Have you ever had one of those “Why don’t we have these?” daydreams?  I know I have.  I almost universally ignore them and wait to watch someone else make a truckload of money from them.  In a previous career, I worked in the video/game rental industry.  I started from the bottom and worked my way up so I have a pretty good grasp of the ins and outs of what makes and costs money when running a rental store.  Read on to find out what my daydream was related to and who is making their truckload of money from the same idea I had…The biggest expenses in running a rental store are clearly rent and labor.  Both of these have been minimized with the latest craze of Red Box vending machines and their various copycats.  See, back in the day, long before DVD was the norm, I heard the stories of all the oddball things the Japanese were doing with vending machines and vending machine storefronts.  I imagined a completely automated VHS tape rental kiosk, which as the industry transitioned to DVD became an automated DVD kiosk eliminating the pesky issues of rewinding movies and munched tape/tracking issues.

Now that DVD rental kiosks are getting the be the norm (heck, I have them in every McDonald’s and half the grocery stores in my area) it’s only natural to extend that to games and GameFly seems to be testing out that very notion.  The biggest issue when moving to games is the much higher cost of the discs.  You’re looking at a $60 (retail) disc versus $15-$20 for movies.  Since all these machines operate with the requirement that you have a valid credit card, my guess is that any issue immediately results in you getting charged for the game in question with the possibility of getting a refund being handled by customer service once things are sorted out… “Yes sir…  I’m sure it was a complete accident that you rented Killzone 2 and returned Barbie’s Horse Adventure in the disc sleeve… it happens all the time!”

These kiosks take up virtually no space, there are virtually no labor costs, there is virtually no cleaning required, there are no uniforms to buy, there is very little equipment to maintain (compared to an entire retail store,) there are no scheduling issues with the staff, they’re usually available 24/7 unless they’re located in a store that isn’t open all the time, etc.  The only real upkeep is a person coming by a couple times a week to restock and clean the machine.  With RedBox at least, you can return movies to any RedBox, not necessarily the one you rented from, therefore stock levels sometimes need to be adjusted in addition to older titles being rotated out to make room for newer titles.

Beyond rentals, I would hope GameFly tests selling both new and used games via their kiosk.  It’s no stretch to see local kiosk accounts tied to online GameFly accounts and the appropriate discounts applied to long-time customers in good standing.  Would you rather pay $55 for a used game at a GameStop store or $30 from the kiosk at McDonald’s?  Let me see now… pay more… have to enter a store staffed with confident (yet largely incompetent) people…  or remain anti-social, save a bunch of money, and yes… get some fries with that.  That’s a tough one!

So RedBox, GameFly, whoever else is looking to make their mark in vending machines rentals/sales…  good luck with my idea (lol, like I was the only one with the idea!) If you maybe see fit to toss me a free rental every once in a while I’d appreciate it.  Also… if I ever do happen to return Barbie’s Horse Adventure, please know it was an accident.