In this increasingly digital age, the notion of actually getting up off the couch to go rent a movie is becoming an increasingly foreign concept. With Netflix, iTunes and all sorts of other modern conveniences, old brick and mortar dinosaurs, like former rental mogul Blockbuster, are slowly going extinct.
The franchise has been in trouble for a while, and signs of its impending bankruptcy has been looming for months. With Netflix set to expand its service North of the border to Canada, Blockbuster entered Chapter 11 in order to give itself a little more time to remodel in order to better meet the demands of the current market. It may be too little too late for Blockbuster, and with its potential demise passes one more sign of a bygone age.
Thinking about Blockbuster going bankrupt and the increasing frequency at which I download my games directly has me remembering the gaming days of my youth where a trip to the local Blockbuster occurred about once every week to see if there was a new game for rent. On my allowance, I couldn’t afford a new title constantly, so renting one for a short period of time seemed like a good trade off. So, I have a question for you guys: do you still rent video games from a store, or do you get your rentals via GameFly or a similar service? When was the last time you actually rented anything, be it a game or a movie, from a store?
Source – Bloomberg
Rooster Teeth made a valid point on their podcast about this, saying that they deserve to go bankrupt because they failed to innovate and address Netflix, Gamefly, and Red Box while they were in their infancy.
Gamefly all the way across the sky!
SK is right, though “deserve” to go bankrupt is a little harsh. The last thing we need is more people losing their jobs.
I am Canadian, so Blockbuster was a frequent place to rent movies when I was younger. Once Digital Cable became “common” and not “luxury”, they kind of disappeared from my thoughts, since I could hit a button and rent any new release for $4.99 digitally. I haven’t rented a video game in probably 8 or 9 years. I started building PC’s, then learned about demos (which consoles never used to have unless you bought/subscribed to magazines) etc etc.
I’m not sorry for them. I do almost everything digitally. If a company can’t grow, they collapse. The real problem here is capitalism; nothing more, nothing less.
I definitely dislike not being able to rent a game directly. While services like Netflix and Gamefly make life a breeze for renting (queue up a bunch of stuff, no return dates, etc), there are those of us who can’t get a subscription (for various reasons.)
While Blockbuster could’ve done something to save themselves, it’s a shame they got shoved aside so badly. Unless Netflix and/or Gamefly start having renting terminals, then I’m stuck just not playing the game for years (I still haven’t played Read Dead Redemption….)
A shame, but if they weren’t going to acknowledge the danger online distribution posed to them then they brought this upon themselves. Their own fault.