RentingVideoGames.com

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Gamedaily recently conducted some research on rental video game habits. One of the biggest findings was that 50% of video game renters did not purchase any of the games they rented during the past year. Given that 40% of console gamers rent video games, this is a large group of people that are not buying the games they rent.

This contradicts the popular belief that gamers rent video games and than make a purchase. It seems that they are more likely to rent OR buy rather than do both.

The college newspaper for Texas Tech has a review on the Transformers video game for Xbox 360. The author says it is better to rent than buy because it’s very short and carries a $60 price tag.

Joystiq reports that one of its readers spotted a position for GameFly on Monster.com. The position is for an Operations Manager and clearly states that the company is opening a satellite distribution center. With the recent addition of its Pittsburgh operations center, delivery times should further improve outside the West Coast.

If you like programming and video games, then this could be the ideal job. GameFly is looking for an in-house web developer to work at its headquarters in Culver City, CA. They could have made the job description a lot more interesting by talking about the perks — I mean, are we talking first dibs on the latest games or at least free rentals while employed?

Gottaplay relaunched its website in March with the intent of becoming more community-oriented. A press release from May also went into detail regarding the new features which include allowing members to post comments on one another’s profiles, send buddy requests, send private messages and search for friends.

None of this seems revolutionary, nor is any of it apparent if you’re not a member. Most successful communities offer some features to non-members, or at least leverage their communities (i.e. forums) to attract targeted traffic from search engines. Why does Gottaplay hide it all behind a “walled garden”?

Here’s an interesting article about the “next big thing” in video content. It discusses the major media players and their recent moves and strategies, as well as disruptive technologies such as peer-to-peer (P2P). Of course, one of the biggest players in P2P is BEN, or the BitTorrent Entertainment Network, which recently went corporate-friendly and has agreements with studios such as 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros to distribute movies and TV shows.

Towards the end of the article, one of BEN’s founders is quoted as saying “You can rent movies, purchase TV shows and music videos, try out video games, and if you like them, you can purchase them.” Clearly, if BEN was widely adopted and major game developers were willing to give them comprehensive distribution rights, video game rental companies (given their current format) would be in trouble. Not to mention gamers are likely to be a prime segment for P2P adoption. Quite frankly, the whole concept of waiting to have a game cartridge shipped over the course of several days seems antiquated.

This is already old news, but GameFly is offering a free Wii or one year of GameFly services to members that encourage five friends to join. The advantage to posting this late is that I have been able to watch the “fine print” at the bottom of the promotion page change. First, it said your friends must be first time members that remain customers for at least one month. Well, that got gamed so now your friends must remain members “for a minimum of 2 monthly membership fee charges.” What did you expect?

I’ve come across GamingLessons on a couple of occasions. They offer professional video game coaching at what appears to be rates of $15 - $65/hr. The kid who started the business operates it out of his home in Jupiter, FL using a network of players, many of whom are in Major League Gaming. I’m not sure how they handle requests from different geographic locations other than hoping someone in the network is close by.

We made a post last month about a blogger receiving an e-mail from GameFly stating that an East Coast distribution center was being opened in Pittsburgh, PA, but there was no official word from the company. Now, an official press release is listed at their site. This is big for existing customers as well as rental prospects located on the East Coast.