E-Play Wal-MartE-Play based in Columbus, Ohio is installing their new kiosks at 77 Wal-Mart stores in New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. Most of these stores do not have a Redbox DVD Kiosk installed at this time. For those stores that already have a Redbox kiosk, the DVD rental capabilities will be turned off.

The E-Play kiosks not only provide DVD rentals but they also provide game rentals AND game exchanges. A user can bring a game to insert into the machine and they will receive a credit as much as $25 for high-demand games. The machines put the credit on their credit card and they can then purchase or rent other content.


The E-Play kiosks which will be outfitted in Wal-Mart colors though owned and operated by E-Play have much higher capacity that Redbox or Blockbuster Express with nearly 4,000 movies or game disks per kiosk.

Wal-Mart currently does not sell used video games, take trade-ins, or rent video games. This could allow Wal-Mart to complete much better with boutique game stores that do have the capacity for the after-market or rental of video games. Last year in July, NCR which is marketing DVD Kiosks as Blockbuster Express, bought a minority stake in E-Play in an agreement that was to add thousands of E-Play machines in GameStop and Dollar Tree stores.

I’m very interested in knowing how they are able to verify that a game is what it is declared to be and what its condition is. I suppose they could mount the disc and check but I’m not sure what they are doing right now. Anyone have some inside info?