Announced in February of this year, Blockbuster’s Games By Mail program is an extension of the company’s Total Access movies by mail service. Competing with Gamefly the same way Total Access competes with Netflix. Now Seattle area Blockbuster Online customers can opt into the games service, which allows them to rent any number of games, one out at a time, for $US7.99 per month.

“We know our customers in Seattle love games, so we’re excited to expand our Games By Mail pilot to include this market,” said Keith Morrow, Blockbuster CIO. “We hope customers will take advantage of the service and share their feedback with us, so that we can build on our key learnings from Cleveland and further refine the offering in preparation for a national launch.”

And it probably wouldn’t hurt if it boosted paid subscriptions for the service too.

The app, which requires Wi-Fi to work, lists games by platform in a number of ways, allowing gamers to browse or search for their favourite titles. Once a person finds the game they’re looking for, they can check out the box art, look at game’s controls and even read through user reviews for the game.

The service also has channels that allow people to read a feed of video gaming news pulled from Shacknews, which Gamefly acquired in February. And of course log on to their Gamefly account.

Gamefly co-founder Sean Spector says he hopes to continue to expand the 5000 games included in the applications library and that he also plans to extend the reviews and news found on the program to include other video game news and review sources.

“The idea behind it is to be the all encompassing video game app for mobile devices,” he said. “This is for everyone who is a gamer, not just Gamefly subscribers.”

According to a listing from online game rental outfit GameFly, spotted by Siliconera, Monster Hunter Finder will be published by Konami in January 2010, possibly the first DSi-only game to hit North American store shelves. As previously reported, the game uses the Nintendo DSi’s built-in cameras to snap pictures of collectible beasts in the vein of Pokemon and Sony’s PSP game Invizimals.

Monster Finder [GameFly via Siliconera]

If you live in the Philadelphia area and had trouble receiving your GameFly rentals last year, odds are good that Reginald Johnson was to blame. Johnson worked as a mail-processing clerk at the US Postal Service processing and distribution centre in Philadelphia, responsible for unloading mail from the trucks that docked there. And unload he did…into his own SUV.

Reports of missing GameFly shipments in the area began reaching the Postal Service’s Office of Inspector General in 2007. In September of 2008, the inspector general set up a sting operation using test mailings, and Johnson was found to be the culprit. After a car chase that ended in Johnson crashing his car and fleeing on foot, authorities discovered 79 GameFly mailings in a backpack in the vehicle, with an additional 81 found in a duffel bag dropped during the pursuit.

And what was Johnson doing with all of these rental games? In his SUV authorities also discovered five Nintendo Wii Sports, three Wii Fits, a PlayStation console, game controllers, and receipts from GameStop, where Johnson had been exchanging games for trade-in credit.

Johnson admitted to stealing 2200 GameFly mailings over the course of his employment with the US Postal Service in federal district court yesterday, and now faces 12 to 18 months in prison according to preliminary sentencing guidelines. Sentencing is scheduled for January 13.

I’m actually interested to know which GameStop he was bringing these games to. A guy showing up on a regular basis with a stack of caseless game discs had to have thrown up some sort of red flag, shouldn’t it?

Ex-mail handler admits theft of video games in envelopes [Philly.com - Thanks David!]

Last month, GameFly filed an order to force the USPS to provide figures showing how many of its retail locations have Netflix, Blockbuster, or other dedicated mail slots for DVD-based mail. The Postal Service said, in effect, “don’t know what you’re talking about,” and said such slots, if they exist, would be against USPS policy. GameFly came back with pictures taken in Alturas and Susanville, Calif. (Susanville pictured above; both towns are well in the northern part of the state) showing just such a thing. The Postal Service has refused to authenticate the pics.

Dedicated mail slots are just one facet of GameFly’s overall complaint against the Postal Service, which includes hand-sorting of competitors’ and peers’ disc mail, to avoid breakage, and that USPS automatic sorters break $US300,000 worth of GameFly games per month.

The case is still, as they say, pending. Still, has anyone out there seen dedicated Netflix slots at their local Post Office?

Update on Gamefly Complaint With USPS That Netflix and Blockbuster Get Preferential Treatment [Hacking Netflix via Game Politics]

Square Enix reps told Kotaku: “We cannot comment on a PS3 release at this time.” However, they went on to say that the listing on Gamefly.com was “an error and had been taken down from their site.”

Well, not completely taken down. While searching for the PlayStation 3 release of Star Ocean: The Last Hope doesn’t return anything but the Xbox 360 version, Gamefly still has the title in its database. We’ll chalk that up to either a technical limitation or a preference to not have to upload the listing again should an announcement of a PS3 port be coming soon.

