I’ve spent a bit of today in one (for a job), and it’s… Honestly just kind of sad.
Everything is “branded” and based on some commercial IP. All the “independent”/quirky things I grew up with are gone, it’s fully cashless, much more expensive, and just generally… Super underwhelming. I’ve seen one pinball machine in the entire place. 😔
And still, the place is nearly empty. So if they’re trying to “appeal to different demographics” by pivoting to branded shittiness (fidget spinners! plants vs zombies! Fucking rabbids), it clearly ain’t working, lol…
Ah, I miss the 2010s, even compared to this shit…
I've considered it as a possible future RL business venture if I ever suddenly gained success you see because couple that with being able to have beers while you're gaming and chatting to people it would make for a great atmosphere compared to shitty night clubs. Of course, because it's for gamers, you're going to have people with the same interests gathering and that would be genuinely good for communities to mingle like that again.
It is going to be the case I suspect I'd have to deal with the whole damn infrastructure of that myself. It would have to be a ground up operation because a lot of the developers out there wouldn't play ball or expect you to install DRM on all of the in-house systems and force people to log into personal accounts etc.
There are still pubs were you can rent/borrow gaming systems with games, even Nintendo games other than that, been around for a while. Don't remember it being more DRM than what is usually included in the console/steam.
And if you worry about system being stolen/amount of req drm, hmm perhaps setup the bar were people bring their own consoles/systems and just support with good infrastructure and beer :D
Sorry for the late response, but that's even more of a legal minefield because it's other peoples' possessions and you could be liable for all of that if it gets stolen. You could potentially set something up properly though but you'd have to make quite the investment in security and take it seriously.
So once more this idea would only work in a society which is more stable.