Why is the game rental industry dying?

Ok, so i have been renting games since 95 when i was a kid. It was the to only way to play new games often back them with out spending a fortune (also i was 5 and had no control over it). When i got old enough, ie the ps2 days, i rented games to beat them. If i never got to finish them, i then considered them as a game to own, because length wise, i would get the most money out of my purchase, and playing the full game already allowed me to make an informed decision, (okami is a prime ex).  Now, i buy more games but i still rent a lot.  
 
Online,  i learned that i am in the minority. Rental services are dying. And i wonder why that is the case. I wonder what has changed  to make the business die. With the mantra that  8-12 hrs of game is good. I would assume those of us who know this, would rent the game once or twice and just go thru the game. You are not spending 60$ and trading it in immediately afterwords for 30$ only to see it sold for 50$. It behooves me to see used sales sky high and rental business going down. I mean if u look at movies, ppl prefer to rent then own, while movies are not as complex or time consuming, the habit is there. One day we will move to digital games, and unless onlive takes off and rentals live on in that system, i see the inexplicable death of renting. 
 
Now for stupid stuff: 
-I understand games under 15$ are worth 60$, its not about length but girth.... i mean quality. I own metal gear solid 3 subsistence. I rented it and beat it. But i loved that game sooo much, i had to own it. Therefore i bought it.  
-Remember, i am asking why rent businesses are not  flourishing instead of used businesses.  
- I know that rentals are pretty much dead when systems go digital. I am talking about about the present and knowable future(ie right now there is no ps4 with cloud gaming)

Netflix killed all the video stores, that's why. The empire that is Redbox is attempting to bring back game rentals now, though.

Theres also development preasure to stop rentals and sell backs. It eats into their profits in the long term. Thats why every game has multiplayer now and project 10 dollah.

The availability of demos?

Some people just like to own this stuff, I know i do. Haven't rented in years and when i do it's a one off seperated by years since the last rental.
 
Don't trade in either. I like to keep my game collection..no idea why.

Demos probably helped kill rentals

With the whole Redbox thing coming in, I don't think its dead at all. 

I haven't rented a game in about 8 years. I think it's because my local game rental store closed down and I couldn't be bothered making the effort to go further into town to rent a game. I ended up realising (just as the 360 came out) that I could buy PS2 games cheaper than it cost to rent them and that kept me satisfied. Nowadays, I can just go to my game store and buy games for a fiver or less so if I'm feeling really cheap I can still buy a new game.

Gamefly still seems to be chugging along.  I had a membership there for three years and only recently cancelled because I wasn't using it enough.  Games I rented would languish on my shelves only to have me spend a few hours with them before shipping them back.  From what I understand, one of the problems is that each rental copy of a game must be purchased while licensing agreements with film studios allows some "for rent only" copies to be made.  Additionally, extra BD or DVD movies can be returned to their wholesaler while that is not the case with video games.  This means that being a video game renter is a bigger risk financially than becoming a movie renter. 
 
Local rental is dropping out because there are fewer and fewer video stores to rent either from.  Not just Netflix, but Hulu, Movies-on-Deman, and even XBL/PSN offer movie rentals that don't require you to leave the house.  Redbox might have some success because they direct their service toward a very casual market.  I don't mean "casual gamer", I mean someone who doesn't see the benefit of joining a subscription service or doesn't have access to the internet on a regular basis.  Since they seem to be in every Wal-Mart, they've penetrated into the consumer awareness.  If they do some advertising like "Now with Call of Duty Black Ops" that awareness could improve to where even avid gamers will try out the service.

Blockbuster is still up here in Canada.  I rent almost all my console games.  Their monthly plan is a bit more then gameaccess (gamefly thing in Canada).  But I think it's worth it, I can get the big titles at midnight release, and the rest when they open at 10am.   And when I finish one it only takes 10 min to trade it off for another.  Compared to waiting days for the mail services.   Only issue I have is that they sell most of the games over 2 years old to make shelf space for the new ones.
 
