Game Rental Company GameFly Goes Digital With Unlimited Play Service

GameFly will launch a new "unlimited play" digital delivery service for subscribers this Holiday season, the company has announced. The service brings to mind comparisons to Netflix: current subscribers to GameFly's unlimited discs-by-mail rental program will be given access to the digital side of its business at launch, which will allow them to download and play any of its applicable PC games for unlimited amounts of time, as long as the subscription fee continues being paid. "We're thrilled to bring digital to the gaming consumer in a meaningful way, as no other service or retailer brings physical and digital gaming together like GameFly," said Sean Spector. GameFly's new digital program, which also incorporates transaction-based downloads based on its recent acquisition of Steam competitor Direct2Drive, will launch this Holiday after a closed Los Angeles beta next month. While specific publisher partners have not been announced, co-founder San Spector told Joystiq that the company expects "over a hundred titles" available for the beta, and "hundreds" in time for the public Holiday launch. This is of course not the first unlimited games-on-demand subscription service to launch in the United States. Perhaps the most notable was Turner Broadcasting's GameTap, which was later acquired by France's Metaboli. Similar ventures have been made by companies including Comcast and Verizon, among others.