I’m coming up on the second monthly renewal for my Gamefly subscription. I received a 30 day trial with a Pizza Hut order a few months ago, and decided to give it a shot. The trial started out as the 2 at a time plan. In the first month, I rented 5 games: Half Life 2, Trauma Center: New Blood, Trauma Center: Second Opinion, Fable II, and Virtual Fighter Online. At the end of the first month, I changed the membership to 1 out at a time, and returned Virtual Fighter Online (keeping Fable II.) Here’s where the problems started. I received Fable II on 11/7/08 and it was returned on 1/6/09. I had the game for 2 months, and never found a chunk of time to devote to it. I had decided to use the membership to play through games that offered easy achievement points, and my next game was the original Condemned game. I blasted through it pretty quickly (just over 2 weeks,) and sent it back. I currently have a PS3 game out (MGS4,) and I’ve only played a few hours since I received it almost a month ago. The membership cost is $54 for the last three months, in which time I’ve completed Half-Life 2, and Condemned: Criminal Origins. The main reason that I’m thinking about this is that I have a $5 coupon that’s going to expire this month, around the time that my account would renew. With the amount that I’ve rented in the last 2 months, I can’t justify keeping the membership, so I’ll probably use my coupons to keep the game I have (MGS4 for $24.99,) and cancel before it renews.
If you have a few hours per day to devote to games, and you’re not interested in owning games, Gamefly may be probably right for you. If you rent less than one game a month, you’re probably better off going to Blockbuster/Gamecrazy/Family Video/etc. Heck, you might even do better buying used games at Gamestop, and using their liberal return policy as a rental system.