The problem with the American blockbusters, from what my friends have told me.  Is that they don't get enough games in because there aren't enough people renting from them because they don't get enough games in.

As people already have mentioned: Netflix and easy access to demos. I read a lot on these forums about people renting games but personally the only game I've ever rented was some title for the original Xbox, which is a long time ago. I don't even know of a place where I live(in Sweden) where it's possible to rent games.

I prefer to own things.

Also, I believe in paying the creators of a product that I am using. It's the same reason I don't buy bootleg movies.

Because of online codes and demos. We're passed the 90s y'all

I know a person who "rents" games from Gamestop by purchasing a used game and returning it within a week or so and getting some or all of his money refunded. Maybe more people are doing stuff like that? I don't know.

Personally I just prefer owning games. Every now and then I like to play games I haven't touched in years so it's nice having instant access to them. It feels wrong inserting a disk into my console that so many other people have used before me, I don't know where that thing has been! I'm super uncomfortable even buying games used, I haven't done that in years. My friends like to ridicule me for that, apparently that isn't normal anymore or something...

And yes, I've been playing games long enough that it is fairly easy to just go off reviews, demos, or footage to judge whether or not I want to play a game. If all else fails, well, Steam or Amazon will probably have it for 75% off some time down the road, at which point it's probably cheaper than renting anyways.

 
I just enjoy buying things more than renting them, even though im most of the time, a cheapscape.

buying used is cheap if you wait.

I prefer purchasing my games but recently started a gamefly account and i have really enjoyed it.  I am definitely leaning more to the renal market than buying new especially with the ease of gamefly or blockbuster by mail services.

I use Gamestop with their no-questions asked used policy to see if I want a game. If I don't take to the game in 7-days I return it. If I do (or beat it) I buy it. Sure their prices are really high, usually being more than I'd pay new at Amazon, but if I'm unsure of a title, it's worth the premium to allow for returns.

I usually buy new and sell them back (if I don't want to keep them) for $35. It takes me 2-3 weeks to beat an 8-12 hour game and renting for that amount of time would cost me $20-30 anyway. I don't care if they sell it for $50, they have to pay an electric bill after all.

I'm an adult with a real job, so money isn't so much the issue, I'm just impatient and refuse to go to Blockbuster every day waiting for a copy of Alice to be turned in. I tried Gamefly and its even worse because nobody HAS to bring them back. I waited 5 months to get Donkey Kong! I could've bought it for $15 by then.

It has yet to start in Norway.

Not dying, more like evolving. Brick and mortar stores are becoming less common for many kinds of businesses. We're entering a more and more digital era as time goes by.

@Xerxes8933A: Umm... Blockbuster Canada is doing worse than Blockbuster in America. Most of the Blockbusters in the country are having clearance sales right now, and will be closed completely very soon.

@FreakAche said:

@Xerxes8933A: Umm... Blockbuster Canada is doing worse than Blockbuster in America. Most of the Blockbusters in the country are having clearance sales right now, and will be closed completely very soon.

What province are you in?  News to me and my Friend who works at the one I go to.

Becuse renting a game is just as bad as pirateing it

Gamefly is still alive and well.

I don't know videotron doing well still. Blockbuster on the other hand....

@weeman105 said:

Not dying, more like evolving. Brick and mortar stores are becoming less common for many kinds of businesses. We're entering a more and more digital era as time goes by.

Exactly. The rental industry isn't dying, its just moving online. Even if Blockbusters were still around, their selection and prices were atrocious.

The worst thing about movie and game rental stores dying is the terrible selection Canadians will be left with. In the city I live in, we've already had Rogers Video. a chain, close down both franchisees, and the two Blockbusters left are the only thing between the complete digitization of rentals in the city.

