We had a crew over for the football playoffs a couple of weeks ago and all the kids were comparing their holiday presents.  It seems all the kids were comparing their new Leapster, Wii, and Nintendo games.  They were discussing which game they liked, which games they were going to trade, and what they wanted to get next.  However, just one week later, my kid was staring at his games.  Mario Kart was still a blast.  And everything else he either mastered, was bored of, and in some cases wasn’t old for. 

We had the same problem with buying DVD movies.  So we solved that problem by letting him take one of every 3 of our NetFlix movies.  They come, he watches them many times, and we send him back, without the expense of buying the DVD.  So I searched for similar services for games.  SmartyRents and Gamefly came to my attention immediately.

SmartyRents has cornered the ”try before you buy” service for educational games.  Started by credentialed teachers, they rent games for Leapster, Didj, Clickstart, Little Leaps, the V suite of game consoles (Smile, Motion, Flash, and Smile Baby).  They have also gone through and documented the exact skill sets that each of the games teach so you know if it is age appropriate.  Interestingly, they also have the back catalog for all of these consoles.  So you can rent games that are actually out of circulation.  Packages start at $9.99 a month for 1 game at a time and up to $24.99 for 4 games at a time. 

Gamefly is concentrating on the exact opposite, more traditional part of the game market.  Focusing on the Wii, PS3, PSP, XBOX, Nintendo Game Cube and Nintendo DS they sell everything from Super Mario Brothers to Grand Theft Auto.  With over 7,000 games, you can rent one game at a time for $15.99 a month and 2 game at a time for $22.99 a month.  The site sorts by popularity or release date and provides information on what type of equipment you need to play. So for Wii, it will let you know if you need the Steering Wheel for the game.

So if your kid seems to go off and on games like mine and you get frustrated at the $30-$50 games that are just sitting there next to your TV unused, SmartyRents and GameFly provide a great alternative using the NetFlix model. 

 Larry

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 20th, 2010 at 6:58 pm and is filed under Toys. If you use RSS, you can subscribe to the RSS feed. , or if you would rather receive an e-mail, please subscribe to the e-mail in the lower right hand corner of this page. Both comments and pings are currently closed.