Phil Elliott 15:47 (BST)
04/04/2008

WhyBuyGames.com, the online rental company based in Towyn, Wales, has announced that it is expanding its service to include Blu-ray movies on top of its existing range of videogame formats.

The company, which recently secured external investment to aid growth, is making the move off the back of strong Blu-ray player sales, which it says has jumped sevenfold since the collapse of Toshiba's HD-DVD format.

Co-founder Aaron Barrett told GamesIndustry.biz that he expected the popularity of the format to grow revenues, with as much as 20 per cent of the company's turnover coming from Blu-ray in the future.

To date the most popular games format has remained the Xbox 360, but according to Barrett, PlayStation 3 activity is on the increase.

"There has been a significant rise in PS3 game rentals this year," he said. "Due to the increase in PS3 game rentals we decided to expand our services to offer Blu-ray films and have noticed that customers are increasingly adding these into there rental queues."

He was also confident that the rental market would continue to grow, and become an increasingly popular choice for consumers.

"The videogame rental market has had significant growth over the last five years and is forecast to increase further but at a steadier rate," he said. "With the cost of game development for next-gen consoles rising, the RRP has to be adjusted to reflect this - which puts game purchases for a lot of people at a low priority.

"Game rental will therefore become a far more attractive option as time goes on," he added.