VentureBeat Homepage. Moving beyond its movie and video game rental business, Blockbuster said this morning that it has started selling retail video games and game hardware to all of its U. The effort is part of a plan to significantly expand its game business and compete with the likes of GameStop and Game Crazy stores.
Blockbuster will add more rental game titles as well. Blockbuster will have special offers like an exclusive Sony PS3 movie and game bundle. Did you miss a featured session? The whole experience was like a race against a time. Renting an entire video game console was the height of childhood luxury at Blockbuster. It was also a way to make you more popular amongst your friends, if only for a weekend. If you wanted an R-rated movie, you had to ask an older sibling or friend, or convince your parents that "The Matrix" was a film every nine-year-old must see.
Blockbuster was the perfect place for parents to drop off their kids while they ran errands The stores themselves had lots of cool features and cutting-edge technology at the time. Some even had props from movies or toys you could buy. Nothing beat wandering the aisles of Blockbuster without a specific movie in mind, and coming across something that piqued your interest. Streaming websites don't give you that same thrill.
It was always a treat to come in to rent a DVD and find that you got something extra with your purchase. Blockbuster had a brief stint with DVD-by-mail rentals to compete with Netflix , but it was short-lived.
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A leading-edge research firm focused on digital transformation. But when you look at what's really going on, it makes no sense. Can someone give me a good reason why Blockbuster would want that Circuit City dog? To make matters worse, it has no chance of competing with Best Buy and it's looking more and more like the junk heap of tech retail instead of a bastion for value. Blockbuster's story isn't much different.
Regardless, shareholders couldn't have cared less and its stock price is still on a downward spiral -- it lost more than half its value in just one year. But if Blockbuster can't survive in the rental space, what makes it so sure it can acquire another dog and try to survive against Best Buy in the retail space? Does it know something that both Circuit City execs and the rest of the industry doesn't? Does it have a secret formula that will allow it to beat its Web competitors? As if that's not enough, Blockbuster then announces that it wants to bring retail to its stores and start making video game gear available.
Does it even realize what the competitive environment in that industry looks like? As it stands, the company needs to compete with huge video game retailers like Wal-Mart and Target, which are closely followed by boutiques like Gamestop. To make matters worse, Blockbuster has even more major competitors online and with Amazon and the rest, it's difficult to carve out a niche in that space.
Ostensibly, Blockbuster is trying to copy the Hollywood Video tack with its own GameCrazy deal, but even that business is suspect and most prefer the others over a video game boutique that's located inside a rental chain.
Blockbuster is a movie and video game rental chain -- nothing more, nothing less. Instead of trying to sell video games, why doesn't it try to improve that facet of its business? Blockbuster has officially lost its corporate identity and is doing what little it can to show its shareholders that it's trying to change things. But by getting into retail, its executives are showing how inept they really are.
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