Gameznflix “trial” doesn’t let you try…
February 21st, 2007Last night, somewhat motivated by my rant, I decided I would try signing up for Gameznflix, a service which lets you rent both games and movies for 1 monthly price. I thought it would be a good idea, since they also rent HD-DVD discs, and right now HD-DVDs are just too expensive to buy.
In any case, they allow you to sign up for a 14-day “trial”, ostensibly so that you can try their service, decide that it’s worth it, and continue to pay for the service. Unfortunately, it seems that the trial, rather than illustrate the great service they offer, is designed to annoy the hell out of you so that you’ll upgrade. Apparently, in the small print/faq:
“The trial plan gives you a chance to try our service for a limited time at no cost to you. However, you will not get access to the full library of items as we reserve the top titles and new releases for paying customers. If you are on a trial membership and you would like to get the top titles, you can either wait for your trial to end - which will automatically upgrade your account. Or, you have the choice to upgrade at any time to get a title you’re wanting.”
Well, ok… so I just have to find some titles that aren’t in quite as much demand. I guess that’s the reason why it won’t let me select The Departed or Babel on HD-DVD… well, fine, how about the standard DVDs? Nope… grayed out, but if you click on it, you have the option to immediately upgrade your account. How convenient!
Well, what about some older movies… I’ll pick a few at random. Mary Poppins? Sorry, no go… Gattaca? No way. Mean Girls? Get out of here! Ok, ok… maybe some older movies (aside from Mary Poppins)… Casablanca? Nope. Gone with the Wind? Sorry. On the Water Front? What?
Alright, maybe some games… Lost Planet came out last month, maybe I can get that? Er, no… Well, what about Kameo… that freakin’ launched with the system in 2005… No, not that either. How about the ORIGINAL Ratchet and Clank for PS2. Haha, yeah right.
So far, I’ve found exactly 2 DVDs that I’m allowed to rent (and admittedly, all of the ones I mentioned above I don’t necessarily want… I was just looking for SOMETHING that it would let me rent). Miraculously, I’m allowed to rent the non-special edition of United 93, as well as Unforgiven (not something I’d necessarily put at the top of my list, but heck, it’s SOMETHING).
So tell me, Gameznflix, what exactly is my impression supposed to be from the trial? Do I just assume that really, the trial is BS and you really offer next to nothing for it, or that your inventory is total crap, and I therefore am not allowed to rent anything?
Maybe the experience would improve once I’m outside of the “trial”, but if this is what they’re letting me try, I’m not sure I want to give this company any of my money.
Posted in Etc, Jeff |
February 22nd, 2007 at 11:58 am
Have you tried Gamefly? It was a bit slower than Netflix but otherwise I had no complaints.
February 22nd, 2007 at 12:05 pm
I haven’t tried Gamefly yet, but the reason I wanted to try Gameznflix is so that I could get both movies and games out in any combination at the same time. Instead, I may see if I can find something that lets me have a couple movies and a place that lets me have 1 game for roughly the same price… or just forget the whole thing anyway.
February 22nd, 2007 at 5:25 pm
I use this service for games only because the movie selection is a bit crap. Though sometimes you have to wait for the game you want (i.e. Where’s my WarioWare???), the price is SO much cheaper than Gamefly, I go with it.
Since November I’ve gotten at least 11 or 12 games and only paid like $30 or so thus far. I decided to upgrade to $250 a year 6 game at a time plan and just stop buying games altogether, since I can keep ‘em as long it takes to get sick of ‘em.
February 22nd, 2007 at 5:39 pm
Glad you found us dante. We’ll have some more content up soon. =)
But yeah, I agree… I should be renting more, considering how many games I buy and never end up playing through (see my earlier post). Even though I get most of the games at a discount, if I don’t play them it’s just money out the window. I suppose the same could be said about a rental subscription like gameznflix if I don’t end up using it, because I’m sure I’d still want to buy games like Zelda, God of War 2, Gears of War, and other big ones that I’m sure I’ll want down the road or as soon as they’re released (not to mention any multiplayer games that I may want for those occasions).
And of course, this still doesn’t address the fact that Gameznflix barely lets me rent anything in the trial… It looks like they’ve shipped out United 93 and Unforgiven now… Devil May Cry 3 is still in my “queue”… those were basically the first 3 things I could find that it would allow me to rent.
March 1st, 2007 at 1:10 pm
I would not recommend going with Gameznflix. I was using them for almost a year and had terribl service. I switched to GameFly. It does cost a bit more, but is well worth it. Also, you can save a little on GameFly by watching videos on BrightSpot.TV.
I compare GameznFlix to GameFly on my site. Check the link for my name.
March 1st, 2007 at 1:27 pm
Thanks Jigsaw. I checked out your comparison, and it’s very interesting and helpful.
I’m still in my trial period for Gameznflix. They shipped me 2 movies (which I received), and a game a day later (that was actually 2nd or 3rd in my rental queue, behind a different game that supposedly had availability… go figure), which I have not received yet (it’s been 4 business days now, 5 if you count the shipping day). I also noticed that Gameznflix doesn’t rent TV DVDs… this is potentially just a small quibble, but it may be enough to fully convince me that Gameznflix isn’t the way to go right now, as there are TV shows that I may be interested in watching.
If I only wanted to rent games, I would definitely consider Gamefly. Unfortunately, I actually do want to rent movies/tv dvds as well. Another part of my motivation for signing up is that I just bought the Xbox 360 HD-DVD player, but until HD-DVDs themselves drop in price, I won’t be buying many of them… so I’m going to rent. I don’t think too many places carry them in stores yet, but Blockbuster.com and Netflix both seem to have plenty of copies (probably easier to get than DVDs, since HD-DVDs haven’t really made a big penetration in the market yet). Blockbuster.com also gives me one free in-store game rental a month, which may be enough for me, considering my playing and buying habits. So, I’m leaning towards giving Blockbuster.com another shot, despite them doing something a little funny in my first trial with them as well (shipping something 13th or so in my queue despite supposedly having plenty of availability for the next 5 or 6 things in my queue). If it works out, I’m sure I’ll make another post at some point. =)
March 11th, 2007 at 8:01 pm
I’ve been using gameznflix for about 6 months now and I’m pretty happy with the service. I like to experience lots of games just to see what they are like and this has been a great resource. I used to buy cheap used games at gamespot but even $9 games add up quickly. I have the $8 per month 1 out at a time service and I have averaged 4-5 games per month. Thats pretty good in my book, I don’t use it for movies but I plan to once my game queue gets a little smaller. Obviously the selection is not as good as netflix, but it’s not bad either. If you really want quirky and eclectic movies, its not for you though, thats for sure. I think your experience with gameznflix will vary greatly depending on your location in comparison to their shipping centers. I’m 1 days mail away from a return center in colorado so when I return a game it gets back to them the next day. I was impressed to see that they usually have a 1 day turnaround. I don’t know if thats normal but it seems great to me. I even got a notification that a game went out on a sunday. Mail doesn’t move on sundays sure but the fact that they have people processing games on sundays really helps you get more out of your subscription. Sometimes when the game next in your queue is only available at a distant shipping center it can take as much as 5 days to get your games. That can suck a bit, but it doesn’t happen to me very often.
March 13th, 2007 at 10:49 am
This site is no good. This is my second day or trying to rent games and no luck so far. All I get is error after error and when I finally get to a game it askes for my login again and the errors out again. Tried to fully activate account and I cant do that either! Canceled account after 2 days and no games:-(