Hire out PC games at your local video store

In last week's Future Gamer there was a great story about an attempt by a now-defunct company called Gamester (nothing to do with the Gamester that make peripherals today) to set up a PC games rental scheme. The scheme bombed and took the company down with it.

Trade weekly CTW now report that video rental company Blockbuster are to pilot a new PC games rental scheme. The initiative is set to run in 12 Blockbuster stores for a 12 week period and will focus on older releases like Tomb Raider 3, Actua Soccer 3 and Colin MacRae Rally. It will cost either £3.50 or £2, depending on the title, for two nights.

Before renting your title, the idea is to take home a PC verification disc. It scans your machine's configuration and then uses a series of 'traffic lights' to highlight which titles are compatible with your PC. Green means everything's fine, yellow indicates that the game might not work and red means you're going to need some extra kit to run it.

Piracy has always been the main reason publishers were unwilling to allow their games to be rented, but Blockbuster will be using an version of C-Dilla's Safedisc technology to safeguard the games, and that seems to have allayed publishers' fears.