Be Excellent To Each Other

It seems you STILL can't rent Wii games from Blockbuster.

I went to a couple of BBs and the managers all said that 'Nintendo wouldn't let us or something.' A quick look online and it seems that it's always been the case.

If this is true (and it seems to be the case) Nintendo not only aren't making that many games, but they're dead set on not letting folks play the ones they do.

No Smash Bros. or Trauma Center for me then. Blah.

I'm pretty certain you can rent Wii games from LoveFilm, I think Blockbuster are just trying to make it not look like their fault.

That or they don't want to pay Nintendo's fees or something.

Either way thats crap.

Does that only apply to Blockbuster? That swapgame site seems to have plenty.

Or do you mean specifically Nintendo first party titles?

EDIT: no, they have nintendo titles, too.

Blockbuster had Gamecube games.

Can't comment beyond that.

Lovefilm let you add Wii games to your rental list, definitely.

As to whether you can actually rent the games from them, I'm not sure...

Surely with so few Wii games anyway you can afford to purchase all that even remotely interest you? Ahahaha, etc.

As does GamesFrenzy

These places don't exist in real life though, do they?

On the subject of Swapgame... did anyone ever actually get that copy of 'Big Brain Academy' from the NGamer reader offer?

EDIT: Corrected name of game and removed gratuitous swearing, both preserved for posterity in TheVision's reply below.

Nope... I don't really know whether I was expecting it to be honest. Web scams like that never seem to work out.

I'm pleasantly amazed Bob Holness is still alive; I assumed he'd died years ago. If I was Alan Coren's ghost I'd be really pissed that he'd outlived me.

So the company which makes the games I spend thirty five quion then only play for a weekend don't want me and the rest of the country to be able to have that weekend's play for threepounds fifty and no further profit to the maker?

Stands to reason, innit?

Yeah you can, one of my mates hasn't bought any Wii games in ages because he always has a steady stream coming through his letterbox. And also of Wii games.

For a company with a business model that is based mainly on rentals, Blockbuster are tremendously good at falling out with the companies who release the products they want to rent.

It usually comes down to money; Blockbuster tend to not like paying big fees, as they see themselves as far too big a player to have to play by the same rules.

They did it a few years ago where for almost a year, they didn't carry any Warner Bros releases at all. Though in that instance, they were entirely right in this particular stand - WB had taken the decision to remove the rental window (that period where you could rent new films which were not yet available to buy) and simultaneously massively up the fees they charged the libraries to rent them out.

So, to sum up: Blockbusters = liars.

As a former Blockbuster employee in its entirety.



They basically don't exist now. The last REALLY big film that had a noticeable one was Monster and to be fair, Blockbuster MADE that film.

Don't get me wrong, getting rid of the rental window was a Good Thing, but the way WB went about it was a Bad Thing; they essentially multiplied the fees rental shops had to pay to WB for rental copies several times, while simultaneously removing the incentive for rental shops to actually pay anything to them in the first place. If the practice had become widespread in the form that WB wanted, loads of independent shops would have gone under rapidly; ironically it was the big chains (Blockbuster and Global, mainly) sticking two fingers up at Warner and refusing to stock new rental or retail products that probably saved a few independent businesses.

Oddly when I worked there and customers asked why we weren't carrying WB stuff, they would not let us tell the customers that it was down to WB wanting BB to pay Loads More Money. Even when it was reported in the news and that.

So what explanation were you told to give?

My local corner rental shop stopped stocking WB films for a while, too, but soon started again because there was a film that everyone came in asking for. So did WB back down?

We were just told to say there was "a dispute" and not to elaborate, and if the customer really wanted to know they could write to customer services at head office.

They came to an arrangement of some sort in the end; I think they just reduced the fees back to the level they were at or something.

It was all faintly ridiculous though as it was only the main WB label that was affected; subsidiaries of WB who published on their own labels were not part of the squabble, so the likes of New Line (Lord Of The Rings etc) were still available.