The thing too many people in the United States are quick to dismiss is the lack of online rental access in Canada. Everyone from America will quickly say "We have RedBox, we have Netflix, we have Gamefly, we don't need you rental stores, DIE DIE DIE." Canadians don't have Gamefly, and a tiny amount of RedBoxes that are only in large urban centers. We have a Netflix that is 1/20th of the selection, if that. We have Zip.ca for movies, a service that only offers DVD rentals, and not an established or overly fast service at that. We have GameAccess, a Gamefly clone with a review base that complains about new title access being extremely limited. Not to mention the overarching problem Canada has with threats of Usage-Based Billing, and absurd caps from ISPs who are at monopolization in many rural and smaller urban communities, prohibiting any Netflix or Onlive services from being a future option for those without fairly high data plans. Maybe it'll get better, but hell, it doesn't really look like it will.

The visceral thrill of browsing through a selection of games and movies on a shelf isn't just the best experience for Canadians. It's oftentimes the only experience we can get, if we expect selection. Those in the GTA could have extremely different experiences from myself, but the GTA represents nowhere near the population of Canada.

@garrettpinkney said:

The worst thing about movie and game rental stores dying is the terrible selection Canadians will be left with. In the city I live in, we've already had Rogers Video. a chain, close down both franchisees, and the two Blockbusters left are the only thing between the complete digitization of rentals in the city.

The thing too many people in the United States are quick to dismiss is the lack of online rental access in Canada. Everyone from America will quickly say "We have RedBox, we have Netflix, we have Gamefly, we don't need you rental stores, DIE DIE DIE." Canadians don't have Gamefly, and a tiny amount of RedBoxes that are only in large urban centers. We have a Netflix that is 1/20th of the selection, if that. We have Zip.ca for movies, a service that only offers DVD rentals, and not an established or overly fast service at that. We have GameAccess, a Gamefly clone with a review base that complains about new title access being extremely limited. Not to mention the overarching problem Canada has with threats of Usage-Based Billing, and absurd caps from ISPs who are at monopolization in many rural and smaller urban communities, prohibiting any Netflix or Onlive services from being a future option for those without fairly high data plans. Maybe it'll get better, but hell, it doesn't really look like it will.

The visceral thrill of browsing through a selection of games and movies on a shelf isn't just the best experience for Canadians. It's oftentimes the only experience we can get, if we expect selection. Those in the GTA could have extremely different experiences from myself, but the GTA represents nowhere near the population of Canada.

In all honesty though, how is anyone in America supposed to know about those problems and why should they care? Yea, it sucks that Canadians have such limited options, but why should Americans care?

@DivineCC: Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying people in America are supposed to know about content choices in other countries.

On one hand, it's a pet peeve of mine that people don't care about a country that is massively affected by consumer choices from their own, and that's a personal thing. On the other hand, however, internet regulation and access is the number one issue to the telecommunication between human beings in the future. It could very well be that the shift of one country with regards to increased traffic and accessibility to the internet could heavily influence another country, and help them tremendously towards a similar increase, but with a governmental inability to regulate monopolization tactics, in the present, and seen in previous telecommunications industries, it is more likely that the problems we have in Canada, and the issues with net neutrality in the United States, point to a more inaccessible internet for the end user in the future.

All I'm saying is that in an era where internet growth is inevitable, but internet access that includes these services is not, due to greed from ISPs, more choices, including those in the "meatspace", to use a gross term, are important. The Blockbusters shouldn't be waved away, personally, because I like going to them, and more importantly, because the United States could probably do well with more choices as to how they access content in this atmosphere. We have limited options in Canada now, but what if we're just a microcosm of a government's inability to hold the reins steady on a regulated oligopoly?

Outside of that concern, there's no way I should expect you to care about us canucks, just don't yell at me for not watching Deep Space Nine. It's never coming to Canadian Netflix. D:

my country never had game rental, so it was always a pet peeve of mine when people say "this game is a rental", which to me became "this game is to be bought at half price". Still, i didnt know game rental was dying, if i could rent most of these 5-8 hour games, i would (espcially since i dont play multiplayer)

Demos, Gamefly, used game sales, and now redbox.