The Value Gamer: Play and Purchase Behaviour in a Recession also shows that gamers have increased their purchase of used games to “record-breaking totals” since Nielsen began tracking used game sales.

“Overall, the uncertain economy has not hurt gameplay and may have accelerated it as gamers look to get more value out of the games they own,” The Nielsen Company says.

More interesting, I think, is what type of gamers Nielsen seems to think is driving this increase in play.

“Primarily, we believe mainstream gamers are playing more of the broadly appealing games (i.e Wii Fit, Guitar Hero and Rock Band) pushing their hours of gameplay up,” said Michael Flamberg, director of client consulting, Nielsen Games. “The social aspects of these games have engaged them. We don’t believe hardcore gamers are driving up the usage averages we’ve observed. Second, gamers may be looking to stretch their entertainment dollar further through playing games they own more. The importance of value for them is evident in the findings on used game purchase.”

Gamers are also making more use of rental services like Gamefly, according to the survey.

The results seem to show that developers need to continue to concentrate on making ways to extend the life of their games if they want to increase sales and lengthen the time a person holds on to a title. New downloadable content, episodes and, of course, strong multiplayer elements all seem to help that.

The Los Angeles-based company says that the United States Postal Service is responsible for breaking between one and two percent of 590,000 video games shipped each year with their automated sorting machines. That doesn’t sound like a lot of games, but Ars Technica’s done the math – putting the cost to GameFly for broken games at $US295,000 a month.

Besides breakage, GameFly is sore about games being stolen out of the mail; though it does give the Office of Inspector General and the Postal Inspection Service credit for arresting 19 USPS employees in connection with the thefts. The company is also annoyed that working with USPS to find a solution has only cost GameFly more money as they experimented with heavier and bigger mailer to try and protect their product.

The final insult, though, is the claim that Netflix and Blockbuster have it better. According to GameFly, USPS manually plucks Netflix and Blockbuster DVD mailers from the sorting line en route to the machine to protect them from breakage. GameFly’s complaint alleges that they’ve asked for comparable treatment for their game mailers, but that postal service hasn’t done it. With Blockbuster renting out video games by mail, says the complaint, “GameFly now faces direct competition from a rival that is larger and longer established – and which, because of the preferential treatment given by the Postal Service, enjoys a substantial cost advantage in the distribution of its DVDs to consumers.”

GameFly told Kotaku today that because this is a legal matter, they have no official comment at this time. Their complaint says in the Relief Requested section that GameFly wants the Commission to immediately hold hearings on their grievances and offer them “reasonable and nondiscriminatory rates and terms of service.” Like now, before more games get broken and Blockbuster noms on the market.

Check out the full complaint here.

Gamefly: USPS handles DVD rentals with kid gloves, ignores us [Ars Technica via Voodoo Extreme]

GameFly has just launched GameAnswers.com, a website that allows gamers to share their knowledge of the industry and judge by their peers.

GameAnswers is essentially the video game version of Yahoo! Answers. After a quick and painless sign up process, users can ask questions or answer questions to their hearts’ content, climbing the ranks as other community members rate their answers in terms of overall helpfulness. Simple community functions allow you to follow other members or gain followers yourself, perhaps one day becoming to most informative gamer the world has ever seen.

GameFly founder Sean Spector explained to Kotaku why exactly they’ve created the GameAnswers website.

“Gamers want feedback from other gamers, but don’t want to spend hours combing through message boards to find what they need. GameAnswers lets gamers get answers on their time line and not others’.

Spector hopes that rank system will help encourage good answers, rather than a page full of “First answer!” posts, and if that doesn’t work there is always the report abuse button.

While there are currently no plans to integrate GameAnswers with the GameFly video game rental-by-mail service, Spector didn’t rule out some sort of shared features appearing in the future.

If reading the comments section on Kotaku is any indicator, gamers sure love to show other gamers how much they know. With that in mind, we should completely crash the website’s servers in a matter of minutes. We can do it. I believe in us.

GameAnswers.com [Official Website]

Looks like Sony will be bringing former PSP exclusive Secret Agent Clank to the PlayStation 2, one those 70 games coming to the last-gen PlayStation, according to a new listing from GameFly.

Ratchet & Clank fans may remember the previous PSP outing, Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters also went from the PlayStation Portable to the PlayStation 2 about a year after it first hit. The existence of the PS2 version was revealed via a similar retail listing at GameStop with an official announcement arriving one month later.

GameFly shows the PS2 version landing in May.

If true, Secret Agent Clank will join PSP hits like Silent Hill Origins, Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories as up-ported once-exclusives. It will also mean one more title stealth announced by GameFly, who excels at revealing games prior to official announcements.

We’re checking in with Sony to see if they feel like confirming the game’s existence.

Secret Agent Clank [GameFly - thanks, Baust528!]