Thursday, August 12, 2010

GameFly Eyes Blockbuster Games-By-Mail Program

Los Angeles-based video game rental service GameFly is seeing more competition from video rental firm Blockbuster this week, after its competitor announced that it is expanding its online movie rental service to include video games. Blockbuster--which had been running a pilot program covering video games since 2009--said this week that it will expand beyond Cleveland, Ohio and Seattle, Washington, and provide its own video game rental service to all of its customers. It's unclear if the move by Blockbuster into the videogame area will affect GameFly, as Blockbuster has already been fighting competitors on multiple fronts. Blockbuster is already under seige, with assaults from Netflix on the movies by mail rentals, and Redbox on the retail front. For its part, GameFly, which is queued up for an IPO, had said in its filings that it is able to provide "greater subscriber satisfaction" than its competitors, because of a broader and deeper selection of games and additional content it provides to videogame players. GameFly also has said, in its S-1, that is believes it has higher brand recognition in the category that others, including Blockbuster.