You know what, I don't know why we are having this disucssion.

The stores are dead but the brand might have some life in it providing other movie and gaming delivery services. Simple as that, move on.

1: Wait outside Gamestop

2: Scope out leaving customers and approach

3: Reveal firearm

4: ???

5: PROFIT!

Fixed

Even if you have to wait 3-4 months for certain games, $14/month is a darn good deal for the price. Mail-in rental services aren't perfect but they're pretty damn good for what little you pay for them. Even if I limited my playing time to an average of say a couple hours per day (say 14 hours/wk), buying games at $60 a pop on a regular basis would be pretty expensive. Especially if we're looking at short single-player games like Heavy Rain, God of War, VANQUISH,  etc. Enslaved and Castlevania: Lords of Shadow can't be that long either.

Yeah, there are quite a few games I want to try.

However, I signed up in hopes of getting several new games. Instead I'll just be playing some older games. Still a great value over all.

GameFly which is a tad pricier at $15.95/month for one game and $22.95/month for two games has a bit better turnaround. I was still a customer when Bioshock 2 came out and I received it in the mail the week it came out.However, this was an exception compared to past games, which had been at the top of my queue and did not arrive well until a month or two after.

Games by mail is not Netflix by any means. Each game in the mail company has a limited supply and an overdemand for the latest games. Contrary, Netflix (now with the streaming) does not run into the same issues because most of their customers are movie hounds who will not bitch over not getting the latest release, instead settling for one of the many thousands of older movies.

Honestly, I just don't believe a service like GameFly will ever be able to meet demand. Too much demand coupled with individuals holding onto the latest games for months on end severely limits their ability to meet their demand at an acceptable rate. This is the chief reason why I quit GameFly after 4 months. I kept on getting crappy filler games I placed at the bottom of my queue at a rate of 8 times out of 10 when I went to check my mailbox.

I dont know if Gamefly has this feature but the rental service I use here in Canada allows you to reserve games (extra $2/month) before they even come out so that you actually have a chance to get a game the week of it's release. I was able to get Fable III (a game of very high demand. But I did reserve a week in advance. I might not have had a chance if I reserved only the day before) this way today. They shipped it out when it came out and it arrived today just two days after release. Last week EA Sports MMA arrived just one day after release (I didnt have to reserve this well in advance because the demand was relatively low because Fallout: New Vegas hogged pretty much all the demand that week). If you don't reserve before release AND the game has high demand, you are fucked though. This is why it's a bitch for me to get stuff like Halo: Reach, Fallout: New Vegas, Dead Rising 2, Medal of Honor, etc. I didn't bother reserving these games before release (because I didn't care about them enough to reserve them in the first place, which is fine with me).

As for the filler games on the bottom of your queue, that shouldn't be much of an issue if you only put games you want to actually play in your queue. I know the frustration of putting filler games on there that you are less keen on and getting sent those games instead. I remember in the summer when I bought a PS3, I badly wanted to play Heavy Rain and had Infamous and FF13 high up on my queue too. But I didn't get those and got my lower ranked games instead. So I had to settle for PS3 exclusives I was less keen on (God of War III, White Knight Chronicles, Disgaea 3). Well it turns out I was bored by God of War III and Disgaea 3 (they are not my thing. I know these games have a lot of merit to their fanbases. But I couldn't get into these games) and while WKC was pretty good for me, it was far from my #1 rental of choice. So yeah, that irritated the hell out of me. But then I reserved Heavy Rain and got it no problem since the game was already like 5 months old then.

The fact that I actually had to reserve a 5 month old game just to get to play it is a joke. But Heavy Rain has a strong cult following and the rental place probably didn't stock much of it since it's not exactly that popular in North America. Popular enough to chart this years top 50 though I guess. But you know what I mean. It's not God of War III or Uncharted 2. So I can't blame the rental place. In order to keep costs low so that they can continue to offer their service for a cheap price, they can't order too many discs of each game. If you have a bunch of unrented games in stock, your business is fucked and you have to either sell the stock or raise subscription costs to compensate.

Overall Gamefly and other such services are useful if you have realistic expectations about what they can offer you. Remember, you get what you pay for. For $23/month (and especially not Blockbuster's $14/month), you can't expect the kind of convenience that you get when you pre-order/buy Day 1 from a store for $60. On the flip side, buying games regularly at $60 and then trading the games back at half value or less to GameStop is expensive (reselling on eBay is better but less convenient. I have a lot of games I want to sell on eBay but I'm nervous about the possibility of getting screwed by dishonest eBay purchasers out there and having to deal with conflict resolution headaches). It's one thing if you buy say one game a month and resell those games. But it's not unusual for guys I meet in RL even (not just geeky forums like this) to buy $60 games from GameStop several times a month.

Well it's just a matter of how long you want to wait. I would wait a couple months to play a couple games for cheap.

LoveFilm is unfortunately the same with Movies and games. I gues there's really no choice but to just live with it :(

At this moment, BlockBuster is the only company that provide games and movies for one price.  In other words, if you have netflix, for whatever you pay you can only get movies.  With the new blockbuster online, with your sub you can get a movie or game for the same price.  If or when Blockbuster gets the steam service, then they would be the only company to provide all three services for one price.  This can be huge and gain blockbuster back their customer base if executed successfully.