Review of Game Access

Introduction

Well, today is December 10^th and it has been exactly one month since I first signed up with Game Access. They are a company in Montreal that offers game rentals to Canada with no time limits. Naturally being patriotic, I really wanted to try them out and blog about it. So I came up with an experiment to see how many games I could get within 1 month. In total, I have received 11 games over the course of the 30 days.

First off, I would like to thank Game Access since they were confident that their service would live up to my expectations and gave me a free account for the month. Game Access gave me a Platinum account with 2 outgoing games and their Fast Return service (24.95$ + 3.99$ for Fast Returns). This meant that I can rent out 2 games at a time, for an unlimited amount of time. I can play each game to the end. Fast Return allows me to request Game Access to ship 1 game as soon as I drop one of my games in the mail box. This means that while my returning game is traveling to them, my next game is on route to me at the same time. This cuts the waiting time down. The only oddity is that they only offer Fast Return on 1 game at a time even though I get 2 games at a time. Apparently it was abused so they put a limit on it now. This service was invaluable for this experiment.

Let me summarize what I wanted to achieve when I first started this endeavour. I was hoping to receive at least 30 games within 30 days but I now realize that was a foolish dream. I was hoping the postal service would deliver things at least every 2^nd day but that unfortunately didn’t happen. Still, the point was to see how efficient their service was and whether it was worth the money. I would check the mailbox everyday for a new game and then send it back out the same day. The only exceptions were weekends since Canada Post doesn’t deliver on weekends.

How long did I wait for my games?

I received 11 games within 30 days. That means each game came every 2.73 days according to my algebra. In reality, the games took about 3-5 days to come depending on the postal service. I was able to track the status of each game so I knew when it arrived because they would immediately send me a new one. When I used their Fast Return service at night, they would ship the game the next morning. That really helped lower my wait time. Its a shame Canada Post isn’t faster with the deliveries otherwise I would have received more games.

Is it worth the money?

In short, yes, yes it was. The account Game Access gave me costs 24.95$ + 3.99$ for the Fast Return service. I got 11 games for 28.94$ which is amazing.

For casual gamers, this is a better deal than buying games outright. At the worst case scenario, you buy 1 game a month because it takes about a month to beat each game. That means you will be paying 600$ a year to own these games (at 50$ a game). If you are like me, once you beat it, you probably won’t pick it up again for months so its just dead weight. Now with Game Access, it will only cost you 299.40$ a year at 24.95$ a month and that is for the account with the 2 games rental. The single game rental costs 17.95$ a month. That means it costs 215.40$ a year to rent 1 game a month with Game Access. That is nearly a third of the price of buying 12 games.

If you can beat games quickly, then it means you can play more games. Lets say you rent 2 games a month. That means you will get to play and complete 24 games a year for about 300$ with the 2 games rental account. 24 games at 50$ each will cost you 1200$. That is a considerable savings and what I believe a pretty reasonable estimate. The only way this service can cost more is if you only rent 6 or less games a year with them (300$/50$ = 6 games).  

For most games, such as COD: Modern Warefare 2, I would rather rent and play to completion than own. Games such as Rock Band (for the obvious reasons), NHL 10, and Gran Turismo, I would rather own than rent. Game Access does rent out Rock Band and Guitar Hero which is good if you have the set already. Its great if you want to try out the latest version for a party. So its the best of both worlds, I can play the latest and greatest games and with the money save, invest in the games I would keep forever.


Customer Service [new addition]
I forgot to mention that I emailed them about the oddity with the Fast Returns. They emailed me back within 25 minutes of my email and gave me a clear and concise answer. Good customer service means a lot for me since I hate talking to robots or call centers. 

Conclusion

I really enjoyed the month I had with the service. Every time I see a new game being shipped, it was like a mini gift being sent to my mail box. I just wish I had more time to play with all the games which is why I’m keeping my account.