All the levels have been beaten, the enemies defeated and items gathered. It’s game over, and you’re left with a $50 investment that will sit on your shelf and collect dust unless you get motivated to sell it on eBay. When you’re ready for the next new game, it will cost another $50.
That’s the old way to play video games.
A new crop of Netflix-style online video game rental companies offers a better solution to dedicated players watching their money. For a flat monthly fee, players can rent anywhere from one to eight games at a time, play them and send them back when they want new ones.
“We started the company because we were buying games for our kids and paying $40 to $50 for a game and playing a half-hour a day, and then trying to trade it in and getting pennies for the dollar,” said Greg Gentling, founder of the online video game rental service Gamerang.
Gamerang (www.gamerang.com) and its major competitors use a queue system like Netflix through which subscribers list what games they want to rent and receive the next one when they send back the disc they have out. All of them allow customers to decide how many games they want at a time.
Gamerang’s fees range from $14.95 per month to have one game out at a time to $35.85 for four games. At Gameznflix (www.gameznflix.com), which rents DVDs as well as video games, options range from $17.25 per month for three games at a time to $222 for 14 months to rent eight at a time.
Besides renting the newest games, some of the services also offer vintage titles.
In addition to renting games for new consoles, Gamelender offers games for older game systems including Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64 and Sega Genesis, with a full 50 percent of their stock being from older systems.
“We pretty much offer any game ever made for any of those consoles,” said Khaell Pinter, operations manager for Gamelender (www.gamelender.com).
Although online services have gained popularity, Blockbuster Video spokesman Randy Hargrove said the company is not concerned about losing video game profits.
“We’re focused on retail, renting and developing our trading business as well,” Hargrove said. “Right now, we’re seeing that online will be a small percentage of the overall industry.”
Blockbuster offers unlimited rentals from its stores with the Gamepass, a rental program that allows customers to take out one game at a time for $19.99 a month with no late fees. Although Blockbuster has launched an online DVD rental service, it has no plans to start renting games online, Hargrove said.
“Never rule out games, but at this point our focus has been on just the movies,” he said.
The rental companies would not disclose customer numbers, but both Gamelender and Gamerang said they are planning to expand by adding more distribution centers for quicker turnaround times.
“We are considering adding a station in Chicago for this year,” Gentling said. “It’s a big city, and a lot of our customers are located there.”
———-
Edited by Cara DiPasquale (cdipasquale@tribune.com) and Kris Karnopp (kkarnopp@tribune.com)
