Posts Tagged ‘gamefly’
Konami bringing Monster Finder to the US?
In early September we were notified that Alpha Unit’s Monster Finder was to be the first ever Nintendo DSi exclusive title on the market. However, there was no word on when, if ever, the game would be hitting North American Shelves.
However, a recent listing on GameFly’s website has let us know that Konami will be publishing the game in January 2010. Is this to be believed? Well, GameFly is a pretty credible source but until Konami, or anyone involved, says something there
USPS worker steals over 2000 GameFly games
This will certainly add to the ongoing battle between GameFly and the United States Postal Service: a USPS worker has been caught and admitted in court that he stole over 2200 GameFly discs from his workplace.
The man was busted after surveillance showed test mailing of fake discs disappear during his shift, and found 170 discs in his SUV. It was later discovered that he was apparently trading the discs at the local GameStop.
GameFly files more complaints against the USPS
GameFly filed a complaint against the United States Postal Service back in April where it accused the USPS of favoring Netflix and Blockbuster mail, and overall treating the GameFly mail with little care. This time, GameFly is complaining about “Netflix only” post boxes set up around the country, and has filed a petition of information regarding the matter. GameFly also elaborated on the complaint that its parcels were mistreated, to which the USPS noted that GameFly should update its packaging. We’ll see how this ends. Any GameFly members out there with bad experience with the service from the USPS?
GameStop to purchase GameFly?
GameStop is one of the biggest (if not the biggest) game retailers in the entire United States but currently they do not offer rentals like companies such as GameFly. That may all change if recent rumors floating around regarding a possible buyout are to be believed.
Apparently, the Antioch Grove was on hand at a Halo 3: ODST event hosted by GameStop where a representative hinted at a possible buyout. Below is an excerpt from their coverge:
“Perhaps even more interesting than all of the buzz and activity surrounding the event, was a conversation that we had with a few of the Gamestop employees who were helping to host the event. After lamenting about the poor customer experience from the video game by mail company Gamefly, we asked why Gamestop didn’t come up with their own games by mail program, so that residents could get their games from the mail or locally. Pretty much all of the employees agreed that this would be a fine addition to the Gamestop family, but it was what they said afterwards that was a bit surprising.
Apparently, the water cooler gossip around the Antioch and Brentwood stores is that “someone” (Gamestop) is planning on buying out Gamefly before the end of the year. When pressed for more details on the subject, the Gamestop representatives grew quiet and didn’t provide a lot of details, but most of the employees in attendance seemed pretty confident about the rumor. Having a hot game come into town for a preview is exciting, but would pale in consideration to how big this would be. We’re still keeping this one on rumor status until we can get more concrete information, but it definitely caught our attention and something that we will keep our eyes open for.”
If/when this deal goes down it is sure to make GameStop a force to be reckoned with, as if it wasn’t already.
GameFly Filing Complaint Against Postal Service
These days popping down to the local rental store isn’t as popular as it used to be; Netflix’s format has heavily dominated the rental business and after a while someone realized that the same framework could work with video games. Rental service GameFly works in the same manner; pay a subscription depending on how many games you want at once and select your titles. The game discs are mailed to you in small paper envelopes which double as the return envelopes when you’re finished.
GameFly has apparently experienced incredibly high breakage of their discs and has been doing a constant dance of meetings and appeals to the postal service to try and get theses percentages down. As you might imagine with video games costing around $60 while DVDs are often a third or less of that price, GameFly’s profits are cut into quite sharply by high loss rates.
They’re now filing a complaint against the Postal Service, citing that their business is being harmed by preferential treatment that’s being given to other companies. You see, though Netflix and Blockbuster ship their dvds and games the same way around seventy percent of their mail is removed from the piles of letters and other items that get fed through automatic sorting machines. GameFly has requested the same service be granted to them, but apparently this hasn’t happened. In addition to high breakage rates, nineteen USPS employees have been fired for stealing discs from GameFly, which likely means there’s even more of it happening.
GameFly accuses USPS of breaking game discs
Game rental service GameFly has filed an official complaint with the Postal Regulatory Commission against United States Postal Service, claiming that USPS breaks thousands of game discs each year, and favors competitors Netflix and Blockbuster.
GameFly revealed that the company ships almost 600,000 discs each month, while receiving over 500,000 discs returned form customers. GameFly estimates that up to two percent of games are broken, which leads to a loss of almost 300,000 dollars a month — 3.6 million each year in costs of replacing the discs.
More here.