14 DAY TRIAL // GameFly has announced that it will be launching a new digital delivery system for video games this holiday season which will allow those who subscribe to get titles for unlimited play as long as they pay a monthly fee.
Those who are at the moment subscribing to the GameFly game discs-by-mail service will be also given access to the digital side of the service on launch, which means that they can download and then play all the games offered in the library for an unlimited amount of time.
Sean Spector, one of the leading executives at GameFly and a co-founder, has said, “We're thrilled to bring digital to the gaming consumer in a meaningful way, as no other service or retailer brings physical and digital gaming together like GameFly.”
A beta for the service will be launched during September and will take place in the Los Angeles area.
GameFly has not yet announced which publishers have signed up for the new digital distribution service but it seems that more than 100 PC video games will be offered during the beta and hundreds more will be added in time for the holiday launch date.
The infrastructure for the new service will probably be based on the Direct 2 Drive digital distribution channel that Gamefly has recently acquired.
It's not yet clear exactly how much gamers who are interested in just the online unlimited play service will need to play and whether GameFly aims to create cross promotions between the new launch and Direct 2 Drive.
The model for the GameFly initiative is very similar to that used by Netflix, the movie and television series oriented distribution service that has achieved great success on home consoles and on the PC.
Similar initiatives include GameTap, which was created by Turner Broadvasting, and also services from Comvast and from Verizon.