You want to roll out DVD kiosks? Okay, we'll rent video games.
DVD-rental kiosk frontrunner redbox is readying another gauntlet to throw down in its brewing fight with fading brick-and-mortar DVD-rental goliath Blockbuster, piloting video game-rental kiosks in two test markets.
While Blockbuster has partnered with NCR Corp. to move into the DVD-rental kiosk market, it still lags far behind redbox in market penetration. And its brick-and-mortar operations are, at best, in flux as the company moves toward online, subscription and kiosk services as it tries to phase in a more multi-platform approach to combat the challenges posed by competitors like redbox and Netflix. (But to give Blockbuster its due, the company is moving aggressively to make up lost ground with heavy DVD rental-kiosk deployments in New York City and the Texarkana region.)
The Coinstar-owned redbox is test marketing video game-rental kiosks in
Reno
,
Nev.
, and
Wilmington
,
N.C. —
and while the tests are still ongoing, the Internet buzz around the initial rollout late last year was hot and heavy.
And since the tests are still ongoing, the company isn’t releasing any data on them, according to a redbox spokesman.
But he did confirm that the tests are market-wide in both
Reno
and
Wilmington
, meaning almost all redbox kiosks in those markets should be carrying both movies and video games. And with movies at $1 per night, and video games at $2 per night, redbox is continuing to stick it to its competitors.
At one time, Blockbuster was the county’s leading video game rental source, and until recently video game rentals safely remained a profitable Blockbuster offering that redbox couldn't match —although other companies like GameFly had started muscling in. But all of that could be about to change.
According to Gizmodo.com, the first of the "long-rumored" redbox video game-rental kiosks went live in
Reno
in August. Charging $2 per night, the kiosk started with a limited number of titles, all Xbox 360 games.
But the redbox kiosks now include games for other systems, like the Wii and PS3, and the still-limited selection does include popular games like “Call of Duty,” “Assassin’s Creed” and “God of War.”
And while this surely can't come as much of a surprise to Blockbuster CEO Jim Keyes — really, the surprise should be that it's taken this long — it also can't be welcome news in light of the daunting difficulties his company already is facing in the coming year, as it fends off challenges from several directions.
