Video Game Rental Online, A Guide

By Shane | July 20, 2006

It dawned on me today that you can rent games online now, not just movies. I tried an online movie service here in Canada once called Zip. It was pretty good but at the end of the week I had so many movies and very little time to watch them. They still don’t have a game rental feature but maybe that will change. I thought I would investigate if renting a game online was really worth it. Would you save money? Would you get the game you wanted within one week or would you have to wait longer. Is it a good service to have? These are all questions I had so I decided I’d look into what’s out there and believe me there’s a lot, judging by the list.

If you’ve never rented a movie or a game online what usually happens is you’ll have a queue of games in your account and the company keeps sending you another game when you return the one or multiple games you currently possess. They will most likely include a self-adressed, paid envelope so you don’t have to pay for the shipping. It will take 3-4 business days to get a game and another 3-4 days for the company to recieve the game you’re returning.

I’m also asking people with a poll if they use an online game rental service to see if it’s a popular trend these days. Are gamers willing to wait for that hot new rental game to come in the mail or is this service just good for the older genres. I’ve composed as many websites that I could find here in North America and here they are in no particular order after the poll:

Gamefly is one of the bigger online game rental services in the US. Gamefly has just about every current and next-gen console category for rent. They’ve even jumped the gun with a PS3 and Wii games section, but of course no games yet to show. You can rent 1 Game out for the first month at $9.95 and then $14.95 US per month there after. They claim no late fees but I’m sure they’ll be calling your cell if you have a game for months at a time. Besides you wouldn’t be able to rent another game unless you return the game you already have. Surprisingly they don’t rent PC games, which leads us to the next game rental website:

Games Mania, which is owned by Bell Canada, only rents PC games online. They have over 75 top quality games for $14.95 Cdn per month. If you’re a Sympatico customer it’ll only cost you $6 Cdn per month.

Game Access (Canada only) which looks like they “borrowed” Zip’s site design is another online game rental service that delivers to your door. For one game out at a time they’ll charge you $16.95 Cdn per month. They compare their prices with tangible stores like Blockbuster to show you that their fees are less. Like Gamefly, they too have all the latest and upcoming console games available.

Rent Zero carries a lot of newer games and charges $14.94 per month with a 14 day trial. For now they only rent games for the PS2, XBOX, GAME CUBE, XBOX360, PS3 and Wii.

Yahoo has jumped on the online game rental wagon. They only offer downloadable PC games and you pay $10 for 3 games per month or $15 a month for an unlimited amount of games. I didn’t seem to see many newer popular PC games, only popular games from the past.

GameznFlix does it all. You can rent Movies, books, audio books and of course games. They charge as little as $8.99 per month.

Numbthumb (nice name) rents games delivered to your door for $19.95 per month for two games at a time. They too offer a 14 day trial in case you feel like you don’t like the whole idea of renting games online.

GPlay Rents unlimited games for $14.95 per month with no late fees. They seem to carry the newer games and have just brought XBox 360 games on board.

Gamelender has games for most systems and go buy a 3 tiered package deal anywhere from $19.99 for 2 games at a time to $34.99 for 5 games at a time.

Gamerang has a nice site and keeps up with the latest game trends. They rent anywhere from $14.95 for 1 game out at a time per month to 4 games out at $39.95

Red Octane will not only rent the usual but Dreamcast and
PSP games too. You can start renting from them for $18.95 per month

Gotaplay is in the know. They rent out for most systems plus the PSP and even PSP UMDs starting at $12.95 per month.

In closing, there are probably more of these services out there as I’ve just covered North America and I most likely didn’t catch all of them here either. My whole reasoning for this is to see if renting a game online and waiting 3-4 days for it to arrive was really worth it. Are gamers willing to wait that long for the ease of use? The answer is in the poll.