Anyone use Gamefly?

[semillama]

I'm considering signing up, but I'd like to hear if anyone has had any experiences about the service before I go in. How's delivery time? Game conditions (ever had to send something back because it was unplayable or scratched)? A good value for the money?

What's spurring this consideration is realizing I don't want to give Blockbuster any more cash for game rentals when I could have which ever one I really want to rent from gamefly; plus I've had to return games to BB on more than one occasion when the game wasn't playable due to scratches, and there wasn't another game in stock that I wanted to play in place of the defective one. I can't afford to buy all the games I'd like to play.

Thanks in advance!

[Ohio Joe]

1. I had to go look to see who that was

I never heard of them before. Looks like they are a lot like netflix though which could be a pretty cool service to have. I agree, places like BB are not very good, selection of games can be spotty. I think something like having trouble with a disc itself is a risk your going to face no matter where you rent from. I saw something reported somewhere during the recent E3 though that you might want to look into... let me see if I can find it...ahhh, here it is, it is called OnLive:

http://news.cnet.com/onlive-could-threaten-xbox-ps3-and-wii/

It looks like it has potential. Pretty much you are renting games but you never have the game. It runs completely on the OnLive servers and sends the video output to you PC. You don't need any fancy processors, graphics cards, no patching the game, just a small client that plays the video/send and receives control commands. The real big catch seems to be will it work? heh, it does require broadband (the faster the better I assume) and of course, it is not available yet but it does go to public beta this summer and rolling out this winter (well... thats the plan).

They are taking sign ups to be in the beta, maybe give it a shot (not sure of the details but betas are usually free)

http://www.onlive.com/beta_program.html

Good luck!

[Ignis]

2. I do, and it's great.

Gamefly has saved me hundreds of dollars each year for the past two years I've been using the service. I still buy games that wow me, but being able to try out games beforehand (for as long as I want) AND to simply burn through single-play games that have little/no replay value for a fixed monthly fee has been awesome.

The shipping is fast, the service has been great the single time I had a problem, and the free gamefly dollars promo is nice. Of course, every game you want isn't available when you want it--especially if you're trying to rent the newest, hottest games right after release--but I've had pretty good luck with my queue so far.

Highly recommended. If you want a referral, I think they used to give you a free month or something. I'll go check now.

[Joe the Liberal]

3. I used to have it.....

and it was great but unfortunately I had to drop the service because it just became one of those small luxury's I could no longer afford. But I absolutely loved it when I had it, it's similar to Netflix except replace the movies with video games. All of the games I got were in decent shape some had minor scratches others looked as though they were brand new. No game I ever got from them was scratched to the point where I had to return it because it just didn't play, that's from my experience.

And yes it ten times better than going to Blockbuster where ONE rental will cost you about 10$. As opposed to Gamefly where you pay 16$ a month and you can rent as many games as you want for that month so long as you return the one you have. Or they have another option where you pay $22 a month and you can have 2 games checked out at a time.

It's a good value and lets you play so many games to see if their worth buying or not, which you can buy directly through Gamefly and they send you the case and booklet should you choose to keep it.

Overall I think it's a great and easy to use service and I had no complaint when I had them, you can try it out for free and you can cancel anytime. I loved it and I hope to get it back again one day, I'd say it's at least worth trying out.

go here for more info http://www.gamefly.com/Features/HowItWorks/