There's been plenty of talk about the RedBox movie rental kiosks going game lately. Now it looks like the company is pushing forward with the plan, and is currently in talks with several game studios to get their titles in the box.
It turs out that RedBox has been conducting trials since August, with machines in Reno, Nevada, and Wilmington, North Carolina spitting out game rentals for $2 a piece.
Even Brian Farrell, CEO of THQ, said he'd consider going the RedBox route. "If you look at movies and music in some ways, resisting new business models has not been a great formula for success, so one of the things I like about our industry is we tend to think, 'We have to adapt to this change.' So it's part of our DNA," Farrell said.
RedBox needs to forge partnerships now, before they launch games. They didn't with movies, and now studios like Warner Bros, Fox, and NBC Universal are cutting off access to their movies, as they feel the $1 rental fee is devaluing their product.
Dale North is Destructoid's Editor-In-Chief, a founding editor, and specialist in Japanese gaming. An accomplished musician, Dale was reporting from Japan during the earthquakes of 2011. Luckily, he got the fuck out alive and is home in America now with his wife and beloved corgi, Einstein. Dale is also a co-founder of Destructoid's sister anime site
Japanator. Likes Corgis, Sega Saturn, PSP, iPhone, Photographic tools.
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Contest:
5:00 PM on 12.03.2009 | 
I really hope they either get the word out about this system better, or do something else to make it successful. I don't really see any good use for these machines.
The Redboxes in my area see a lot of use and draw away a lot of the competition.
Dunno how well this could be applied to games, though. They like to put stickers on those DVDs and that never seems to help a game play that well.
They'd have to be placed in higher-traffic areas, too. You can't expect it to succeed in a place no one things to associate with rentals. Grocery stores tend to work out great, though.
agreed on both counts. After about 2 days, you'd be better off renting from a normal store or getting a gamefly subscription
But seriously, saying "It's part of our DNA." always sounds pretentious as fuck to me. Cut it out, business guys!!
Where in the world are you getting $4 game rentals? Anywhere around here is at least $9 for PS3 and 360 games.
I could be wrong though. I've rented one game in about three years.
Each vending machine is hooked up to the internet, and when you check out a movie they send you an email (you have to put in you email address the first time you use each individual machine). The machines also only take credit/debit cards. If you were to rent a movie today, you have until 9pm tomorrow night to return it, otherwise you are charged an additional dollar. After a couple of weeks, they take more money from you card (this is all done automatically by the system) and you now own the movie.
The discs also have bar codes on them, around the center hole, which is scanned when you return the movie in the slot.
Unless you peel off the bar code, there's no cheating the system.
I haven't rented a game in about 5 years or so, but from what I remember, it's more about getting a taste of the full product. If it's a short game, you can beat it in a couple days, though if it's longer and you find yourself attached to it, you're probably better off just buying a copy. I doubt it's really necessary (though I'm sure others will agree with me) to rent a game for a week or more. At a point, you would've returned it by then or bought the game to keep.
I'll bet solid money that Activision will never let Call of Duty anywhere near a redbox.
Games I would never buy, but wanted to play, I just rent from Redbox. At 2 bucks a day, you have to make sure it's a relatively short game.
It's simply not my playstyle, I need to spend time for a game I can't just get the most out of it quickly. I can't be expected to get the best out of my money under that plan
Also, these machines aren't owned by the businesses they stand outside of or inside of. They are the product of a mutual agreement between RedBox and the hosting establishment.
awesome for games those short single player game
response saying they do rent them on select markets... Wish they would roll it out soon in my area.
Netflix = $108 a year
RedBox = significantly less.
Sure, they don't have the selection Netflix has at all, but I just can't spend that much money on something like that.
$108 w/Netflix buys:
- ~121 DVD movies a year
- Unlimited streaming movies a year
- No use of gas money to pick up/drop off video, just pick up or drop off in my mailbox
- No late fees ever
$108 w/RedBox buys:
- at most 108 movies a year not including the amount you'd spend on gas