Redbox Joins the Battle this Week with Video Game Rentals
Beginning with movies, the appeal of renting movies met itself with an immense amount of success given the accomplishments achieved by rental companies such as Blockbuster and Netflix. Following up on this model, the video game market was brought in with services like GameFly, and this week gamers will have another attractive method of renting movies.
Redbox, most commonly found outside of grocery stores, pharmacies, and gas stations, is an automated DVD rental system that gained popularity with its attractive pricing and convenient access. Announced a few months ago, Redbox will finally launch their pay-per-day video game rental service this week on June 17th, 2011. PlayStation 3 owners will have the following choices of titles on day one:
- Brink
- Call of Duty: Black Ops
- Duke Nukem Forever
- inFamous 2
- LA Noire
- Red Faction: Armageddon
- Transformers: Dark of the Moon
While DVD’s are priced at $1 per day, video games will cost $2 per day. We’re still a bit skeptical as to how well the rental service will turn out because video games tend to take much longer to complete than movies do. It won’t take many days before the price of these rentals will outweigh just signing up for its competitor, GameFly. But hey, more options are always welcomed, and if it doesn’t do well then maybe the fees will go down.
[Source]
11 Responses to “Redbox Joins the Battle this Week with Video Game Rentals”
I see this only working out for people who don’t play online much. If you have the time, now single player games can be finished in only a matter of hours.
RFA, yes, 8 hours. inFamous 2, probably more like 10-15, depending on if you do side missions. LA Noire, much longer, simply due to the length of conversations and the overall slow pacing… If it was like $1 a day I could swing this just to get a taste of games without waiting for the horrible gamefly turn around time, but I couldn’t see me beating too many games through this service.
If you have netflix, is it the same amount of time or longer to get the next game from them? I haven’t tried gamefly; about how many games can you get per month because of this turn around time?
Yeah, that’s definitely the bad thing about Gamefly, is the turn around time.
@Jeremiah
It all depends on the game you want will determine how quickly you get it. There have been times where when I got the notification that they’ve received the game I sent back, it was a few days where I got something saying the next game has been shipped out.
Where I live they have had games for months…I remember being tempted by Marvel vs Capcom 3 when it came out, but I have yet to rent any games from them.
@jeremiah
same here. the redboxs that ive been to around l.a. have had game rentals at least since the beginning of the year if i remember correctly, if not longer.
not a bad deal if you just wanna test drive a game youre unsure of.
More binge gaming nights!
I can’t really see $2 a day being worth it. Unless you plan to spend the entire day playing or just want a preview before purchase.
I agree. $2 a day will add up fast and if your keeping the game for more than a week it probably isn’t worth it. I usually take me around a month or two to finish game depending on how long they are, so I don’t see me using this service very much is at all.
Also they have been renting games for several months now at the redbox at my local store, and from what I can tell they don’t have a huge selection ( like 3 or 4 games).
I don’t see this taking off to well. I mean, I can rent games for a total of 11 days for $22. For that same $22 I get 2 games at a time for a month from Gamefly. Sure Gamefly has a delay (3 days up to a week for me) when switching out games, but you’ll likely have that 2nd game during that week wait.
Lets see, 2 games at a time, unlimited exchanges for $22 a month or a single game for $2 a day? I’ll personally take Gamefly any day/month/year. Redbox might be an option for those rare 1 day plat games, but I don’t see myself frequenting.
Redbox saved me $60 on L.A. Noire. I was thinking about buying it, but I rented it first. Glad I didn’t waste my money on it. Not a terrible game, just not my kind of thing. I think this could be what Redbox is good for. If you’re thinking of buying a game, pay the $2 to rent it for a day or two to try it out first. The only problem there is that Redbox doesn’t have a large selection, so chances are they won’t have the game you’re wanting to try out. Hopefully that will change if the video game service gets more popular. But I don’t think it’s aimed at hardcore gamers. It’s more a casual gamer thing, but I do think it could be useful as a “try before you buy” type thing as I mentioned.