In what seems like a response to competition from RedBox, Blockbuster will halve the price of its kiosk DVD rentals.
DVDs rented from Blockbuster Express kiosks will now cost $1 per night, Video Business reports. In a pilot program, the company was charging $1.99 for the first night and a dollar for every night thereafter. Redbox, by comparison, rents DVDs for $1 per night.
Jeff Dudash, a spokesman for NCR, which operates the kiosks for Blockbuster, said that the companies reviewed the kiosk's pilot program and "determined that $1 a day made the most sense for our customers at this time."
But this move doesn't level the playing field for Blu-ray. Redbox, which stocks Blu-ray discs at some Wal-Mart locations, charges the same nightly rate as DVD, while Blockbuster will rent Blu-ray disks for $2 per night when it begins offering them.
Blockbuster and NCR are a bit cagey about how many kiosks are currently in operation, but they plan to have 3,000 running by year end, and 10,000 in service by the end of 2010. By the end of this year, Redbox plans to have more than double that amount.
It comes up time and again when Blockbuster is in the news, but it seems the rental giant is grasping at straws here. The one-two punch of Redbox and Netflix have crippled Blockbuster's old business model, and now the company is playing catch-up with kiosks, mail-order video games and on-demand online video.
But what Blockbuster hasn't done is tie all of those services together in a package that's more attractive than those of its competitors.
