Lunchtime Discussion: Would You Rent A PS3 Game?

Sure I may be posting it, but today’s topic of discussion come from nofi, our glorious leader. It’s a good one too.

The next step in digital distribution surely has to be actual game  rentals. I don’t mean the ability to download a full game for £20 and keep it for as long as you want, or even get part of a game in weekly doses (like Blue Toad Murder Files) – no, I mean pay £5 to be able to download a full game and play it for two days, pretty much like you do at your local video rental store, but over the web.

Naturally all this is dependant on your bandwidth and remaining storage space but in principal, in theory, would this be something you would be interested in? When the country’s covered in snow and everybody’s either driving around at three miles per hour or sliding down the pavement on their backsides, surely the sensible thing would be to stay in and keep warm and let the internet do the rest?

So, what sort of price points would you be interested in?  Would you be prepared to download the full game and then pay an extra £25 or so to purchase a further ‘unlock key’ to keep playing past the rental period?  Or does all this just sound like Star Trek and you’d rather face the terrifying conditions of the last couple of weeks of Britain just to get your hands on a physical copy of FIFA 2010?