Why Buy Games Game Rental Review

Review of Why Buy Games Game Rental

BLASTING onto the UK games rental scene like a gigantic pixellated superhero in blue and yellow spandex, WhyBuyGames.com has taken us all by surprise by offering a games rental service to rival the big guns like Lovefilm and Swapgame.

With an astoundingly large catalogue of games titles for rent - over 6000 at last count - the stock at WhyBuyGames.com for DS, GBA, Wii, PS2, PS3, PSP, Xbox and Xbox 360 pretty much covers every game released including a very impressive back-catalogue of Xbox games.

Blu Ray too

And it's not just games.

WhyBuyGames.com is also the only dedicated UK games rental site at the moment currently stocking Blu-Ray films for you to watch on your PS3 (or Blu Ray player if you have one).

There are around 600 blu-ray titles available which falls slightly short of Lovefilm - last time me looked they had 1,732 titles but 600 movies should keep your entertained for a few years at least.

In fact in our recent feature article on UK Blu Ray rental, it was revealed that WhyBuyGames is only marginally short of Blockbuster in terms of the number of Blu Ray titles it offers for rent.

In fact, the only niggling problem with this extra (as far as we can see) are the bizarrely pixelated photos of the DVD covers which give us Space Invaders flashbacks.

Two Week Free trial

When we first took a look at WhyBuyGames.com, they offered a rather measly 10-day free trial - a length of time we have long argued is not worth its weight in salt, as it doesnt safely give you enough time to test out more than one cycle of the games rental process - but pleasingly this has been extended to 14 days now.

A full two weeks should allow you to safely rent 3 - or at least 2 - games and get a feel for the way WhyBuyGames.com's games rental service works.

Better still, you do not have to return the games before the trial is over - just make sure they are returned within 7 days of canceling your trial.

Excellent service and fast turnaround

One of the biggest complaints with UK games rental services is that they neither stock enough popular titles nor do they turn around titles fast enough.

WhyBuyGames.com appears to have blasted those two complaints out of the water - well almost.

In terms of title turnaround, WhyBuyGames.com excels. They operate a 6-day a week schedule, so your games can be processed and sent out on a Saturday.

The extra day offered by Saturday processing makes all the difference and we were happy to see titles popping through our letterbox at a pleasingly swift rate.

While no games rental service is immune from lack of popular titles (it would never make sense economically to stock enough popular titles to send to every subscriber on a whim), WhyBuyGames.com appears to have - at the present time - a healthy balance between not having too many subscribers whilst still holding a decent stock of new and popular releases.

What this means is that we were receiving games high on our queue list almost all of the time.

A little clumsy in places

In our earlier review we mentioned how we were less enthralled by WhyBuyGames's sometimes clumsy website and order system, citing how - in particular - the process of adding multiple titles to your queue was cumbersome.

The great news is that WhyBuyGames has listened to the criticism and fixed this. Adding new titles to your queue is quick and simple now.

We also bemoaned the lack of star ratings for titles, which WhyBuyGames has diligently rectified, offering an 'official' star rating as well as user ratings (where users have submitted a review). Unfortunately, it looks like all their official star ratings were defaulted to 3 stars, which pays lip service to the concept of star ratings!

Email notifications

The WhyBuyGames.com games rental service is not without its nice touches though.

You'll be emailed every time one of your games is dispatched as well as every time a game is received back at headquarters.

Additionally, if you're going on holiday or you find the landlord is bugging you for rent money, WhyBuyGames.com allows you to postpone your account until times are not so hard!

In short, we are pleased to see a reliable and comprehensive games rental site like WhyBuyGames socking it to the big boys.

With a redesign that isn't so dark and gloomy and a little more attention to detail we'd be hard pressed to find a better UK games rental service.

Free trial details

	Why Buy Games offer a free trial of 14 days. Two week free trial. It's free, so...

Actual User Ratings

	Why Buy Games offer a free trial of 14 days.

At a Glance

Our Rating
No. of Titles	6,000 +
Free Trial	14 days
DVDs at once Max / month Unlimited £9.49 Unlimited £12.49 Unlimited £14.49

	Game Types Available:
	Sony PS3		Sony PS2
	Sony Playstation		Sony PSP
	Xbox 360		Xbox
	Nintendo Wii		Nintendo GameCube
	Nintendo DS		Gameboy Advance

Customer Reviews

Add your own review of Why Buy Games's game rental service...

Remember, the customer reviews below are subjective (and are not the opinions of ChooseDVDRental.co.uk).

Nikki from Liverpool writes... 28/08/2008

"I changed to whybuygames from nimblethumbs and what a difference I've seen. All the staff are very friendly and any issues are swifly dealt with, we tend to get the titles that we really want and the turnaround times are really fast. Also I like the fact that you can request a game and they tend to get it quite quickly. I would highly recommend this site to everyone."