I wanted to add two more points to last month’s Netflix vs. Blockbuster post. First, Blockbuster allows you to continue to access your account and modify your queue even after you have cancelled your membership. This is nice for me, because it means I can add movies as they come out in theaters, rather than sitting down next May and trying to remember every movie from the last year that I wanted to see. With Netflix, you get nothing but a message telling you how to come back.
Second, Blockbuster announced in February that they would integrate games into their service, on a trial basis, and hopefully roll out the service by the second half of the year. Apparently the trials didn’t go so well, because we’re almost halfway through the second half of this year and they haven’t mentioned games at all. It would have been a very convient Netflix+GameFly type of service (speaking of which, if those two companies merged, wouldn’t that be cool?). But I’ve since found Goozex (which I might blog about some day) to provide me with a fresh and cheap supply of video games. And it’s not like Netflix offers video games either, so neither service has an advantage here.
September 16, 2:05 pm
Why don’t you blog about how stupid it is that people are still mailing around digital content?
September 16, 10:48 pm
We’ll get there eventually. Music has moved to almost entirely digital distribution. Games are getting there, with some full XBox 360 games to be available as downloads soon. Of course there’s no solution out there for second-hand games without a physical disk, which is a drawback for those of us who don’t have to have games as soon as they release. Movies are getting there too (with Netflix streaming and OnDemand you kinda have the option now). The biggest obstacles are brick&mortars (especially GameStop) dragging their feet, threatening not to sell games if the digitally distributed games undercut their price. That and resistance by ISPs to increase broadband speeds.