News

Blockbuster expands gaming section in stores

By Ed Oswald | Published April 28, 2008, 8:00 PM

Blockbuster has expanded its video game presence, now offering retail video games, hardware, and accessories in all of its company-owned stores.

Previously, the company had only offered game rentals and limited retail gaming items in its stores. In select locations, the company had a shop-within-shop Game Rush operation selling new and used games.

It had also owned southeastern US game retailer Rhino Games for a short period of time, although that was sold to GameStop in 2007. Regardless, with Monday's announcement, the movie renter now appears ready to move fully into the retail video game business.

Blockbuster will also beef up its rental offerings, ensuring more copies of games are available for rent across all platforms. Titles and hardware would be stocked for the Nintendo Wii and DS, as well as the Xbox 360 and Sony PS3.

Although not specifically mentioned, it appears games and hardware will be offered for the Sony PSP as well, as the company said it was committed to providing support for "all platforms."

The company will waste no time attracting customers. Its first promotional offer is an exclusive Sony PS3 bundle. The package includes a 40GB PS3 consoles, an HDMI cable, Blu-ray title Spiderman 3, PS3 game Transformers, and a rental card that entitles the user to one free PS3 or Blu-ray title a week for 12 weeks.

Retail price has been set at $499.99 while supplies last, the company said.

Comments

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OnePCWhiz
Apr 29, 2008 - 10:23 AM edited

Now if someone will just break the price-fixing issue...

Most new Wii games are $49.95... no matter where you look.

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siryak
Apr 29, 2008 - 9:29 AM

I like this! Now if they would add this to their online rental portion they would hit Netflix where it hurts. Either that or force them to get games too, which is win win :)

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bobthegoat2001
Apr 29, 2008 - 12:29 AM edited

To bad I can't think of 12 games I'd want to rent on the PS3. Gran Turismo, Metal Gear and... that's about it. I'm not even a big racing fan though either.

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FubarJeb
Apr 28, 2008 - 9:28 PM

This kinda reminds me when we could rent PS1's from Blockbuster, many years ago.

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