GameFly’s PC Client Public Beta Launches

It’s stories like this that make me realize that some of our headlines must make absolutely no sense to non-video-gamers. Hell, sometimes they don’t even make sense to me. But it’s been pretty well established by now that I’m an idiot.

According to a post on Joystiq this morning, GameFly, the video game-mailing service, has launched the public beta of their PC client, which will act like Valve’s Steam and EA’s Origin services. Like Steam and Origin, you can browse GameFly’s online store of downloadable titles—but what sets it apart from the others is the “Unlimited PC Play” service that it offers to customers of its video game rental service. In this way, the GameFly service has more in common with movie-centered service Netflix than ever before, as Netflix offers unlimited movie and TV streaming to its customers…of course, that was before that company jacked the prices and split the services in two. The service comes as a result of the company’s purchase of the Direct2Drive service back in May of this year.

As to what’s available, there are certainly more games listed for straight-up purchase than there are for the unlimited portion f the site’s offerings, but the service provides “hundreds” of titles to Unlimited PC Play customers already, and there will probably be more on the way.

The list is pretty huge, too: you can check it out right here. Memberships with GameFly start at sixteen bucks a month, and there’s a 10-day free trial available on the site if you haven’t signed up yet.

What do you think? Is this deal sweet enough to make you switch from Steam or Origin—or at the very least, add GameFly to your PC-gaming routine?

Via Joystiq