For years now, GameFly has been the only major provider of videogame rentals by mail. Now, Blockbuster is stepping up to the plate in a big way by offering game rentals cheaper. Significantly cheaper.
The new game rental service from Blockbuster is a simple add-on to the company’s already existing video rental service. The extra cost to you – zero, zip, zilch, nada. Renting games doesn’t raise your rate.
Here’s how it all breaks down: If you’re currently renting one game at a time from GameFly, you’re paying $15.95 a month – assuming you don’t have some sort of special deal going. Over the course of a year, you’re looking at $191.40.
If you’re renting two games at a time from GameFly, that’s a staggering $22.95 a month. Twelve months in a row brings that up to $275.40, which starts to look like a pretty big expense.
With Blockbuster’s service, you’re only paying $8.99 a month for taking one game out at a time. That’s nearly half of what GameFly charges. The yearly total for that is just $107.88. For two games at once, it’s $13.99, or three at a time is $16.99. That’s only a dollar and four cents more than GameFly charges for just one game.
Even better, you don’t have to stick to just games. If you want to rent a DVD or a Blu-ray, all you need to do is pop it in your queue.
I’ve used GameFly in the past but ditched it because of the cost and the extremely long wait between games. I’ve also used Blockbuster for videos back when they offered free in-store exchanges, but I ditched that for Netflix once streaming hit the Xbox 360. Shipping for Blockbuster was nice and quick, though, much like Netflix.
As long as the shipping stays fast and the games stay in stock (I’ve signed up, so I’ll let you know!), it looks like we may have a GameFly killer on our hands. At the very least, it’s incentive for GameFly to bring its prices on down. That’s a big win-win for gamers.
Eric Hulen
One problem that they didn’t mention but I found out that really sucks is that all new game releases are delayed 3 months.
Dick Ward
AuthorDang, I thought you were kidding. Signed up this morning and I can’t get ‘Crackdown 2’ until October.
That changes things a bit 🙁
Eric Hulen
I wish I was kidding. This is a deal breaker for me and I beat a lot of other people. It’s funny how Blockbuster make no mention of that fact anywhere on there website. Even there FAQ has no mention of it.
Move along people nothing to see here now.
Dick Ward
AuthorFunny, isn’t it? Blockbuster’s entire marketing campaign is about how there’s no Redbox and Netflix style delay on movies, but they’re the only company with a delay on games.
What a let down!
William Henley
This is GREAT news! I may start playing games again! With my time schedule, I only get, at most, a couple of hours a week to play games (trying to fit it in with my movie watching, and comptuer tinkering). If I kept a game from GameFly for long enough to really play, I realized it was costing about $20 a game for me to rent. Many of the games I was interested in sold used for about that price. What was really bad is, as you said, the long delay between games, with it sometimes taking about a week for a turn around between games. When you only have one game out at a time… This added up to it costing me roughly about $25 per game to rent.
I am going to check out this blockbuster service when I get home from work! The concept of gaming again is great!
jason W
I signed up too but the wait is no big deal to me with in store exchanges. Just go pick up the new one in store.
Jeremy B
I signed up for the free two week trial. three days ago and I’m ready to cancel. The selection is laughable and the wait time for new games is a joke. They don’t even have games like Little Big Planet. I tried to use the in-store return and get a game that had a long wait. It would have cost me 5 bucks. I was told this standing in front of the sign touting the no extra fees.