Dr. Mac follows up with some comments regarding the Netflix blurb I posted yesterday:

So yeah, that whole Netflix thing. I think they must rent video games soon. For the first time ever I’m seriously considering jumping ship. Circuit City has GameznFlix which is about half as much as Netflix, has games, and from my limited searching has a pretty good selection. There were very very few things in my Netflix queue that they didn’t have. Plus switching to them and dropping Netflix and Gamefly would save me $30 a month.

The only problem is that a) I don’t like Circuit City, b) I do like Netflix and have been a long time customer, and c) Netflix adds extra things with the friends, the suggestions, etc. But if Netflix doesn’t get [videogames] on board soon sheer economics will make me try out GnF’s offerings. Over $300 a year can’t be ignored.

Now, I dropped my GameFly subscription sometime last year. I didn’t really want to and perhaps as a result I’ve played a lot less videogames. I’ll let you be the judge on that, but I consider it maybe not a bad thing but at least unfortunate. For me, the price difference is more like $10-11 per month since I only do Netflix (at the $20/month level) but that still means about $120 in savings per year plus the ability to rent videogames through the service.

But dismissing the extras that Netflix has is difficult: On one hand I don’t want to be married to a particular brand or service, but I must admit that I kind of like having a place where I can rate every movie I watch and then go search on those ratings. I’m sure there are other, independent sites that offer the same functionality or possibly even non-service based software suites that do it. But I really only maintain the ratings (which helps Netflix with my recommendations) because I’m already on the site to manage my queue anyway. And not just that but I know a couple of things. One is that Netflix at least for now is in the lead in terms of this type of service. That means that I don’t have to play the emotion-roller-coaster ride the way I typically do by latching onto products that are not market leaders (hello, TiVo and Apple) wondering if they’re going to be able to afford to keep afloat long enough to let me continue being a customer. GnF may be a nice hybrid, but they look the way Netflix did about four years ago: Like a fly-by-night with a chance to make it. I gambled on Netflix and have been happy since (mostly) but I’m not sure I feel like doing it again.

Still, that $120 is hard to ignore and cheaper plus better usually equals decision made. Not sure why this is different, exactly. Maybe I just keep hoping Netflix will wise up and make the decision for me. Maybe I’m just lazy and the prospect of rebuilding a 220+ movie queue is too daunting. Maybe I want to show solidarity and not be one of those people that jumps ship at the first sign of something even marginally better.

Yeah, probably the lazy thing.