Blockbuster: Publishers giving "an awful lot of support" to boost rental over pre-owned

Blockbuster's said in an interview with MCV that publishers are offering "an awful lot of support" to dismantle the pre-owned games market.

Blockbuster said that it's upgraded its rental side of business with publisher blessing.

"We have ramped up the rental side of our business and we have got an awful lot of support from publishers," said Blockbuster commercial director Gerry Butler. "Publishers like renting as it takes away from trade-ins.

"The problem with trade-ins is the publisher doesn't get any money. The advantage of renting is that they get quite a lot of money."

Blockbuster charges customers £5 to rent a game for five nights. For anyone wanting to buy the game after renting, the rental fee is deducted.

"Take Q4, there must be at least 35 major games out," Butler said. "You physically can't buy them all. But you'd like to play them all. So we have put together a very cost-effective way for consumers to play games."

Blockbuster also offers a monthly subscription service for £7.99 or £9.99. The first one allows customers to rent one game at a time, while the latter allows two.

It plans to lure more customers to rent games by doing expensive television advertising campaigns between Champions League football matches and episodes of X Factor.

Thanks, Eurogamer.