There’s ”at least 35 major games” this Q4 and you ”physically can’t buy them all,” says Blockbuster, but ”you’d like to play them all.” Publishers get ”quite a lot of money” from rentals.
Blockbuster in the UK is running its first TV campaign for video games in 2 years as they want to drum up more interest in game rentals, and are targeting prime time shows for their ads.
”Take Q4, there must be at least 35 major games out,” said Blockbuster’s Gerry Butler. “You physically can’t buy them all. But you’d like to play them all. So we have put together a very cost-effective way for consumers to play games.”
”We have ramped up the rental side of our business and we have got an awful lot of support from publishers. Publishers like renting as it takes away from trade-ins. The problem with trade-ins is the publisher doesn’t get any money. The advantage of renting is that they get quite a lot of money.”
It costs £5 to rend a video game for 5 days with each additional night costing £1. If you decide you’d like to own the title afterward then Blockbuster will deduct the rental fees against the full retail price.
“Gaming is very important to Blockbuster,” added Butler. “We have a large percentage of the heavy core gamers in our stores. And we think rental is a great way to play games in austere times.”
Is the promotion of video game rental the answer to trade-ins for publishers? Would you rent a game?
