Redbox To Roll Out $2 Video Game Rentals

If you’ve been through a Wal-mart, gas-station or other various retail store nationwide you’ve probably seen these really tall red kiosks in the entryway. You might have also seen sweat pants, feet covered with flip-flops, shorts with “Juicy” on the butt, or something to do with Looney Tunes. These would be the stereotypical user of these Redbox kiosks. But going forward, you might see pasty white, malnourished videogamers in Mountain Dew and Cheeto smelling clothing.

Redbox is getting into video game rentals - more than likely trying to take a little market share from GameFly - and will roll out video game rental kiosks nationwide to thousands of sites for a $2 a day price starting June 17, parent company Coinstar said Thursday.

Coinstar announced it’s first-quarter earnings to it’s investors the other day over a conference call, showing off it’s 10% jump in shares in an after-hours trading after having finished the day up 2% to $51.41 during the regular trading session. The company posted net earnings that grew 32% to $8.5 million on revenue that was increased 31% to $424.1 million.

Even though Coinstar is named for its machines in grocery stores that extract a percentage fee each time a customer swaps coins for paper money, the company gets most of it’s revenue from the $1 a day Redbox DVD kiosks. In this past quarter, the DVD rental business grew revenue 38% to $362 million and sales at its “coin” unit just 2.4% to $61 million. Wow. I mean, I knew it was more revenue from Redbox, but shit, that’s a whole different tax bracket.

The company has 18,800 of the Coinstar coin-counting kiosks and 31,800 Redbox DVD kiosks, 21,000 of which will also start to house video games.

So if you are in the market to try a game out for a day or longer, Redbox video game kiosks seem to be the way to go. With GameFly’s subscription $10 dollars a month, you’d only have to rent 5 games to make it worth it that month. I can see myself doing that (if I play a lot of games or want to plow through a game over the weekend). With more and more gamers getting fickle and getting tired of games quicker these days, Redbox might be your best bet, without you having to spend a lot out of pocket.