Inside Blockbuster Express

As the kiosks roll across America quickly outpacing the growth and footprint of the Brick and Mortar stores we have to look at how they will continue to compete with those stores. Most of the store also rent video games. That has become a significant portion of their business. The length of the rental in the video game market is significantly longer than that in the DVD movie market. Though its very possible that a game will be rented and returned the next day, its not to hard to expect the time it takes to watch a movie and thus its rental time will always be shorter.

So the question is – When we will see video games start being rented from the kiosks? Redbox has done some experimenting with it but there has not been any widespread deployment at this point. E-Play has deployed kiosks in several Wal-Marts and Best Buy stores in a pilot that not only rents and sells games but also can purchase them back for credit. With NCR at the helm for Blockbuster Express, it looks like they could be the leader in video game kiosks. But Blockbuster Express is just starting to deploy kiosks and at this point they need to get their feet wet in the DVD marketplace to begin with.

“We believe there is still a significant opportunity in the DVD-rental space,” said NCR spokesperson Jeff Dudash. A possible video game option in the future is “something that we’re examining, but at the moment we are focusing on delivering the DVD experience,” he said.

NCR also is a partial owner of E-Play. The E-Play kiosk holds significantly more discs than the Kiosks used by Blockbuster Express and Redbox. This combined with their ability to accept trade-ins for credit has them leading the pack in Video Game rental and sales. In addition, NCR is also working with Toshiba and MOD Systems, which just recently made a DRM-free deal with Sony Music and several other major record labels, to develop kiosks with digital music download capabilities.

Now if NCR can just combine these efforts together into a cohesive strategy, they might win the day not only in the DVD video space, but in the video game market as well. As Dudash said, “Certainly, there are a variety of things we’re looking at in the entertainment space.”