Blockbuster touts GTA IV, Mario Kart releases; retails PS3, 360, Wii, DS packages
By Triston McIntyre
Ah, Blockbuster, love of our early days as budding gamers, how we adored thee! But how tragic and sorrowful your fall from grace has been. Blockbuster is trying desperately to get gamers to fall in love with it again, this time by not only debuting hot new release games like Grand Theft Auto 4 and Mario Kart on the new release wall, but also by jumping into the retail biz and selling hardware to gamers.
That’s right, now in addition to exorbitantly priced Junior Mints and popcorn you can rent or buy games, purchase accessories, and even game consoles themselves, all from the comfort of your local Blockbuster, according to PRNewswire. Blockbuster is serious about becoming a real entity in the game retailing market according to Blockbuster’s VP of game marketing, Rod Murray, who said, “We’re committed to offering a full assortment of everything gamers want in our stores — hardware, accessories and retail and rental games across all platforms — including Nintendo Wii, Sony PS3, Microsoft Xbox 360 and Nintendo DS.”
That certainly is a mouthful, and very ambitious of Blockbuster to boot. Blockbuster isn’t assuming gamers are going to flock to rental locations to pick up consoles, however; it is going to be offering attractive packaging options to make the trip worth gamers’ whiles.
For all the would be PS3 owners out there, Blockbuster will be offering a pretty nice package of a 40Gb PS3, “Spiderman” on Blu-ray, HDMI cable, the PS3 game “Transformers,” and a PS3/Blu-ray rental card that gives buyers 1 free Blu-ray or PS3 rental per week for 12 weeks, all for $499 U.S. before tax. Not bad, not bad at all.
In truth, the offer seems like a steal; the individual price of many of those accessories would well eclipse the soft $499 price point. How Blockbuster will be able to get hands on Wii consoles and offer packaging options boggles my mind, as the blasted little white boxes are hard to come by as is. No doubt offering these lovely packages will be expensive for Blockbuster at first, but I can see the marketing strategy be good for getting consumers in Blockbuster locations…keeping them after their gamer cards run out might be another story entirely.
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Tips N4G
April 28th, 2008
XD the Transformers game.. boy that game was stupid… but thats not the point… well this is good for gamers everywhere… I would rather rent some “questionable” games than buy them… like Transformers… XD
April 28th, 2008
Blockbuster must be able to adapt in order to compete with popular online rental companies such as GameFly. Console sales in store is probably a good move on it’s part.
April 29th, 2008
blockbuster sold hardware last gen also. they also rented it, which is a great option for playing the ps3 w/o having to pay big for it.