GameFly expresses confidence as Netflix muscles in

@Warlock234
I don't think netflix will be as good as they used to be. Here's why: the streaming service sucks! There's hardly any good movies and they never put new tv shows, just the old ones.

I recently restarted my Gamefly membership (I quit because starting in 2010 they just never sent me any games on my list) and the service is still terrible. I have tons of old and new games alike on my queue and I never get sent any of them, often I have nothing out. I'll be canceling as soon as Netfl..err.. Qwikster gets their games worked out... even the Redbox down the street has some games in it I can rent.

Gamefly fails.

@jsx92 I wound up quitting Gamefly twice because they just never sent me the games in order on my list, whether they were "Available Now" or not. If Netflix can deliver a better service I'm happy to give them a try.

@jsx92

This...

I have been a Gamefly member on and for years. I have the same experience every single time. I live in NY so it is not like I am in the back county swamp land somewhere too far away from their warehouses. My Q is always around 5-7 games. I almost NEVER get any of the top 3 choices in my Q. Even when I have not yet received a game and one or two of the top 3 say Available right now or High Availability. The damn games still do not ship to me. When I take a screenie and send it to them and ask why these games don't ship I get a reponse saying that Gamefly whenever possible wants to ship to you from your nearest warehouse location. Meaning sure the game is available but we won't send it unless it is at the closest warehouse to you. My reply is always isn't it better to send me the game from the next closest one then to not send me nothing at all for a week? Then I cancel and wait a few months and try again ad naseum. I know for some people their system works well, definitely not for me though.

@Warlock234

i guess im one of the lucky ones, been with gamefly since 09 and i always get all of my games as soon as theyre released. I lived in NY and the pittsburgh hub supplies my games. What i do is send my game back on thursday so they can get it on saturday, they send the new game out on monday and i get it on wednesday. Works EVERY time.

@PedoJokerBear
live*

@PedoJokerBear

I live in Kansas City, MO, and my experience with GameFly is identical to PedoJokerBear.

You guys have to know how to use Gamefly. The only games you should have in your Q are upcoming releases and the 1 you want (depending on your plan). If you have only one game out at a time plan, then only the game you want should be in your Q. That way you get priority since it's the only game you want. Think about this way, if you have 3 games in your Q, then most likely they're going to send you the one they have most of. I had Gamefly for two years, never did I not get a game I wanted and that includes new releases the week of their release. I may have had to wait a day or two for older releases to ship sometimes, but that's expected.

@Mustang

Especially since they lost Starz! I read that means Netflix will lose close to 2,000 movies and tv shows come march.

@Mustang Fanboy I agree, Netflix is definitely slacking when it comes to fresh content, we have had Netflix for about a year or so maybe a bit longer, but we still have to use the local video store. Movies that have been out for 6 plus months rarely make it into the library.

I have had "The Road to Wellville" in my DVD queue since we have started the service, that is pretty sad. Netflix needs to spend some money and get more movies to both the DVD service and the Streaming service, and now that the service had divided, we'll probably be seeking a new service that offers more.

@Warlock234

I sincerely doubt that. Qwister is going to end up running into the same problems that GameFly has. The only way they won't is if they completely stock all or the majority of their distribution centers with tons of titles of the most popular games. That is just not going to happen because games cost more then DVD's and to do so would put a hugh deficit to their earnings for the period, which would be even more detrimental, especially with over a 50% decrease there stock has already taken over the past year.

Bottom line....I'm glad I dumped their stock when they were at near their peak.

@bamb0ostick Exactly! I had a one week turnaround for a game! That's 1/4 of the month that I'm paying for without an actual game in hand. I can't do that. If the new Netflix service is just as bad, I won't use that either. If it's as fast a turnaround as they have for movies, I'm all over it.

@MontEdZuma

I'm guessing they'll have the same level of service for games as they do for movies. Not sure how robust the selection will be, though...but it's gotta be better than Redbox, which is my only other current choice for renting games.

