Video rental is just plain outdated. Streaming as it is today has a lot of problems, but they are ones that could be easily solved through regulation if regulators ever had the appetite. These stores went out of business because technology made their industry obsolete. I bet most people would have to do a little work to even play a DVD or Blu-Ray today. Maybe dig out an old device and hook it up, or use a laptop with a disc drive. Maybe a gaming console, but there have been a lot on the market for a while now that don't have optical drives. There's enthusiasts of course- including people who still keep VCR's and laser disc players and even people with their own reel-to-reel projectors, but they're a tiny minority.

Friendly's I only went to once and it was unremarkable casual dining. That industry DOES have a problem where private equity keeps on buying, looting, and destroying companies, but I'm also hopeful that can open up more space for small businesses instead. I'll pass on this one.

My memories of RadioShack were that it was cheap junk that was overpriced, but often the only reasonable option unless you wanted to order online or through a catalog from somewhere that could take months to arrive. I do wonder what the world would have been like if RadioShack had positioned itself as a repaor parts supplier and lobbied for Right to Repair legislation. Probably a stretch of the imagination.

Circuit City... For some reason I thought they went out of business largely due to embezzlement, but when I look forward that now I can't find anything so maybe I'm thinking of another company? Best Buy seems to be struggling to compete with Amazon and Wal-Mart still today, so I don't think Circuit City could have lasted much longer than it did either way.

Party City and Toys-R-Us are the 2 that make me upset, because both were successful businesses ruined by Private Equity. Not that I want to simo for these corporations, but what PE has been doing to so many industries in the past decade is absolutely disgusting. Id I had to choose one to bring back I'd say Party City because a lot of the custom and specific party supplies there aren't going to be stocked by your local Target or Wal-Mart, and that's the kind of thing you'd prefer to see in person rather than order online.

[–] Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world 2 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

You wouldn't say that about video rental if you've been to Scarecrow Video in Seattle. They go way beyond what any modern streamer can do. It's an institution, and one of the only things I actually miss about the states.

[–] paultimate14@lemmy.world 0 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Please enlighten me then- what does Scarecrow Video do that makes them special? From a quick Internet search it looks like they re-organized into a non-profit, got officially recognized as a museum by the state, have relied on Kickstarter campaigns to stay running, and seem to still be struggling to keep the lights on. So just from skimming their website it seems like less of a business and more of a preserved piece of nostalgia and novelty.

Don't get me wrong- I'm very much in favor of physical media and media preservation. Today's streaming and digital "purchase" landscape has a ton of issues. I just think the solution to that is public libraries, and it looks like Scarecrow is trying to be a hybrid of a library, museum, and business with the business part failing.

[–] Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago

I don't see how you can be a fan of physical media and still fail to see see what's special about a community-supported video museum with a huge emphasis on physical media preservation.

Now, is it the ideal solution? Maybe, actually - imagine if the state ran it? They'd refuse to carry certain things. Stuff could disappear if the wrong type of people got into public office. As it stands, they have a huge selection of R-rated, NC-17, and unrated media. They have every genre of film, stuff you simply cannot license anymore, rare and otherwise impossible to source media, and they do it with style.

It may not work as a business model anymore, and humanity's videography is not sanitary enough for it to work as a fully public institution - I think they've struck upon a perfectly workable (if inelegant) middle ground.

[–] TrickDacy@lemmy.world 2 points 6 hours ago

I think what you said about RadioShack is exactly what they were up until the late 90s

[–] zipzoopaboop@lemmynsfw.com 1 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

I agree Video rental is outdated; but those places also had games which are getting more and more expensive and more valid. As long as code in a box doesn't completely replace and ruin physical media

[–] paultimate14@lemmy.world 1 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

I mean... Your last sentence is already becoming more and more true every day, and has been for years. Microsoft was trying to eliminate the used game market back with the Xbox One. In the US at least there has been a sever decline in videogame stores. Gamestop used to be just one of a handful like Babbage's and EB Games. Other stores on this initial post like Toys-R-Us also used to carry physical videogames too (I think Circuit City may have too?).

Plus I always felt that videogames are just consumed too differently from movies. Movies are something easy to consume in a night or a weekend, especially because the rental versions were usually just the movie with none of the special features. I rented videogames a few times as a kid, and I always felt so much pressure to try to play as much of the game on the time I had it as possible. It ended up a stressful and unpleasant experience. Plus you had some videogame developers who adjusted difficulty specifically for rental markets, like Lion King and Battletoads, which I would argue was detrimental to those games.

There's a reason TV show rentals never really caught on like movies either- it just takes too long to consume comfortably. The Netflix mail model made a bit more sense for shows at least, but couldn't quite bridge the gal for videogames. GameFly tried it and I suppose technically still exists, but I haven't heard anyone talk about it in years. RedBox tried and had a nice moment, but ultimately got swallowed by streaming.

Plus DLC and updates are becoming more common, so it would be annoying to have to go and re-rent a game, purchase the DLC, try to speed through it in a weekend, then return the rented game but still be out whatever you paid for the DLC with no way to play it.

Rentals were pretty good for being a low-risk way to try a game out. You could spend $1-$5 usually for a game that might cost $40-$50 to buy new, and occasionally publishers would have promotions where a rental would come with a coupon to offset the rental price if you want to buy the game. Nowadays that has been replaced by free downloadable demos. Which aren't perfect, but I think are better than the old rental system.

[–] zipzoopaboop@lemmynsfw.com 1 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Demos have been dying out faster than physical media for years too

[–] paultimate14@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

That does not match my own experience.

Back in my day, I received a couple of demo disks packed in with my PS1, and I got a couple more through other means like magazines and the famous Pizza Hut promotion. Some games would include demos for other games too: Spyro and Crash Bandicoot used to do that a lot. Now that I think if it I don't remember ever seeing any cartridge-based demos at all for any Nintendo or Sega systems, even the later ones like GBA and N64. There were kiosks in public places, but I never saw anything intended for a consumer to have- carts were just too expensive.

By the PS2 era demos had mostly dried up. I have a God of War demo that came with a magazine and that's about it. I could only speculate as to why, but I suspect increasing game sizes and DVD's being more expensive than CD's may have been a factor?

I'll admit I stopped paying attention to demo's for a while, so maybe I missed a peak at some point from like 2010-2020. But nowadays Steam, the Switch, and the PS5 all have a category or filter option to look through demos. There's tons of indie games trying to get attention, and of course tons of shovelware too. But most of Nintendo's published games have demos on Switch. Scrolling through the PlayStation store I see EA sports games, Persona 3, Power wash Simulator, Ys, Diablo 4, FF VII Rebirth, Tekken 8, Crow Country., Chants of Senaar, Sea of Stars, Ghost Trick (I didn't even know that was on the PS5 lol), Like a Dragon, Resident Evil 4... So Square, Capcom, Sega, EA, Activision-Blizzard, tons of indies, and more. Sony is the only publisher whose absence I noticed, unless you count VR stuff. The number of demos available today is overwhelming, if you look for them.