If Blockbuster pays $25-$40 per game, I would bet my left nut that they also pay a fee for every time they rent out the game to a customer.

That would probably be the case cause no retail store is paying that low of a cost for games. They barely make a profit on game sales, Blockbuster must have some sort of additional costs.


Got a Family Video around me that has 3 day rentals for $4. They have half price rentals all the time too as a promotion, so its only $2. A 5 day rental is $7...also eligible for the half-price when offered. Blockbuster sucks.

Blockbuster does do this quite a bit, mostly with movies though I think. It's how they can get about 200 copies of a title for rent on release week: they get cut a deal, pay a bit for each rental that goes out, and then decide if they want to buy the remaining copies to sell used or send back (which usually means a destroy). If you ever see someone standing at a counter putting discs into a loud little machine, it's not cleaning it (get asked a lot); it's destroying it.

Heres a little secret if you rent from Blockbuster. Sign up for their Blockbuster club thing for like 20$. Every five movies you rent you get a free Movie/ Game. Get one game a month for free and it pays off. You get a bunch of free coupons for older movies and stuff but its a good deal.

To clarify, the 'club' (rewards) actually costs $10, for a year. On top of the rent 5 get 1 free, ever Mon-Wed, pay for a rental and get a free older movie with it, and each month you get a coupon for a free older movie. It's not great, but for the games it's not bad. In my store you would pay $23 for the 5 movies before getting the game; if you do this right though you can get 11 movies for the $23 + 1 game, if you only rent Mon-Wed. If we count the games sort of like two movies (since they are twice as much), then $23/13 items averages $1.76/rental; even counting the game as one it's about $2/rental. But the selection is too limited for me, and hopefully you don't already have a back-cataloge of all the decent older movies. I would still rather pay $17 for NF or the new $16 for BB online-only plans.

Also, since I'm already writing so much, there are in-store passes for about $1 a day (2 movies at a time for $30/month, or 1 at a time for $22/month). The 1 at a time edges out rewards a bit since it's about the same price, although there is no free game, but you get your pick of the litter in the movies. Selection sucks compared to vast onlines of course, but it might be something to consider for those that don't like to wait and want brand new movies right away.