So i was at my local rental store to see if sould calibur 4 was in. They had only two copies for ps3 and both were out. So i was thinking how many other people are out there trying to rent a popular game like sc4 are in the same situation as i am tonight.

Why haven't sony or microsoft started an online rental service for their videogames? They have rentals for movies and tv shows so why not for videogames as well? I think microsoft and sony would both make a killing on this kind of service. Sega was way ahead of its time when they came out with the sega channel:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_Channel

The main problem is the downloading of the videogame rental. Would take quite a while. Perhaps a streaming the videogame could work? I'm thinking this will happen in next gen consoles.

what do you guys think of this idea?

They could rig it so the rental will stop working in 3-4 days, but they know people will reverse engineer the games so they will get a full game for the price of a rental.

huh? They could do it just like the movie rentals. It disappears off your hard drive after a predetermined length of time. Sounds like a decent idea to me.

I'm with Corvin on this one. They might as well start printing money.

Sega Channel!? Pffft! Well over a decade before the Sega Channel, there was PlayCable and GameLine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayCable
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GameLine

They probably consider a demo to be enough of a "rental."

Besides, I don't know if they even want people renting games. I remember Nintendo was very much against it when it started with the NES. Like with used game sales, there's just nothing they can do to stop it.

Except with this method MS/Sony/Nintendo own a retail channel and developers could get a chunk of the rental pie unlike with Blockbuster. Plus this method would put a dent in Blockbuster rentals. People are going to rent, that's life I don't see why companies don't adapt to the times.

Bandwidth would be the biggest concern, followed by storage. PS3 games are what, 5-50 GB's in size? Wii has no real storage right now, and the XBox360 is somewhat limited.

If the US pipeline would improve greatly, and the next generation systems have addressed storage concerns, then I could see this idea working.

Plus with so many isps putting monthly caps on I don't want rentals filling up my cap everytime a new game comes out

I just sent off for red alert3for ps3 after reading some pretty good reviews about it (wiki , HM , 1up) and also watching a sample on youtube. Anyone else got it or got any other games in the Command & Conquer ??