The concept of game rentals is on the up. There have been a few contenders providing this service that have come and gone, falling by the way side over the past couple of years. More recently some of the bigger players are getting serious about game rental.

LoveFilm have recently highlighted their games rental service and upped the anti with extended trial periods of up to 30 days. Metaboli offer games rental on PC via downloads.  Their service allows users to subscribe and download any number of games they want.

How does Games Renting work?

The usual to the postal schemes is similar to the DVD rentals. You sign up and pay a subscription fee. On the website you create a list of games you want to rent and the company sends you a game from that list.  You play it, and post it back when you're done.  There is usually no deadline to return the game, only the maximum number of games you can rent at one time. Some schemes have a priority setting where you can order the games but not all.

Alternative Approaches to Games Rental

A couple of companies offer alternatives to the framework above.  SwapGame allows you to rent a game, and if you like it, give you a change to buy it.  Metaboli offers a download only service, although this is just for PC games at present.

How much does it cost?

Schemes prices are driven by the number of concurrent rentals you have at one time.  Prices range from around £10 to £20 a month. The more games you have at home at one time, the more you pay.

May schemes offer free trials of up to a month. See the information below for a comparison.

Which Games Rental Service is best?

The goto the Games Rental Comparison Table to give you a better idea of what games rental service will suit you and what it will cost.

Wii Fit is still in demand. Although a lot of retailers are stating they have it in stock, when you look at the detail they only sell them as part of a package, or the link simply does not work.

We have seen this happen with a few merchants and for us it is frustrating because it seems it is in stock on our database but when you click through there is no stock or some sort of caveat to buying a Wii Fit on its own. We can only apologise for this and continue to work with the retailers to improve these problems.

The most consistent supplier we have seen selling Wii Fit bundles is SimplyGames . They keep the stock levels up-to-date and delivery is quick, normally 1-2days at the most, which is normal service for most online retailers.

Bundles start at £104.79 plus £4.95 courier delivery for a Wii Fit and Battery pack

To check out the SimplyGames selection of bundles click here.

Last week the GameLocker home was burgled; Playstation 3, Wii, laptop and iPod gone into the ethers, never to be seen again it seems...

So, here I am, on a friend's computer updating the site for the first time in ages. I have decided to write about my experiences because during the past few weeks I have seen a lot of other people on message boards in similar situations, feeling the same frustration and anger. I'm taking a philosophical approach - its done now, and I have to learn from it, but there are other things that can be done to either retrieve your stuff, or deter people from taking it in the first place and I will cover them here.

• UPDATE 1 : The burgulars were caught and went to court in June for burgulary
• UPDATE 2 : Nintendo did come back and provide the serial number to my console but please remember to take a note of it when you get new stuff.
  

So, back to the day in question....