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this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2025
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Gaming
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game rentals have their place
Mostly only because games are so expensive when they don't have to be.
It's not just that. It's also that the second hand market is really not there anymore. There are a lot of games that I know I'm only playing once, in this case it makes sense to buy it, then resell it. But it's not really feasible on PC.
In this situation, a rental market does make sense. And it also allows more easily to test games you probably wouldn't have bought. I played Persona 3 this way for example.
One solution to this is companies bringing back the demo which I think should be a thing.
However, yeah, we agree there are a few cases where actual renting makes sense. I just wish it wasn't digital.
No, you're right. And combined with the easy refund you get from Steam for example, which would make it basically a trial period, there are a lot of possibilities.
I was thinking more about very long games that you're not sure you really will be convinced after only 2 hours. On a Persona for example, 2 hours is nothing, you're not even going to pass the tutorial.
Of course a demo is not forced to be at the start of the game, but some games are hard to showcase 😅
On the other hand, I'm just realizing that we are talking about an actual rental model, which we don't really have at the moment. Gamepass is a subscription model, which is quite different (and not in a good way)
So yeah an actual renting model could be cool, depending on its pricing of course.
Just be thankful they haven't followed inflation of both the value of money, and their budgets. A $40 NES game would be $120 in todays money and it was probably made in a month by three people in a shed, meanwhile something like CoD Black Ops Cold War credits over 9000 people and had a budget of $700 million. GTA 6 has already blown past a billion.
In fact, video games are currently pretty much the cheapest they've ever been, comparatively speaking.
bootlickers and corpos always roll out this argument while ignoring the growth in players meaning you get more sales
Yep, that's why the best selling games consoles with the largest user base for selling all those super expensive AAA games are all the modern ones, like the Playstation 2, Nintendo DS, the Switch and the Gameboy Colour.
Most games today are cross platform and sell substantially more copies that old console games. Mega Man 3 for example sold just over 1 million copies and was a great success. GTA V, crossplatform AAA, sold almost a quarter of a billion copies.
Maybe indie games. Certainly not AAAs though.