I love Netflix. The turn around is often one day if you live in a big city and I have never had a problem with a DVD getting lost in the mail. We run some GameFly banners, though none of us have ever tried the service. For those of you considering a game rental service, 2old2play has finally posted the results from a survey of its readers.

Surprisingly, 27% of respondents complained of games getting lost when being returned to the service provider while 0% claimed that the sent game never reached them. With such a disparity it is hard to believe the post office is at fault. More likely there may be some operational problems at the service provider.

The greatest complaint ( 45% ) was that it was difficult to get new releases. One of the joy's of Netflix is its very deep catalog. I enjoy sprinkling into my queue classics that I have missed. Akira Kurosawa's early works and Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns always seem to pop up. However, Gamefly ( and others ) do not offer PSOne or Dreamcast games, much less anything from the 70s and 80s.

"With the rising cost of games many people are looking to these services to get some of the games that they want to play, but may not necessarily want to keep. The demand for new games versus old is lopsided making it hard to fill requests for new games, but easy to fill requests for old ones. This means that if you have a queue of 10 games with newer games on top priority and older games on low, you're more likely to get that older game regardless."

All that being said, given the fact that there are so many bad games out there. Even more with little or no replay value. Game Rental Services seem like an inexpensive way to sample a lot of games. Does anyone here subscribe to one? Are you pleased with the service? Should I sign up?

Please submit missing coverart.

Well I know just a little bit about those services, even though I've never personally used one.

A good friend of mine ran one of these game rental services years ago, long before gamefly and others. He went under after the competition increased, but just casual chat with him revealed to me a few things;

1. There often are not enough games in the inventory to meet demand. This is not as big of a problem with movies because movies often can be purchased in bulk, are more widely available due to higher distribution rates, and are cheaper.

2. Losses tend to be higher, because most of the product ending up in the hands of young kids that are more likely to share, trade, and lose the games. While the company has recourse for this, it ultimately results in said lack of game availability, which may turn good standing or potential customers away.

3. With movies, some companies pay a subscription to a movie distributor. The rental company in question may hold little or no inventory, and instead leases movies from other sources. In the event of loss, the rental company doesn't eat it, and because they are not required to keep a centralized inventory, they have access to a wider variety, and more copies of movies. This option doesn't really exist for game rentals.

I could go on, but in any case what I'm getting at is that because of these things I would expect for a movie rental service to have a better track record than a game rental service. The game rental services have less resources to work with, higher overhead, and quite frankly a less dependable and smaller consumer base.

I know that doesn't answer your question flipkin, but just sharing what little I know about it.

My complaints about GameFly were:

• long waits for new games as well as long waits for older games-- GameFly was perfect for middle of the road rentals, the kind of game I wanted to try, but had no interest in buying or even long-term play.
• lack of manuals-- sure GameFly tells you the basic controls, but manuals (sometimes) have deeper content.
• long turn around time-- I live 30 miles away from a Netflix hub, so I'm probably spoiled, but I was getting a week lag in between GameFly titles.
• no sense of community-- which Netflix has nailed. I want to be able to recommend games to my friends and see what they have going on.

However, it has been about a year since I dropped GameFly. Maybe they've improved.

Since the advent of CD recorders (and later, DVD recorders), this kind of business has no future here in Brazil. The reason: what would stop someone from renting the game and making a bootleg copy? With movie rentals this happens in a much smaller scale, since movies aren't as replayable as games (and the consumption time is much smaller).

I used to rent games for my consoles (NES, Genesis and SMS), and by that time, game rental stores were a very lucrative business. You couldn't just copy a cartridge, back then. I even remember renting some PC games, back in 96, but by that time, we didn't have CD recorders around. Nowadays we see less and less of those stores, 'cause piracy is much easier (and thus, bigger) than in the past.

Don't you guys have this problem in the US? I mean, do people really respect the law on these matters?

Most people don't have the technical know-how to circumvent the copy protection on many games. Even those that do often have issues to the point where it's simply not worth it most of the time to do a copy.

ROMS of cartridges have been made since 1990, possibly before. Even back then many NES game manuals came with a warning to not make back up copies of the cartridge. I tried to return an open NES game to a store in 1990 the day after I bought it and the return was refused on the grounds that people were making copies. I informed the clerk that he was mistaken in that it was computer games being copied. He showed me a memo that he received informing employees not to accept NES returns because new technology was allowing the games to be copied and played on computers. But that didn't stop sales, again the problem being that to perform it required a level of knowledge, skill, and equipment that was unique enough to keep copies from really hurting business.

People copy games here too, but most won't mess with it enough to hurt the industry. Most would rather just pay the monthly fee or buy the game than mess with mod chips, decryption software, media, and the like.

Well, I doubt a game rental place is really going to care if you copy something. There isn't a way for them to police it, so they can't really get into trouble if you do it, so they probably won't care.

Anyhow, I love Netflix and usually I have 1 day receiving or sending from me to them, but I'm also very close to a hub (30 miles or so). Sometimes it does end up being 2-3 days, though.

One thing that I did have happen with them was to receive just the tear-off cover from the envelope thing with a stamp from the post office saying they were sorry, but that it was damaged. I had to requeue the disk and let Netflix know what happened. They "received" the disk back after about 3 days. I don't know if they actually did get it back from the post office or if they just accepted what I told them happened. Anyhow, it was handled well and they didn't bother me about it.

I doubt I'd rent a game, though. I could do that at Blockbuster, but I don't. So I doubt I would from an online rental place.

Yeah I won't rent games either. I pretty much know what I want, and if it's something I want I gotta own it. Besides, I'm a PC gamer first and foremost.

Netflix has been pretty decent, although they did send me the wrong movie once. I queued Pirate of Carib II and they sent me the first one. No, the error was not on my part.

A timely thread - my son has been nagging me to sign up for GameFly and I've been resisting primarily because I knew nothing about it. The thought of games going back and forth in the mail worries me...

I, too, am a PC gamer through and through. I think my brain is wired for PC controls and I just can't get my eye-hand-brain connection going with video game controls...this may be an age thing, though......:(

Um, has anyone ever used their local libraries for game "rental"? It's free, loan periods are usually two weeks, and though most libraries don't have huge collections it's a good way to try a game you aren't sure you want to buy..

Wow, I haven't been to a library in a really long time because I did not know that they loaned games.

Yes. Books, too. :)

OH REALLY?!

Gosh, I've been looking all over for books so I can start this "reading" thing.

Sorry D Michael, I just couldn't help myself!

As far as library games go, often they only keep T-rated titles, which is pretty limiting.

The more people use the games, though, the more likely a library is to expand their collection.

I know I'm off-topic, and I'll stop now...

Someone forgot to tell her, we're supposed to go off topic :)

Welcome to MG.

Also, they seem to focus on strategy titles, simulations, RPGs and adventures. I remember sneakily photographing the manual of Trainz Railroad Simulator 2004 to submit the credits.

The only "games" I've ever checked out of my library have been Escape from Monkey Island and Alpha Centauri... other than that all I've ever seen was versions of Encarta and edutainment (which isn't a bad thing, since some of those Educational games are way too much fun)

well no... that's not exactly true. Back in the early 90s, my library offered a service where you'd bring in blank floppies (a maximum of 5) and "order" which shareware/freeware items from their catalog that you wanted copied to them.. collecting the diskettes a week later. I used that a few times since I was able to let them do all the work and not tie up my phone line connecting to BBSes.