I'll agree with yo_john on his promotional idea. The lan-cafe in my area had them (before it went belly-up), but its failure wasn't attributed to that, rather to poor location and a market that really has no need for a net cafe

In a city like Boston and near schools, you should clean up.

I live near Boston as you know since we've talked before. I've also been heavily involved with the professional gaming community, specifically that of Halo and Super Smash Brothers so as a result I've been to many LAN centers. There is only one major LAN center in Massachusetts and that is in Framingham although I hear they have a new location in Somerville. They were called Game Universe before but now their Game Underground. I would highly recommend seeing their setup before you start your own since its not far from you.

One of the best ways of getting a strong hardcore following with people that spend on games are tournaments as Yo_John said. The best tournament games that attract the most people are Halo 3, SSBB, Street Fighter 4, Star Craft, WoW (PvP), Gears of War, Tekken and Gran Turismo. Even having a DDR machine setup or Guitar Hero will get you many customers.

For the tournaments you should give the players store credit so you keep the money within your own store. For second place you should give free games and third place a t-shirt or whatever trinket you want.

Specifically for Halo I watched Game Universe go from having a messy tournament with only like 5 or 6 teams to a highly structured tournament using MLG rules with over 20 teams and each player paying 15 to 20 dollar entrance fee's. 

I have to go out with my girlfriend right now but I'll be back later to brainstorm some ideas with you. I would be interested with helping you out in my free time too.

As a side note there is a very large gaming community in Massachusetts so you shouldn't have any trouble finding your market

I don't think there are any licensing costs. After all, I'm selling a network to play games on, not the games themselves.

(I think)

Mendicate: Thanks man, much appreciated advice and info, I'll be sure to check them out.

ok their are many of those in my country, first thing what are you going to have in their as hardware? ps3s, wiis, xboxs, or computers? since i spend possibly more then 100 hours in internet cafes with friends i can help you with prices, and many other things.

and for hours, week days: 6 am till 3-4 am, friday saturday open 24 hours.

and sunday 1 am till 2 am :P

you can posibly sell games, and dvds in the cafe, also sell some food like chips, chocolate, and drinks(not alcohol)

in my country we pay about one dollar per hour for a pc, and about 2-6 for a ps3/wii/xbox depending on how many controllers (a guitar for guitar hero is counted as a controller), you could have monthly tournaments, and also people should be able to reserve hours by phone.

a price for a pc would be 1-3 hours per hour(the more hours the less the price)

and for a console 3-6 dollars per hour depending on how many controllers they took.

also if you want to atract customers you must make them addicted to a popular game so they come to play lets say this game on pc, this game on wii, this game on xbox...... to help you with that you could have polls, like whats your favorite genra, or people could fill out sheets telling you what are they favorite games ....

also for pc's they dont have to be super powerful, all they need to do is support starcraft 2, and also having old games like counter strike would help, as they are very addicting and they could attract many customers.

i would say 8 consoles.

3 ps3s

3 360s

2 wiis

and about 20 pc's.

ps: everything is illegal in my country heck we have fake ps3 controllers 

You gotta compete with those Public Libraries, I'm been too many recently that have some form of gaming for free around once a week. Usually it's Halo, Mario Kart, SSBB, and Rock Band (I have seen SF4 and Blaz Blue sometimes)..