How much longer until Blockbuster goes out of business?

What year do you think Blockbuster will go out of business?

  • Total voters
    62
I can't believe I missed this quote all those months ago, but since the thread has been revived I can answer it. :D

Touring Mars
:lol: There is a chance I may have knocked on your door and tried to sell you a discount card for Video Ezy, since I once worked as a door-to-door salesman in Sydney, and Video Ezy were one of our biggest clients :D
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Depends what year mate and what area. :) If it was the Parramatta area around the mid 90's then it's more than likely.....but we usually scared off salesmen/jehovah's/relatives with the 20 or so boys that would sit in my lounge room getting a little bit trashed, and when I say a little, I mean pretty paraletic. :lol:


Seperately, I think I won in that poll, pretty sure I voted 2010. :)
 
I haven't seen any Blockbusters close in my area. I'm assuming "goes out of business" is at least a 50% reduction in national presence, or bankruptcy. Voted 2012.
 
Mark T
I have noticed that the prices are getting a bit silly now. I think it's £6.95 for a game rental for 7 nights.
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We charge £1.70 a week for a game.

Although being a public library, we get one copy of the game(although more can be reserved, and sent here, from other branches), and it can take us a while to get the newest releases (Yakuza 3 came in today even though it was released a fortnight ago.)
 
Yep it looks like Blockbuster has busted. I think the last time that my parents has ever rented anything was somewhere back in 2004. I remember looking at SNES and NES games in a video rental store years ago when I was a kid.
 
Coming from an Economics class (not bragging or anything) I can see blockbuster closing and liquidizing its assets if noone buys them out. the problem with that is that Blockbuster has become an icon and is a well built brand, that being said however, there service has been going down since the introduction of Video on Demand By Netflix, Pay per view, etc.

getting back to branding, Since blockbuster was the norm when it came to rentals and exchanges, it has a well developed and know brand that noone will forget. That is why i can see them being bought out by a bigger company and turned around to not only reinvent themselves, but to also storm back into the market and retake what it has lost.

On that note, In order for blockbuster to compete, they not only have to offer service better than its competitors, but it also has to enter the digital market place where most consumers are moving too. Because of convenience, most consumers are willing to go digital then drive to the movie store, however, that being said, most are still scared of online hackers and their information being stolen so their always will be brick and mortar transactions.
 
I remember when Blockbuster first opened. Back then it was called Ritz Video. I can remember when new movies on VHS used to come out to rent, they would wait a couple of months and then offer them on sale, previously rented, for around £50-£80!
Imagine that! £80 for a previously rented VHS tape! Oh times have definitely changed.
Anyway, my local Blockbusters still seems to be going strong. It is situated in the middle of town, right next to a famous local landmark and the busiest bus stop in town. It is the first thing people see when they get off the bus. It is a huge advantage also in that when your waiting for your bus, you can go in and have a quick look around, especially when it's raining. I know, because 8 out of 10 times I have either rented or bought something while waiting for a bus home.
Saying that, I did notice something the other day on the pre-owned PS3 games section: stickers on pre-owned games saying "2 for £20 or £7.99 each". Hmmmm...
 
Carbonite
Coming from an Economics class (not bragging or anything) I can see blockbuster closing and liquidizing its assets if noone buys them out. the problem with that is that Blockbuster has become an icon and is a well built brand, that being said however, there service has been going down since the introduction of Video on Demand By Netflix, Pay per view, etc.

getting back to branding, Since blockbuster was the norm when it came to rentals and exchanges, it has a well developed and know brand that noone will forget. That is why i can see them being bought out by a bigger company and turned around to not only reinvent themselves, but to also storm back into the market and retake what it has lost.

On that note, In order for blockbuster to compete, they not only have to offer service better than its competitors, but it also has to enter the digital market place where most consumers are moving too. Because of convenience, most consumers are willing to go digital then drive to the movie store, however, that being said, most are still scared of online hackers and their information being stolen so their always will be brick and mortar transactions.
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You said it when you mentioned the digital market. There is no longer a need or a want for physical rentals. Everything is done online. I want a movie, i'll buy the rental off my playstation or Tivo. Then you don't even include torrents and netflix. The only thing of worth out of Blockbuster is the name. In Australia, you can pick most older movies up for a few bob at places like Sanity or Big W.
 
I saw this coming for awhile. A few years ago, Blockbuster started doing a mail in service like Netflix, but you could trade in the movies for rentals from the stores, which isn't a bad idea. My parents bought into that, but they had a bad habbit of ordering movies and never sending it back. We still have The Invention of Lying from like January. And I also noticed that Blockbuster now has a Redbox like thing that I see around town called Blockbuster Express. It's pretty much the same thing. It would appear that Blockbuster has been getting desperate, but I don't think anyone is really using these outlets. So Blockbuster is suffering.
 
Milford_Cubicle
We use LoveFilm, although we're using it more now to rent games on a try before you buy basis.

All of the 'high street' DVD and game rental shops will be out of business soon, although the rental business (online) will continue as people have less money so are going out less....
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We use LoveFilm too, and I've speculated on how long it'll be before Blockbuster disappears when the service from LoveFilm is so much better. We get four rentals a month for about £6 a month, in any format we like (making use of BluRay a lot since they're so expensive to buy and it'd be daft not to make use of the PS3) for no extra cost.

Plus there's the game rental option you mention. Not used it yet but it's there if we need it.

