Dupe -- In soviet russia, storyduplicates you!

Before I start this, let me just say that I'm not a Blockbuster 'insider' or anything. I read an article a *long* time ago about how this system worked and thought I'd chip into this discussion.

Do you remember, long ago, when there was no Blockbuster? In my town, video stores were mostly mom and pop shops with names like 'Videoflicks' and 'At The Movies'. They'd have like 1 copy of a new release and you just had to be lucky to get it. If a movie was deemed particularly hot, they might buy two. They couldn't buy a whole boatload of them because the distributor charged a pretty steep price for new material.

I think at this stage of the game (mid-80s) it might have been legal to just buy copies from licensed distributors, set up shop and you were all set. The same goes for games. These same stores would rent NES games (!) too. Probably the same business model. Buy from distributor at inflated price, then rent away.

However, at some point along the way, the model changed. Blockbuster showed up. Mom and pop went out of business. But, it's important to note that Blockbuster was still following the same business plan. Only difference? A BB store could buy 10 copies of a new release instead of one.

Then, one day, a bright young plug at BB headquarters said, "Screw this. Instead of buying 10 copies from the distributor, why don't we go right to the studio/production company and say 'If you give us as many copies of your movie as we want for free, we'll give 20% of the profit we make on renting it out'?"

The studios loved it. They worked it into movie contacts (rental profit is now part of the total gross of a movie - Arnie get 2 points of all the rentals of T2 until the end of time).

And thus was born the BB "If we don't have a copy [of a new release], it's free!". Oh, they'll have a copy alright. They have 8000 copies of the new release titles in each store now.

Hrm. What does this have to do with the original post? Well, I'm guessing that if BB is right in with the film studios, they're probably right in with the game publishers too. So EA is getting .5% of the rental profit for all EA games rented from BB.

Comments?