subject: Are You Game For Games Rental? [print this page] If you've ever had achy thumbs, are incapable of doing pretty much anything without the promise of points or have ever woken sweating in the night after a dream about an Mohawked-turtle then you're not going mad. In fact, you're definitely not alone.
The games industry in the UK is now worth billions of pounds and players are more than willing to shell out for the latest releases.
However, given that a large percentage of the gaming market has traditionally been made up of teenage boys - hardly the most affluent group - it has been inevitable that cheaper alternatives have become available.
At first this was largely high-street game swap shops. These are still around today and they have their advantages.
For example, they allow and give hardened gamers the opportunity to get out of the house and meet other gamers (or have somewhere to go when they tell their mums that they're on that blind date she set up for them).
Now, though, there are game rental by post websites. You might not get any fresh air on these sites but they're never out of stock and, on the plus side, you don't have to get any fresh air.
This article is about the pros and cons of games rental by post websites. Whether a service like this will suit you really depends on how you play games, your console and - how can I put this politely? - your level of personal laziness.
After you've worked all those out (which depending on your level of personal laziness might take a little while) you'll need to compare game rental sites to find the best deals to suit you.
So, first the pros: game rental by post can save a lot of money compared with buying games, especially if you love getting the most obscure or the newest titles.
Second, game rental by post sites are often also DVD rental sites which means that you'll be able to take a break from looking at the screen to erm... Well, you can rent movies as well anyway.
Third, game rental sites are a great source of game industry news and community news - not so different from that game exchange shop after all.
On the other hand, game rental can be annoying - you can't choose to keep the discs if you wish and if you keep one disc for a long time then your deal may become worse value for money.
There are some deals which are the exception to this: for example Swap game game rental has a very cheap one disc per month deal which allows users to play just one game until their thumbs fall off per month before taking it back.