It's just way easier. Not to mention "greener", if you're into that sort of thing. A film dropped off with your morning post rather than having to drive to find a store along with thousands of other people each month? It's not only a better business model but it's a more sustainable one too.
 
In countries with good internet speeds and much more penetration of such speeds and services like Netflix Blockbuster has a very slim chance of survival, thing is in some countries like Mexico for example we don't have such services available and good internet still hasn't reached the mass of the population so a service like Blockbuster still has a fighting chance, don't get me wrong, Blockbuster is also struggling here but I feel it has a lot more room to do new things to get a better cash flow.

So yeah in the US for example I think Blockbuster is pretty much as good as dead unless they change the formula a bit, here in Mexico they haven't done anything big enough to be noteworthy and keeping a bussiness pretty much the same for so many years doesn't work in todays economy and bussiness enviroment.
 
They will never go out of buissness, these guys have an inside secret job, collecting Ecuador cocao, keep it quite, I was never here..."sneaks away slowly into bushes"
 
The two Blockbuster stores in this city closed over a year ago now and that just left us with the same ones we had before (Civic Video, United Video, Video Ezy etc).

Games at Video Ezy and New releases are now only $4 overnight, weeklys only $1 or so. I honestly don'tknow how they make any money to be honest. :s
 
I believe Blockbuster retail stores will survive, but will have to be thinned out a bit and the business model may have to be shifted from stores to online more heavily. These guys are giants, or were, and I'm confident they're clever enough to stay afloat.

I honestly haven't been to Blockbuster in a year or more, but then again I haven't rented from Redbox in the same time span, and have never rented or streamed over the internet. I've been going to Blockbuster stores to rent stuff since I was a little kid and I'm reluctant to give up the "fun" of driving a quarter mile to any of three Blockbuster stores near my house to get something.

Maybe I'm just stubborn, but I still don't like the idea of being struck with a game-renting mood, and then having to wait another day to recieve one in the mail. By that time my mood will probably have passed and I'll have found something to occupy myself.
 
Keef
Maybe I'm just stubborn,
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That's Blockbuster's problem as well. They are just to slow to change with the times, they didn't start doing mail service until after Netflix/Gamefly captured the market and the same thing happened with kiosks. Thing is that all 3 of those were around for awhile before they captured the market(Although the only reason Red Box didn't capture it sooner was because they were only in McDonald's until a few years ago).

If they were smart they would work with the movie/TV companies and try to get most of their catalog on streaming as Netflix has a fairly limited selection.

They will have to do something though as a company can't survive long losing 4 billion a year.
 
A massive gravedig to say the answer is 2013.

So long Blockbuster, you made many memories of going to your store on Friday nights to get a movie and a game(As well as being charged because you forgot to rewind).:cheers:
 
Long slow painful...

I used to have Blockbuster mail service. It cost about the same as Netflix but I could go to the local Blockbuster and swap the mailed dvds in for new ones at the store. I loved it and had if for years.

Slowly they took things away, like no games. Then if I recall, they did away with the free in-store exchanges. Maybe they wanted a dollar or something.

With all of the changes, Netflix became cheaper for me and I switched.

Also about the same time the PS3 price dropped to $299, so I bought that along with GT5P. Now much of my movie watching time was spent racing online.

I have seen some Blockbuster vending machines around town, but Redbox has such a jump.

R. I. P. Blockbuster, it was fun while it lasted.
 
Blockbuster's a dated service.

They've already closed down in Canada.

There's all sorts of other alternatives that have proven to be entirely superior. That's not a bad thing either. The world changes, some companies make it, others have to move on.



Also, now it's going to be slightly awkward to describe movies as a "blockbuster".
 
Justin
(As well as being charged because you forgot to rewind).:cheers:
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LOL

Our video stores never charged you if you forgot to rewind the tape.

I cant really seeing them die off.

Some people want to watch a movie on a friday night and they go down to their local video store and get a DVD or bluray.

With blurays players some what cheap you can get the full HD viewing experience.
Not every one wants to get movies mailed to them or has the ability to get them streamed.-
 
They closed the local Blockbuster several years ago. Good memories going in there, renting movies and games. Once they died, we got Netflix. Much better and I don't have to go anywhere.
 
AOS-
Blockbuster's a dated service.

They've already closed down in Canada.

There's all sorts of other alternatives that have proven to be entirely superior. That's not a bad thing either. The world changes, some companies make it, others have to move on.


Also, now it's going to be slightly awkward to describe movies as a "blockbuster".
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Now it's all about RedBox or online services like Netflix or Hulu.
 
Here they've closed as well, but they've also said they're going to re-open and with more than just games and movies, but more of the general gaming stuff. (Wheels, stands for those, controllers, extra things for you PC and the like.) They closed in the start of September, so I'll see if anything comes from that...

Edit: Oh, and BB was also THE ONLY PLACE TO BUY GAMES PHYSICALLY HERE, unless you wanted to travel by boat or plane to another place.
 
R1600Turbo
Now it's all about RedBox or online services like Netflix or Hulu.
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I use Netflix for stream & older releases, Red Box for new releases.

While I wouldn't trade the convenience of rental being mailed to me, or being able to rent/return everywhere locally, reserve online, etc., I really did enjoy the experience of going to video rental. Block Buster especially, because they had so much discount & freebies. I do miss them!
 
I had honestly forgotten that there were even any Blockbuster stores left in the first place. There used to be 3 within about 40 miles, and they've all been gone for going on 4 years I think.
 

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