GEO, a Japanese company that specializes in buying, selling, and renting products (notably physical discs and video games), announced that its new PlayStation 5 rental service has been doing exceptionally well since it started on February 28. One month following the initial rush (which coincided with the launch of Monster Hunter Wilds), half of GEO’s 400 stores with rentable PS5s reported still renting out consoles at 100% operating capacity.
In an interview with ITmedia, GEO representative Yusuke Sakai explains that the decision to offer PS5 rentals came as a result of the declining rental sales of CDs and DVDs (which is largely attributed to the rise of online subscription services). This decline in physical media rentals also coincided with the steep price increase of the PS5 in Japan in September 2024, when the console’s price was hiked up from 66,980 yen (about $470 USD) to 79,980 yen (about $561 USD) This prompted Sakai’s division to look into ways that GEO could capitalize on the company’s know-how with the console.
“We started looking into whether we could use our current rental system to rent out PS5 consoles,” says Sakai. “GEO also buys PS5s, so we had the know-how for maintenance and other aspects. As there were no additional labor or training costs needed to start renting PS5s, we were able to offer them at the lowest prices in the industry,” says another GEO rep.
As for the service itself, you can rent a PS5 from specific GEO stores for eight days and seven nights at 980 JPY (around $6.9 USD). If you want to keep the console for longer, you can avail yourself of the fifteen-day and fourteen-night plan that costs 1,780 JPY ($12.50 USD). Any extensions outside of your initial plan come at 500 JPY ($3.5 USD) per day.
With regards to save data, you get a factory reset PS5 whenever you use the rental service. This means you can’t re-rent the same unit with your data still on it. Instead, you’re encouraged to either use the longer plans or extend your existing one. Considering the length of some modern titles, this may have been part of GEO’s strategy.
While PS5 sales have never been higher, Sakai says that the console rental service is an extension of GEO’s rental philosophy that allows people to enjoy expensive things at a lower price. The service seems to be going well for GEO, as half of its stores across the country are fully booked.
