I’m not usually one to rant and do ‘outrage’ over many topics, but… I have to vent here a bit. My new pet peeve revolves around the way rentals work in our local video stores when it comes to video games. One would think that after the decades of experience renting out movies, your local video stores would carry that same knowledge across all mediums, but alas unfortunately it isn’t so.
Now having recently migrated to the current crop of consoles, I like most gamers in my situation become quite eager to play all the latest greats and not necessarily spend $60 a pop to endure the experience, especially if you’re unsure of the playability and longevity of a title. Now I’m not one to take online reviews to heart since it’s based off someone else’s experience, so I usually use them as an early indication to see if the title even warrants my time. I must admit I’ve never rented games in the past’ well once or twice but that’s a moot point since they were older titles that the masses had played months to years after their release. I am the type of gamer that would buy AAA titles newly shrink wrapped that are guaranteed to be compelling, and the lesser titles I would normally pick up used or when they gain a significant price drop. Since it’s still relatively early in this current cycle of consoles, one has to be weary about what you spend your hard earn coin on, which brings me to renting as a solution and the problem. So what’s my issue? Why is it that one can’t walk into their local video store… wait make that all video stores in 25km block radius and rent one of the latest games without frustration. They invoke this ridiculous policy were customers pay no late fees essentially making the due date on any given receipt a moot point. And let’s admit it, most gamers usually won’t be in any real hurry to drop off the game in a ‘timely’ manner to let us other unfortunate souls enjoy the bliss that is gaming entertainment, and to make things worse popular titles such as Assassin’s Creed, The Orange Box e.t.c allocates 1-4 spots at most on the shelves where #1 movies would occupy half the release shelves in the store; Ok so I’m exaggerating a little to make my point but I’m quite certain it has happened to you at some point; Guaranteed in stock my a.. Uh hum, it really makes me wonder if these conglomerates have yet clued in on the billion dollar industry that is video games. Great titles are available and people want to play them!
This experience has soured my entire outlook on renting, especially after being disappointed exiting the sixth store (yes sixth) in my city not to mention a small town outside of it all in the same evening.
As little as it may seem, sixty dollars can still go quite a ways, it can be either gas, parking for my working week or even lunch on a few occasions, and if developers wish to secure those expendable funds from my pocket to theirs, maybe just maybe they would provide adequate demos for their games. I’m aware some developers make demos available for us to consume and when not word of mouth they play an important role in my purchasing decisions. I appreciate the online stores in the current gen systems as it gives me an opportunity to play demos such as Ratchet & Clank, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune and Devil May Cry 4 before purchase which made a lot of sense since they translated into the aforementioned shrink wrapped buy for me hence pumping vital funds into the developers’ bank accounts.
Tito A. Belgrave
I found your site on google blog search and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. Just added your RSS feed to my feed reader. Look forward to reading more from you.
- Randy Nichols.
Why are you still wasting time going to physical stores? I’ve been through a bunch of online game rental companies, and all of them except GamezNFlix were much better to use than any giant space-wasting establishment. Try Gamefly.
Hiya Jessy, actually I did try to find some online rental outlets in my region but unfortunately I couldn’t find any. You see I’m in Canada and I’m not quite sure if Gamefly and others would accommodate peeps living in Canada, I’ll have to fully check it out again. I do remember one service located in Montreal, but I’m in Ontario, so I’m not sure how that would work either.
Thx for the comments!
I’m sorry, I did not realize that!
I started not using physical money or shopping at physical stores several years ago, and it has really been a massive time- and money-saver. The only things I buy using my cars and legs are the food products which I can not find online. I think the ideal situation would be:
1. Downloadable demos for every game.
2. The ability to fully download any game that was bandwidth-feasible (with the ability to easily retrieve this in the event of theft or destruction of your hardware, via a license).
3. Having the right to sell your downloadable license, either via an easy new system, or eBay/similar.
4. Downloadable rentals: both game-specific, or subscription-based.
Now, I think we are a ways off from this, but I do think that it will happen eventually. For the time being, though, I will have to buy a hard copy of the games that I intend on keeping for a while, and for the rest, I will use a by-mail rental service. I recently got eight Wii games in a month for an introductory rental price of $12.95 at Gamefly! Not bad!
Of course, I don’t see Mac/PC games to rent at any of these places, which is terrible, so I hope that changes soon, along with the other things I listed above. Good luck to you for now, given the current slow-to-change corporate entertainment world!