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Is Blockbuster playing a game of “too little, too late” with games by mail?

by: Dan -
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Blockbuster announced today that they are FINALLY offering game rentals through their mail order services. They are promising access to 3,000+ titles with a starting rental oackage of $8.99 a month with unlimited games per month (presumably one title at a time out).

With GameZnFlix defunct since 2008, Blockbuster is touting that they are the only mail subscription service that offers games, movies and TV shows for home delivery througha single subscription. The thing is, they are right. The problem is, they should have been doing this about 4-5 years ago instead of sitting on their hands while GameFly, Netflix and GameZnFlix took away their business.

The release says to head over to blockbuster.com/gamesbymail to get more information, but someone must have forgotten to tell their webmaster, as the site isn’t coming up. Either it can’t handle the traffic, or there is some other major issue. Regardless, that is kind of an auspicious beginning for a company that got into the game a few years too late.

EDIT DAN  The Blockbuster site finally came up, but was extremely slow to load...

Blockbuster Adds Games to BLOCKBUSTER® By Mail Service

DALLAS, Aug. 10 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Today Blockbuster® (Pink Sheets: BLOKA, BLOKB) announced the addition of games to the BLOCKBUSTER® By Mail offering. Customers now have access to more than 3,000 titles for Xbox, Xbox 360, PS3, PS2 and Wii through BLOCKBUSTER's By Mail subscription service, and popular and classic games can be delivered to their home. Blockbuster is the only entertainment company to offer rentals of games, movies, and TV shows for home delivery through a single subscription service.

Customers can now rent thousands of games for no additional charge through their BLOCKBUSTER By Mail subscription in addition to the thousands of movies and TV shows already available. New customers can start renting games for a little as $8.99 per month with no limit on the number of games rented in a month.

"The addition of games for our BLOCKBUSTER By Mail customers – from families looking for entertainment experiences they can enjoy together, to serious gamers – is yet another convenient way to access entertainment content from Blockbuster," said Kevin Lewis, Senior Vice-President, Digital Entertainment. "This enhanced offering supports Blockbuster's multichannel strategy and shows our commitment to being the leading provider of home entertainment content," said Lewis.

Customers will appreciate the simplicity of online video game rentals, the ability to manage game and movie content together through one subscription, and the great value of doing both with Blockbuster. Customers can keep games for as long as they want with no late fees as long as they remain a subscriber, and have multiple games out at a time, based on their BLOCKBUSTER By Mail plan. Game content will be managed through the same queue that is used to order movie content for home delivery through Blockbuster Online.

More information about BLOCKBUSTER By Mail, including gaming content, is available online at blockbuster.com/gamesbymail.