The Blockbuster Behemoth Files for Bankruptcy

The big movie/video game rental company has filed for bankruptcy, after suffering enormous revenue losses. Blockbuster began in 1985, almost 25 years ago, and has been a gigantic part of the rental store explosion. Blockbuster has always been one of the biggest rental companies around, if not the largest, but on September 23rd of 2010 they filed for bankruptcy.

Beginning in Dallas, Texas in October of 1985, and was first in being the company to have new releases, popular movies, and a huge database and collection. It will continue to operate around 3,000 stores in the U.S. but filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after such revenue losses due to competitors: GameFly, NetFlix, and so on.

Blockbuster has beat out much competition that I have seen growing up. They were on nearly every corner, renting and selling movies and video games at the cheapest prices. Instead of paying 11 dollars to rent one movie or game (much like it is now-a-days) there were good times, good ole' days, where renting would total under 5 dollars for 5 days.

They're old competitors included the once semi-popular Movie Gallery, but nothing really ever came close to Blockbuster until the internet got into the business of gaming and movie rentals. Now you can stream Netflix through your internet connection at Bluray quality; or rent unlimited video games for $15 a month.

Everything moving forward on the internet, Blockbuster might as well close it's doors and move it's business completely online. However, this does cause a big issue with customers that do not have an internet connection, or would rather use a physical location as opposed to putting their credit card information online.

Blockbuster's prices the way that they have become now, it has ran off a lot of loyal customers to the company, and has tried many different sales ploys to get back the business that it has lost; thus far, nothing has worked. As it has followed with the bankruptcy.

Another big killer for Blockbuster and it's signature logo has been the invention of the $1 movie boxes, and more recently the video game terminals. Blockbuster has tried putting out these rental boxes itself, and that may be the last help in it's dying locations.

Either way, everyone will always remember Blockbuster and it's golden ticket stub. Going into the locations and spending a quarter of an hour mulling over a movie and/or game. Going down the rows of Action, Comedy, Thriller, and Horror genres.

Whether they keep their doors open, or eventually lock all of them down permanently, I'm sure that we will still be seeing the name "Blockbuster" for years to come. It's been here 25 already, how innovative can they become?