Archive for January 11th, 2007

GameFly

Thursday, January 11th, 2007

A little before New Years, I signed up for Gamefly.com, which is pretty much Netflix for video games. I bought myself a Nintendo DS for Christmas and the games can add up pretty quickly, so I wanted to try some of them out before I plunked down such a big chunk of money on them. What if they sucked?
Now, I love Netflix. I’m on the three-at-a-time plan, although I really ought to up that again. I’m rather unimpressed with Gamefly so far. First of all, I think it’s too expensive. I can have two games at a time, and it costs more than my Netflix. They have a 10 day free trial, but I didn’t even receive my first games until day 6. With shipping like that, there’s no way I’d be able to keep up a kind of turn around that would be anywhere near cost effective. Especially if it’s a game I end up liking and would like to get a little bit of play time in before I send it back.
One thing that I do like about the site is that they have a “keep it” option that Netflix doesn’t have. Netflix will let you purchase movies from them, but so far I haven’t seen an option to keep what you already have at home. Not all games are for sale, but if you have one that is, you simply click “keep it”, they’ll charge the credit card they have on file, and ship the new case and instruction booklet to you within 3-5 days.
What I don’t like, though, is that I did choose the keep it option on one of the games I have at home. They processed the purchase, and shipped my case (to arrive in the next couple of days), but as of two days later, they still haven’t sent out my next game. I’d hate to see what kind of turn around they’d have if I got a game that didn’t work– Netflix will get my next selection ready for shipment as soon as they receive the report.
So I’m not impressed with Gamefly so far… I’m probably going to stick with it for a little while longer just to try some of the other games on my list, but then I’m going to cancel. Are there other similar sites out there that someone has experience with?

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