jeffbase34

I signed up with Gamefly last week as part of my commitment not to buy new releases at full price and save money. But does going the rental route really equal savings? My in depth look should answer this question at the end of my month.

Gamefly trial plan - 16 a month for 2 discs at a time


5/30 - signed up online, I placed Red Faction Guerilla and Ninja Blade in my que


5/31 - no updates so I put an oldie, Godfather 2 in my que


6/1 - thrilled to find out RF2 and Ninja Blade both shipped. It helps if you select the PS3 version.


6/3 - Ninja Blade received. But not in the mood for a ninja game that night. I wanted to play more Oblivion. I usually only have one hour to game after work, gym, cooking supper and cleaning house!


6/4 - received RF2. Ran out of time last night, and could not game.


I'll keep posting updates. I hope to enjoy a long weekend digging deep into these games and getting my money's worth. We'll see.

PopcornTreeCt

You get your money's worth if there are a lot of games you want to play. There are for me now, but I don't want to go through GameFly again.

Michael Corvin

A lot of us tried them out a while back at the same time and shared our experiences here.

The only thing I notice so far about your post is that $16 is usually for 1 out. How long is your trial for 2 out?

jeffbase34

It's a month long trial then I get bumped up to $22 a month. You know Gamefly does these hoping people will forget to cancel when the trial is up. lol

Obviously, my biggest problem with rentals is time pressure. The last time I did the rental route, it ended up being more like trying out demos on a few games instead of acting getting to beat them. Plus, the turn around rate was really slow. Seems to be very much improved now!

nemein

It can be a very frustrating company to work w/ sometimes, especially if you are used to the quick turn around times from Netflix or Blockbuster. For the most part you can pretty much forget trying to time the releases as frequently either the shipping will take an extra day (or arrive a day earlier) or the release date changes and they'll get things early or late. They don't seem to stock a lot either so if you don't get a new release on that day more than likely it's going to be months before you see it.

With all that said though overall I still really like it. It has saved me a ton of money in titles I would have otherwise purchased and it's given me a chance to try some games I probably otherwise wouldn't have bothered w/. The discounts and sales are nice, along w/ the advertised "reward" plan usually 2-3 times a year they'll send out $10 off coupons (for items over $30 -- of course sometimes they jack the prices up a little before them but usually that has worked in my favor since it'll put a game above the $30 mark so I'm still saving money). I've also used the the "keep it" option several times too. It's nice to be able to get the game, play it, make sure it works and then get a nice/new case from them. Sometimes the timing of all this works out beautifully. For example I got Left 4 Dead on release week, so I know I was the first person to use the game, one of the $10 coupons came in and along w/ my 10% discount I payed something like $35 brand new

The best way to work it is to put a bunch of games in your Q that you want to try out and then just go w/ the flow. Try to order things to get the new releases when you can but if you don't, don't sweat it. Once you get into a pattern w/ the 2 out plan what usually works best is to have one game in transit to/from them while you are playing the other one. When the new one comes in ship the old one out. If you don't play that often or have a backlog of games you own then maybe doing the 1 out plan would work best. That way you can work on your backlog while the game is in transit.

Bottom line though is the fact they are really the only people out there doing this right now. I think I tried a place called Trigger Fingers several years ago and they were horrible.

nemein

They have added more shipping centers but shipping is still a hit or miss deal. Most of the time games will take 2 or 3 days (each way) but occasionally they can take up to a week, or will get "lost" until you email them about it then it usually turns up in a day or two.

jeffbase34

Thanks the tips. I think I'll play Ninja Blade this weekend and send it back. I will be curious to see how many games I get to play/beat in a month's time. Course if this thread gets more annoying than informative, please let me know.

FatTony

I've been on the one-game plan for a few months now and it's treated me pretty well. The main problem I've had is that when I choose to buy a new game, whatever game I have rented ends up sitting around for a few weeks (Prince of Persia was unplayed for almost a whole month while I plowed through RE5 and Resistance 2 has been collecting dust for almost 2 weeks since getting inFamous). But I've gotten a chance to play through a number of games that I would have either bought or skipped altogether, so that's a plus. The only real complaint I have is that with the one-game plan, the turnaround time has varied wildly from 4 days to a week and a half. Kind of annoying, but whenever that happens, I just throw on Rock Band 2 to fill the void.

PopcornTreeCt

This pretty much sums it up.

boredsilly

I hate it when I think of the gamefly service in terms of turn around time. However, the one out plan for $16 is $192 a year. If you give games a average price of $40, you make out about even if you rent 5 games a year, 6 if you average the price at $30.

That's no good, because you can always sell games once you are done with them to recoup some of your costs, but if you average a game a month, you make out like a bandit.

My only concern that keeps me from using the service is I don't think I would want to play that many games a year. I'm definitely not that heavy of a gamer anymore. So I could force myself to play more games, just because I can, or just continue to wait and buy the few games I'm interested in when they hit the sweet spot (less than $30) for me.

jeffbase34

6/5- 6/7 - Finally got around to playing the games. Thanks to Ninja Blade crappy save system, I repeated the first mission 3 times. The first main boss was pretty tough for a first boss. Spent about 5 hours gaming.

6/8 - sent Ninja Blade back

6/9 - wow Gamefly has already shipped me a new game, Infamous! If this level of service continues, I am sold.

pinata242

That's how they get ya.

Tuan Jim

Well I just started with them a week or two ago - a stack of backlogged games that I've been wanting to play but don't really want to pay for (particularly since I don't play online).

Naturally I started with CoD4 (since I've never played it). Think it shipped 5/29. Got it 6/1 - finished on 6/4 (2 evenings playtime - glad I didn't pay $40+ for it), shipped back 6/5. 6/9 received notification of arrival and shipment of my next game CoD WaW - should be here tomorrow.

Not a bad deal as far as I'm concerned. Already have some more FPS games, RE5, Left4Dead, adding some Lego games, and maybe some other older games like Culdcept Saga, etc.

nemein

It probably won't

carloslee34

i use fedex lol i bet you guys are like WTF

lordwow

You FedEx back your Gamefly games?

carloslee34

i do anything to beat the system

lordwow

You showed them.

carloslee34

As Richard Hamilton would say "YES SIR"

devilshalo

I just cancelled my Gamefly sub. I ended up only rotating thru the 4 games I own and usually play everyday and didn't bother with trying to complete ones I rented. Couldn't justify the price to try the few games that interested me.

dvdsteve2000

I've thought about joining for quite some time, but I have a great local video store that rents games. They have this deal where you pay $10/month and everything you rent is half price. Games are $6, so $3 for a game for 5 days isn't too shabby. I end up paying a bit more than Gamefly, but I get what I want when I want it, and I can always snag a game on release day. I'd say I usually rent 8 games a month, so that's $34, but like I said, I get what I want, so it's worth it to me. They also rent BluRay discs at $3.85/day ($1.92 with deal).

superfro

Family Video FTW! (I'm assuming, as that's the exact deal they do here, and I know they're all over the country.) And they get almost everything on the exact release day. They're pretty amazing.

dvdsteve2000

Yep, that's it. I love 'em, and it seems like the locals don't know Jack about games. It seems like the big new releases hang out on the shelves for a couple days sometimes, and I snagged the AC/DC code about a month after it was on the shelf. I guess I'm about the only one who watches release dates, lol.

superfro

We have three in town and I got the AC/DC code from one (which I gave away on here as I didn't care to have them) and two of my friends got the other two.

jeffbase34

6/14 - Received Infamous on Thursday. I was out of town all weekend. So far, I've only managed to beat one level on Red Faction, and my subscription is half over now.