@bamb0ostick Their turnaround time for receiving returns is awful too. I sent a game back, my distribution center is in Pittsburgh and I know from where I live it only takes a day for things to come to or from the Burgh. Yet it took a whole week for them to supposedly receive it. Funny thing is, I reported it as missing and less than an hour later they emailed me to say that they miraculously received it. I suspect they had the disc but didn't process it, which is awful. I sent a Netflix disc back the same day and have gotten through two movies in the same amount of time it took Gamefly to receive one return.

With Netflix I always have movies sitting around I haven't watched yet. I send them back and there's new ones like two days later... it's insane.

Meanwhile I have two empty spots with Gamefly, and some games in my queue from 2006... and nothing for like a week. When you complain they send you copy-pasta about putting games in your queue earlier... arrogant jerks.

@MontEdZuma My understanding, is that Gamefly does this deliberately for a couple of reasons. The first reason being availability of the title. They can keep the number of copies per game that they have to purchase at a minimum, when they can space out how many copies they need to have out to subscribers at a time.

The second reason, is that the company is not as big as some people think they are. Games cost more than even blu-rays, and the audience smart enough to take advantage of Gamefly's money saving deals and service, is not all that large. I think Michael Pachter estimated a year ago, that the company had at best less than half a million distinctive users. I've heard from other sources that the whole operation is pretty much running by the skin of their teeth. And that having longer periods between game turnarounds, helps to pad the Gamefly's profits; fiscal padding they could not keep the company afloat without.

Have you noticed that even when you receive Gamefly service, even when you are not in the same state as a Gamefly distribution hub, they charge you your local (city/state) sales tax on your monthly service fee, and on any game you purchase from them pre-owned. How much are you willing to wager that your local township/county/state does not see a dime of those 'taxes' actually show up in their coffers?

I've known about this stuff for years and let pretty much let it slide, partially because I am a sucker for supporting small businesses, partially because Gamefly is the only game rental service left around (and I know a good deal when I see it), and partly because even with Gamefly skimming off the top the way they do, it is still one of, if not the absolute best deals in gaming.

But I have to admit, as a long time customer of both Gamefly and Netflix, Netflix getting into the video game rental game, is potentially a huge win for gamers (not so much for Gamefly). In all the years of using Netflix, I've never ever waited more than two days to get the next disc in my queue - in most cases, I've even gotten the disc within 24 hours. And never once in all the years of using Netflix have I ever been charged a bogus tax fee added to my monthly bill. Providing that Netflix, or Qwixter (I thought that name was being used by AmWay) prices are competitive, this is definitely a huge win for gamers . . . of course provided that enough gamers are actually smart enough to take advantage of the savings.

In all the years that GameFly has been out and been a national brand, it has not been able to grow beyond such a small userbase, because the majority of gamers either cannot do math enough to realize that GameStop is the biggest ripoff in gaming history, and they can cut their monthly gaming bill significantly by switching to GameFly, or they do not have the will power to make the switch even when they see the better deal. And it's not even switching to GameFly when you see they consistently offer more bang for buck, but it is switching to other retailers as well, like Walmart, or Amazon, or Best Buy. With an audience like that, an audience that has been trained like Pavlovian dogs for the want, the desire, nay, the NEED to get their games the day the games hit street date, video game rental by mail, may prove to be just as much a losing game for Netflix/Qwixter, as it has been for GameFly . . . and Red Octane . . . and Gamerang . . . and Game Mine . . . and GottaPlay . . . and just about everyone who has ever tried it before.