There's plenty of reasons. Gamefly's doing just fine, too. I used to use it, but I found I prioritized the bad games I rented with Gamefly over new purchases I'd make of really good games.

i like to buy my games. demos are starting to come out, and pass codes are an attempted to stop rentals. demos are like 15 minutes of a game. pass codes to play online are starting to come out from them. rental places don't have them, it cost like $15 for one. 
 
playing games online are starting to be the thing for most games now. single player is like 5 hours and then multiplayer is played.

It mostly has to do with a lack of availability of places to rent games, as well as project $10 (I know, I hate this term to, but there isn't another way to say it). With the disappearance of video stores, most people simply don't have a place to rent games. Add that to the fact that GameFly is generally not held in very high regard, and you start to get the picture. Project $10 also discourages rentals by limiting online functionality or locking out content to people who don't buy a new copy of the game. I am really curious to see if Redbox game rentals work out because I haven't had a place to rent games for a good long time.

Gamefly and Netflix helped kill off rental places (blockbuster for example) but now Redbox is trying to get it back. Also i believe demos give people (sometimes) a really good taste from a game and they instantly buy it however if the demo is bad people flat out ignore it and don't even want to rent it. 

there's something about building a collection that's attractive to me, kind of like I have a library of great books to choose from whenever I want. Plus if a friend of mine is interested they can play my games rather than going out of their way to find some old one they can't find.

I had Gamefly account for about 5 months, then I realized that for $17 a month, I could just buy the game I was spending a month to beat, instead of renting it. 

 It's weird. I haven't rented a game in at least 4 years (and that was a random exception), but even with the local Blockbuster and Hollywood video stores closing down there are still some random local places that allow for game rentals. My local Play 'N Trade, perhaps to enunciate the fact that its selection is complete and utter garbage like the rental selections of yore (Like, catastrophically bad. Their SNES and N64 selections consist entirely of sports games and a $25 copy of Super Mario Kart. Because price gouging), rents out games. I've secretly been hoping for their doom for a while, but I think they've actually been doing pretty well for themselves by preying on people who don't know anything about games. 
 
*Ahem* So anyways, Renting is dying because brick and mortar stores are dying. Gamefly is still around though, and they do well for themselves even though I've heard nothing but mixed-negative things about them. That, and even when I rented games as a kid (because, let's face it, game renting was last viable when we were children without much income) the selection was always abysmal. Good riddance I say.

There are more games I want to buy and keep than games I just want to rent.

I have killed the game rental industry single handed.

Personally, I just have more money than I did as a kid. Also, buying games is cheaper in a way because it's easier to trade them back in. Also, used games are cheap and easy to get.

Games being multiplayer based killed game rentals.  Most popular games are either Online, or lengthy enough to constitute purchase

@super2j said:

Ok, so i have been renting games since 95 when i was a kid. It was the to only way to play new games often back them with out spending a fortune (also i was 5 and had no control over it). When i got old enough, ie the ps2 days, i rented games to beat them. If i never got to finish them, i then considered them as a game to own, because length wise, i would get the most money out of my purchase, and playing the full game already allowed me to make an informed decision, (okami is a prime ex). Now, i buy more games but i still rent a lot.

The answer is in your story. Renting is generally something done by the young who can't afford to buy new games. As people age, the rental model generally moves into one of owning. While you still rent, you yourself buy more.

Taking that idea and apply it to the video game industry as a whole. The demographic of who plays games is getting older every year. The primary age is somewhere in the 30's if I remember the last survey I read. Gamers are now much more buyers than we are renters, simply because we're older.

I like keeping my games, it's that simple. 
I don't want to have to get calls from a shop reminding them that the game I'm playing and enjoying has to be returned. 
I also don't spend a fortune as I buy almost all my games Used. In fact, I think I've bought (myself, not received as gifts) maybe 2 or 3. Modern Warfare 2... Gears of War 2... damn. Nah I really haven't bought any games New immediately after release in ages, and I don't think I've ever pre-ordered a game other than MW2 and, recently, Uncharted 3.