GameFly game availability made clearer

GameFly, the by-mail rental service, has updated their website to clearly state the probability of receiving the next title on your GameQ. Dave Hodess, CEO of GameFly, tells Joystiq, "We developed this new system because the old one understated how much inventory we have in stock. Every day, we had games marked unavailable and then received a tremendous number of them in the return mail. We would ship these immediately to those with open slots in their game queues. The new system will help our members make better informed choices about which games to put into their Q's and how to rank them."

Instead of saying "short wait" or "long wait" there will be an availability determination. Meaning that if the title you dropped in the mail is in the GameFly system as returned or in-transit, availability is how you know what will come next:

• Available Now: Game is in stock
• High Availability: 75 percent or greater likelihood of shipping today
• Medium Availability: 50 percent - 74 percent likelihood of shipping today
• Low Availability: 25 percent - 49 percent likelihood of shipping today
• Very Low Availability: Less than 25 percent likelihood of shipping today

The new system is expected to give customers a clearer understand of the actual availability of titles than the nebulous "short wait" which plagued the Xbox 360 category. This news, coupled with the imminent opening of an East Coast distribution center means that GameFly is solidifying its position as the game rental destination for those of us who don't have coffers full of cash to drop $60 per game.