracking? 

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