Thursday, October 20, 2011

Gamefly vs. Blockbuster vs. Redbox vs. Gamestop?

As I'm sure many of us are well aware gaming is not cheap. With games costing $60 no one wants to waste their hard earned cash on a terrible game. There are some cheaper alternatives to getting to play the games you want without having to pay full price. I'm going to talk about some services and the pros and cons of each one.

GAMEFLY
This is probably the biggest of the renting services around. With no late fees and over 7,000 titles it sounds like a great deal. For the most part it is. I've been a gamefly member for a little over a year and never once thought it wasn’t worth the money. I play 10x the amount of games that I did when I was buying games and have saved roughly 1/3 of what I spent per year before it. The only real reason I can boast this is because I don't care what I play. I just enjoy playing the games. However Gamefly does have its problems. With such a large fan base it's difficult to get any new release games. The games are down to VERY LOW QUANTITY (<25%)almost as soon as they appear on the site for rent and some times you will be waiting up to 5-6 months or longer before you can get one. Up till about 2 months ago COD:MW2 was still at LOW Quantity (25%). It also seems like sometimes they just decide to leave out older games. FF6 (gba) for example never moves above Medium (50%) quantity and almost always stays at VERY LOW quantity. If you don't really care what you play that Gamefly is definitely a good idea.

Pros: Lot's of games to choose from. No late fees. Free shipping, and up to 10% off all games.
Cons: Lots of people=Low quantity of new games. Abandonment of older games.

BLOCKBUSTER
Blockbuster started their online rental service not to long ago. They priced it cheaper than Gamefly and offer movies as well. However they only have 3000 titles where Gamefly has 7000. With Blockbuster being focused mostly on movies gaming seems like a second thought, and it shows. Almost ever game has Low Quantity, with some games like Mass Effect 2 for ps3 not even being shipped to Blockbusters online service until October. Another thing about this service is the 5 in store switches. You can take the game you’re renting into any Blockbuster store 5 times a month and switch it with any game there. The problem with this (and this may just be where I live) is that Blockbuster has a relatively small selection games in stores. So again it seems like this service is aimed at movies with games tacked on. The best thing about this service is that you can keep any game you like 25% off. That's awesome. However with Blockbuster going out of business it's not clear how long this service will continue, or if it will improve much.

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