With the smoking ban, credit crunch and increasing running costs all hitting licensed premises in the pocket, a number of Manchester venues have turned to games consoles to entice customers through the door.
Wii and Xbox nights are the latest weapon in the struggle to get people back into the boozer.
Adam Tracey, manager of Simple Bar in Manchester's Northern Quarter, has introduced a Nintendo Wii for customers to use on a Sunday evening.
He said: “We have been running it for a couple of months. We had a projector in the bar and we thought about how best we could use it.
“It's a great success and people really seem to enjoy it. It's free and playing on a full-size projector screen makes it great fun.”
Tracey said the Wii nights have helped put more bums on barstools. “We can get anything from 20 to 40 people depending on the night and when in the month it falls,” he said. “It's another reason for people to come out and have a few drinks.”
