I'd expect them to still appear in dense areas like .. cities .. and you can actually find them (and business seems to be good), but only really in chinatowns and other Asian districts.
And some places are trivially obviously viable, population-wise, like just outside of, or even within, universities (and especially University towns), but PC cafes are still absent, so walking distance doesn't really explain it.
It seems to be more of a cultural issue. It's clearly the best solution for the cash-strapped gamer today and especially so for the last 10 years. Perhaps it simply boils down to the much larger emphasis on console-gaming than PC gaming -- but if that's the case, then cloud-PC-gaming is just as fucked as PC-cafes.
And some places are trivially obviously viable, population-wise, like just outside of, or even within, universities (and especially University towns), but PC cafes are still absent, so walking distance doesn't really explain it.
It seems to be more of a cultural issue. It's clearly the best solution for the cash-strapped gamer today and especially so for the last 10 years. Perhaps it simply boils down to the much larger emphasis on console-gaming than PC gaming -- but if that's the case, then cloud-PC-gaming is just as fucked as PC-cafes.