And I will admit, Netflix/Qwixter's timing to get into game rentals could not possibly be worse. With services like OnLive heralding the cloud gaming as the new de facto for game distribution (something we are going to see a lot of next gen with Xbox 3 and Playstation 4), the days of disc-based media, even among people who today swear they will never switch to cloud gaming, the days of the medium are numbered. Netflix should have gotten into this a decade ago, when there was still plenty of time to make billions at it. And it is not just the cloud gaming paradigm shift that is going to hurt disc-based rental systems in the near future, but it is also a newly refocused push by the FCC, and more importantly by Google, to bring no less than 100mbps as a minimum standard to every American home within a decade, that is going to drive the expansion of cloud gaming at a much faster pace than anyone is really considering at the moment. Five years from now, when cloud gaming is everywhere on every console (except Nintendo) and connected device, and when the national internet infrastructure is midway through the FCC's planned decade of improvements on the road to 100mbps for everyone, only the stalwarts and diehards are going to even care about getting their games on a disc. Even now, if you have an internet connection of 3mbps to 5mbps, OnLive, the startup in all of this, is looking great (considering they are not funneling billions and billions of dollars into this - yet). And while people are quick to state that 5mbps is too much of a blazing internet connection and that most people don't have it. The same people seem not to realize that Netflix has over 25 million instant stream customers, most of which whom are streaming Netflix in HD . . . and Netflix's HD stream sits between 5mbps and 8mbps. Which seems to indicate that even right now today, there are millions more internet savvy people out there with internet connections fast enough to be cloud gaming right now. Which only makes you wonder all the more, why is it only now that Qwikster is getting into game rentals? If anything, Netflix should be getting into cloud gaming, and adding it as part of their bundle of services.

@bamb0ostick
Gamefly is really reliable for me, how odd. I live in the LA area and I get my stuff shipped to me in a day. I've had them for over a year and I almost always get games when they launch too. I've had no problems with them, except this week when they decided to trade that one-day turnaround for a temporary six-day turnaround.

@Tachyonic Cargo: This post was excellent, thank you.

@Tachyonic Cargo

Quixtar is what Amway was calling itself in the US until they felt they could reemerge from their sinister lair without a DBA...

@onslaughtree

Man, you guys down in the states are so spoiled when it comes to media. Under $20 for all you can eat anything sounds like a pretty great deal to me.

I'm not saying it's a bad thing. I'm just saying I'm jealous.

@onslaughtree But that's just it. With the division of Netflix into two separate companies (Netflix for streaming, Qwikster for mailed DVD's and games) you won't be able to bundle streaming and games. It's this division of what was a consolidated service into two separate accounts with different sites and different billing that has pissed off so many customers. The addition of games to the mail service is a curious wrinkle in this mess, but since we have yet to see pricing or have any indication of their selection, I'm strictly in "wait and see" mode.

The Netflix service will probably be faster for us, I'm just outside the city in Poughkeepsie. N's nearest distribution center is right in White Plains. GF's is all the way down in Pittsburgh.

Where I'm at though, there are times when I have like a 3 day turnaround for GF games. Thank Jeebus for the "fast ship" function when the Post office checks it in.

@EvilCartographer but you still have time to read articles and post comments on a videogame blog...?

@SiN13

Exactly. I live in PA and most of the time my games are shipped out of their Pittsburgh distribution center and they still take forever. They want you to hold onto games forever. When you finish them in a couple days, Gamefly will intentionally make you wait over week before they claim to have received the games and an additional week before they mail you new ones.

@SiN13

It's interesting that this is still a problem. I had Gamefly back in maybe 2005 and I had these exact same issues, coupled with multiple "missing" discs, that made it seem like I was just flushing money down the toilet by using their service. On the other hand, I'm religious about managing my Netflix queue and have a very high turnover rate for my discs, so if they can manage to provide me the same level of quality that they have for the past 5 or so years, then I'll stick by them.

I mean, even with the price hike, separate streaming and disc bills, and games tacked on, it'll still be cheaper than the $95 a month DirecTV charges me for a service that I use rarely, if ever.

@HaVoK308 WORD!

I had similar problems:
Live on Long Island, NY. Ship games back from the city and it would take close to 2 full weeks until I got my next game. Having only the 1 game at a time plan meant I paid a full month's price for only 2 weeks of time with a game.

@mietha GamesNFlix went under, but when I had a subscription I thought they were great. It was around when they first started though, maybe it deteriorated after the first year or so.

@Mr Bungo

That is how people get new releases. Send back their game on Friday or Saturday before the Tuesday of a new release. It doesn't work all the time though. If you don't do that, it can take up to six months after release for you to get a new-ish game. I'm finally able to rent L.A. Noire just this week.

@Axtimusprime That's exactly what I was thinking. I can only imagine the price hikes in both netflix and gamefly when they ship using FedEx/UPS.