GameStop-owned EB Games is rolling out a new rental service in South Australia that will transform the retailers used game stock into a catalog of potentially rentable games.
For EB Games and its parent company GameStop, a successful rental program could serve to both combat rising rental offerings from Xbox Game Pass and PlayStation Now while also helping the company monetize its treasure trove of used titles amid an ongoing physical game sales slump.
According to Press Start, the Swap ’n’ Play program will let customers rent one pre-owned game at a time for for the fee of $19.95 AUD (~$15.77 USD) a month. During the duration of their subscription, players are free to continue playing the same game or return it to an EB Games location and swap it out for a different used title as many times as they’d like.
The program mirrors something similar ran by GameStop in select American cities that let customers rent and play used games across a 3 month period for a single $50 fee. While the EB Games program has a few notable differences from GameStop’s summer-long promotion, both services go to show how the company is looking to compete with other rental services that draw customers away from full game purchases.