Xbox 360 rules the rentals
GameFly, the popular US game rental company, released some new stats this week, and Xbox 360 titles could be said to be completely dominating the charts, filling all the top spots.
The statistics cover all game requests, so the resulting list covers an awful lot of unreleased games as well, but here it is organized in easy-to-read glory:
- Chromehounds (360 exclusive)
- Prey (360/PC)
- Over G Fighters (360 exclusive)
- LotR: Battle for Middle Earth 2 (360 version)
- Dead Rising (360 exclusive)
- NCAA Football 2007 (multi)
- Hitman: Blood Money (multi)
- Naruto: Ultimate Ninja (PS2)
- Gears of War (360 exclusive)
- Call of Duty 3 (PC/next-gen)
Looking at the list, it sure says “360 exclusive” an awful lot, indicating a huge interest in Microsoft’s next-gen platform. Ben Kuchera at Ars Technica has another take on the figures though, suggesting that the Xbox 360 games may be sparking increased interest in rentals due to the relatively high price of games:
The more expensive games get, the more attractive it becomes to consumers to simply rent their games without having to worry about late-fees or only having a set amount of time to beat their games. For $20 a month you can play and beat as many games as the speed of the postal service will allow, or you could buy one third of one game. Which would you prefer?
With PS3 game prices expecting to surpass those for the 360, I’d surely consider buying some GameFly stocks right now, since Ben has a valid point obviously. Still, it makes you wonder what people expect: 15 years ago $150 wasn’t an exception for some console games, and $30 was the common price for home computer games. Taking 15 years of 4% inflation into account, that would be a whopping $270 and $54 respectively, for a game developed in about 2 years by teams of max 5 people. Yep, games like that are shipping for about $10 on XBLA these days, and if you look at the credits for a modern full price game you often see more than 100 names on the list. Current prices aren’t that ridiculous at all, especially if you also realize that game sales are compensating the losses made on next-gen console sales, allowing us to buy these power machines at a fraction of the price of a fully fledged gaming PC.
Still, can’t blame anyone for taking the easy way out and just renting for a few bucks per month. And while on it, can’t blame that many people for wanting to rent Chromehounds, because damn, that demo was no invitation for a $60 investment.
Don’t do rentals, I stick to buying.
Same here, nothing beats actually having the game sit next to the box. I played both CoD2 and DoA4 again for a while this week, after not touching them for over a month. I like being able to go back to a game whenever I feel like it.
i rent and buy games, prey and chromehounds dont merit full purchase
Prey is a buy, for me.. While I wait for Dead Rising.
I started renting games when I bought the 360, I had a total of 83 games for my Xbox, after trading them in and receiving maybe $1 to $5 per title from EB Games I became frustrated because a lot of them I never really played fully. What I’m doing now is renting from Gamefly and if I like the game enough, I’ll buy it from them, they ship the box and the instructions for free if you click buy-it-now and then the next title in your game queue comes automatically.
That stupid PS (piece of shit station) always dominates everything!
More than 100 milions noobs buy that shit.
I rather have my xbox360 because it means i am special, and not on like all the others.
3,8 milion xboxes sold until now confirms this
Some of the Top 10 were (obviously) for games not to be released for months (GOW, COD3) … interesting … by that notion, we could start to see PS3 and Wii games on the list, too … could be an interesting guage of interest in other consoles ….
Well the reason the xbox 360 has so many more rentals then other systems is because a lot of people rent the games only for the achievements because they want to try o have a better score which means nothing but it is pretty cool to have a high one. but if there were no achievements then people wouldnt be renting as much.
Just got gamefly cause Once I beat these games, I never seem to play them again, so I trade them at Gamestop and lose my ass out of at least 30 dollars each game!
and I think your also right about the achievments, I have friends that on the regular xbox, we would play games for a long time, now, all they do is rent the games, dont even play the online unless they have to to get points, I like to play games to play the games, not to just get the damn points, I mean your just telling other ppl your a big ass nerd with your high gamerscore, and all you do is play games!
yeah i agreeprplaya4life the reason people are renting is for the achievements i have friends that are just like yours that only play the games for achievements.