... continued from the original article above. Thanks for continuing here.
Personally I left Netflix a few months ago thanks to getting skipped over for movies that were in my que one too many times. That was happening partly because Blockbuster had signed an exclusive deal with a certain studio (Weinstein) for DVD rental content. Even besides that, Netflix was quite obviously throttling my account and trying to keep me from being a heavy user of their system. Things added up over time to the point that I just decided that Netflix apparently really didn't appreciate my business that much and Blockbuster on the other hand was almost literally begging me to come back into their stores and/or try their online program.
When Netflix's system works, it works fairly well (except for throttling users). But, when they have problems, they have problems that screw up things for someone that has their DVD watching and rental system planned out to a point of obsession.
Admittedly Blockbuster's .com site is less neat, less organized and frequently behind on providing current information on disc rentals. Where Netflix gets notifications out to customers quickly and efficiently, and typically in a very timely fashion Blockbuster tends to be slower about sending out notifications and never seems to give a current picture of your que status unless you've not had anything in transit for long periods of time.
Anyway, despite their current problems, I think things can get better for Netflix if they want to take a little advice from myself and from others that have suggested the same thing:
Netflix needs to get into the video game rental by mail business.
Why do I suggest this? Because of the available companies out there that do video game rentals by mail none have the reliability (normally) and pricing advantages that Netflix offers to DVD renters.
I've tried out Gameznflix.com and found them seriously lacking. Netflix could possibly buy them out for pennies on the dollar, or at least for a fairly low price, and turn them into the video game rental arm for Netflix. Gameznflix.com provides movie rentals and game rentals at prices that are down in the Netflix price range. Unfortunately they seem to need to be charging a lot more so that they can put money back into their own IT system, and into their customer service area as they are quite obviously a low budget organization and it shows in their business.
There's also Gamefly.com. They are the current Netflix of the video gaming rentals by mail world. Unfortunately they are priced considerably outside of the Netflix pricing range and given a smaller customer base to work with, it seems that they probably can't or won't be bringing their prices down any time soon. They'd make another possible target for Netflix to buy out and snap up.
A company many people may not know of is Gamerang.com. They are priced similarly to Gamefly.com and have a decent reputation for delivering rentals as promised, but then again friends that tried them complained that they felt they were being throttled on service with them as well.
Any of these three companies could fairly easily be snapped up by Netflix and would seriously benefit from Netflix's usually solid IT and customer service operations. Add some economy of scale to these companies and Netflix could fairly easily start offering reasonably attractive pricing for video game rentals by mail. Something between the current Gamefly/Gamerang pricing and the unbelievably low pricing that is offered by Gameznflix.com would be nice. A movies only plan at say $17 a month for 3 movies out a time, or a movies *or* games plan that would be priced at say $20 a month for 1 game out at a time to go with 2 movies out at a time, or whatever combination works to a reasonable profit level.
Given the current war between Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo, and the amount of people buying into the newest generation of gaming hardware that are now looking for content to play on their systems, it seems that the time is ripe for some of these companies to make a lot of customers happy by offering top notch customer service and delivery of items a priority. If Netflix doesn't, perhaps their competitor will, and then it may be too little, too late to help keep Netflix from slowly bleeding customers.
I've already said (in a prior article here) that I expect the next generation video disc war may already be lost for Netflix and Blockbuster as video on demand becomes a reality for more and more customers. The same could happen in the gaming arena with Sony and their Playstation Network Store, and Microsoft and their Xbox Live Marketplace. Perhaps the only thing keeping that from happening now is that a lot of content is still just too time consuming to obtain for most users. But.... as more users find themselves looking at broadband over cable and FiOS, that bandwidth may not be an issue and the download times will hopefully continue to drop or at least stay stable as the sizes of the files increase significantly. Either way, my point is that the window of opportunity for Netflix and Blockbuster is fairly small and they need to take advantage of the market place wherever they can.
